Organizations continuously move through cycles of aiming high with "vision and strategy," and then bearing down on "planning and implementation." These efforts are continuously, but subtly influenced by the "communication and culture" of the organization. Sostrin Consulting collaborates with organizations through these stages to facilitate their success.
Our primary consulting services are organized around a traditional suite of leadership + organization development interventions that help our organizations identify the critical challenges – and the hidden opportunities within them:
Communication + Culture
Communication is the DNA of organizational life. The patterns of communication and interaction that dominant the hallways, cubicles, and board rooms of your workplace are the culture-making forces that literally shape the experiences and outcomes of people inside the organization. When communication + culture fail to produce the required conditions for organizational success, Sostrin Consulting provides diagnostic tools, assessments, and facilitated change-efforts to create the change you seek. Signature interventions include:
- Taking a communication perspective to see the everyday episodes of interaction that shape unwanted patterns of communication that limit employee engagement, reduce effective collaboration, and effect the bottom-line;
- Recognizing the most critical patterns of communication and interaction where decisions get made, relationships are built, organizational culture is solidified, and the trajectory for ultimate business outcomes are set into motion;
- Examining what existing patterns of communication make and selecting unwanted patterns to re-make; and
- Teaching leaders to spot the critical moments where culture shifts are possible.
Vision + Strategy
During uncertain and changing times, a clear vision and strategy are critical to aligning organizational resources in the most productive directions. Sostrin Consulting designs, facilitates, and implements strategic visioning processes tailored to your organization’s need and sense of urgency. Signature interventions include:
- Defining and redefining the mission, values, and goals of your organization or team;
- Establishing new strategic directions; and
- Understanding and developing agile responses to the competitive landscape.
Aligning Talent + Roles
The seamless alignment between talented people + vital roles is the holy grail of human capital management. Organizations limit the potential contributions of their talent when they fail to establish clear roles and performance indicators that establish a vibrant mutual agenda that reflects the ultimate concerns of employees and the needs of the company. Leaders are responsible for understanding the strategic importance of the mutual agenda and cultivating its boundaries in order to improve engagement and retention in the short-term, and bottom-line performance in the long-term. Sostrin Consulting helps organizations assess roles, capacity for collaboration, and alignment among the strategic requirements of the team and organization. With this foundation, a clear mutual agenda can be created through the following interventions:
- Initial review of relevant individual and team purpose, goals, and objectives;
- Assessment of current capacity for achieving desired outcomes;
- On-site and virtual shadowing to identify performance drivers and barriers;
- Clarifying boundaries for the mutual agenda, including employee motivation and organizational bottom lines; and
- Skill-building interventions that nurture the talent and commitment required to tilt the team toward success.
Planning, Implementing + Managing Change
Sostrin Consulting’s comprehensive approach to planning, implementing, and managing change offers solutions to many of the critical needs that arise during organizational transitions. Whether change is inspired from the inside or imposed from the outside, our participatory facilitation methods help stakeholders understand and adapt to a climate of change and focus on what they can do to influence their future. Signature interventions include:
- Facilitating team and organizational self-assessment processes;
- Establishing goals and objectives to bring vision and strategy to fruition;
- Creating action plans that align values with necessary resources, priorities, and accountabilities; and
- Reorganizing team composition, roles, and work flows for successful strategy implementation.
Integrated Conflict Resolution
The presence of organizational conflict is not inherently bad, or unhealthy. Conflict can be an opportunity for creativity and positive change when it is handled in an effective manner. Conflict becomes unhealthy when it is focused on people/personalities rather than substance and ideas. Instead of inspiring impassioned colleagues to voice their ideas of creative dissent, unhealthy conflict erodes trust, reduces collaboration, and diminishes overall team performance. The costs of unresolved conflict often include:
- Managers spending excessive time reacting to interpersonal disputes and too little time on strategy and implementation;
- Individual employees distracted by energy-draining conflict and operating less productively as a result;
- Declining morale resulting in resistance and/or general discontent; and
- Increasing threats of, or actual, absenteeism, presenteeism, and/or costly turnover.
For organizations and teams experiencing the adverse impacts of unresolved conflict, Sostrin Consulting is available to provide confidential issue assessment and skilled conflict resolution intervention services. With an integrated approach and nationally recognized expertise in the design and delivery of mediation and conflict resolution services, Sostrin Consulting also works with organizations to develop in-house conflict resolution systems that build their native capacity to successfully manage conflict more effectively over time.