Many firms and individuals offer management consulting services, from executive coaching to off-the-shelf training to change strategies. The uniqueness of KJCG is that we bring a full range of services customized to each organization’s specific needs; we serve as a thinking partner, not an off-the-shelf vendor. We bring an ability to design and support fast, sustainable change that is well-planned, flexible, grounded in action, and tailored to your organization’s specific needs, challenges, and opportunities for higher individual, team and organization performance.
KJCG identifies the mindsets and behaviors that are limiting innovation, collaboration, and smart risk-taking in your organization, and then plan a path forward together and then execute that path in collaboration with internal partners to achieve higher individual, team, and organization performance. Below are some of the components we bring as we partner with your organization to becoming BETTER: better serving your vision, mission, and strategic direction; better positioned to unleash individual and team agency and potential; and better at producing bottom-line results.
Discovery Process and Developing a Path Forward
Our commitment to our clients is that our work will always connect to the bottom line—impacting measures that matter. If we are not having bottom line impact, we are producing waste in the organization. Read about examples of measurable, bottom-line results achieved through the implementation of organization betterment efforts to create practices and interactions that create better work interactions for all.
KJCG’s process for understanding the current state becomes an intervention in itself, engaging people in ways that go beyond simple surveys. Moreover, our discovery process enables people to see what is in it for them by framing the work as raising the playing field for all so that each person understands how learning and integrating more higher performing and inclusive behaviors into their day-to-day interactions leads to more satisfying work experiences and markedly better results.
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We use individual and group “Giving Voice” sessions (a.k.a. focus groups) to enable people to share their voice as part of the organization’s journey. In these sessions we are listening for:
what is going well,
opportunities for organization betterment,
spoken and unspoken norms that get in the way of people doing their best work, and,
other roadblocks to moving toward a new higher performing culture.
We utilize the Giving Voice sessions to identify people “leaning in,” who might be willing to join in the betterment effort as we move forward.
We use electronic surveys to gain additional insights and quantitative knowledge of the organization. By looking at how specific groups (level, function, tenure, etc.) respond, we can further tailor the betterment effort to make the organization enhancement that will be most helpful to all members of the organization.
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With every discovery process we undertake we make sure to feed the data back—not only to leaders but to those who participated in the process. We validate our findings with some of the people we talked with. This allows people to truly feel heard and included in the process. We then share the initial Path Forward with the entire organization after developing it with internal partners.
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Part of our Discovery Process is measuring what matters to you. Defining the success of an organization betterment strategy tied to what matters to your organization means the effort is no longer a “nice-to-have” or program unrelated to the purpose of the organization, but a “must-have” component for higher organization performance. We continuously measure progress and track successes within each organization and adjust the strategy based on data. Measuring the progress of change is essential. One tool we use is the Commitment Curve, which enables KJCG and leaders to monitor the progress of the organization betterment effort. It charts people’s behaviors along the path to new practices and ways of operating in stages.
Senior Leadership Team Strategy Development and Education
KJCG’s work with Senior Leadership Teams is focused on enhancing their skills in leading an organization’s betterment effort. Leaders learn enhanced behaviors and ways of leading that support higher performing interactions. This includes new mindsets and behaviors, utilizing Inclusion as the HOW®, problem solving, and unleashing agency to support the desired organization impact.
We provide direct coaching and guidance to the leaders who are involved in making enhancements to the organization.
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Just like top athletes, leaders need coaches—someone to bounce ideas off of, to test new ideas, and to help them grow. But leaders must be careful regarding what they share and with whom; many of their thoughts, concerns and doubts should not be shared with others in the organization in their early stages. Leaders need opportunities to think out loud with someone who will hold their confidence and who does not have a vested interest beyond what is best for the leader and the success in the organization.
We have served as Thinking Partners (i.e., a sounding board and coach) to executives and senior leaders in organizations of all sizes, across many industries, and in countries around the world. As Thinking Partners, we bring decades of experience as strategic partners and confidants. Having a good Thinking Partner is critical for leaders to have the safety to learn, grow and accelerate organizational results.
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Learning Partners is a group of individuals who are high performers selected from across the organization (both organizationally and demographically), who have a good sense of the organization, can influence others and are seen as credible by senior leaders and their peers. They receive education to enhance their understanding of organization betterment and to bring their street corners (aka: perspectives) to the effort. Their goal is to join the Senior Leadership Team during one or more of its own education sessions to enhance leaders’ understanding of the challenges and opportunities to move the organization forward.
“Being a KJCG Learning Partner has truly been a highlight of my career. I’m so grateful for this opportunity thus far and eager to help in any way I can to continue this important work going forward.” - A KJCG Learning Partner Participant
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We work with senior leaders to customize an organization betterment education strategy for leaders in order to achieve the mission and vision of the organization. We conduct education and strategy sessions for senior leadership teams, focusing on how they interact with each other and upskilling them in creating higher performance among the people they lead.
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We work with your organization to identify mindsets and behaviors in your current culture make innovation, collaboration, and smart risk-taking difficult. KJCG assists in clarifying and implementing an organization narrative which creates a new story about the organization, where it has been, where it is going, and the mindsets and behaviors necessary of everyone to get there. It enables people to have a clearer sense of what the betterment strategy is focused on, what is expected of each person, and what success looks like.
Enhancing the Organization for Team and Individual Performance
Individual and organization betterment requires support and buy-in at all levels of the organization and examples of what the new mindsets and behaviors look like in action. KJCG identifies pockets of readiness and individuals who have influence in the organization to model new behaviors in their daily interactions. This exposure enables peer-to-peer learning.
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Rather than methodically cascading education and information down through the levels of an organization, we find that identifying and developing a core group of people from across the organization and giving them the tools and competencies needed to interact differently in their daily work significantly accelerates the speed and effectiveness of change. Their role is not to become trainers, but rather to engage their peers and colleagues in the new behaviors in their day-to-day interactions. By modeling the desired behaviors, they demonstrate to others that interactions can be significantly better and that higher performance is possible. (See Change Champions: A Dialogic Approach to Creating an Inclusive Culture, BMI Publishing, 2022 andUnleash Change Through a Peer-to-Peer Approach, from T+D Magazine, July 2014.)
Change champions participate in an intensive multi-day education series to become advocates and role models for the new desired mindsets and behaviors. They act as pebbles dropped in a pond—they create ripples that spread and grow, building critical mass and propagating the practice of the new behaviors faster and more dynamically.
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Middle managers are the critical component of any organization’s betterment effort. They stand at the crossroads between executive vision and people’s experience, making them critical for translating plans into tangible actions. Their ability to use and model common language and higher performing behaviors greatly impacts the degree to which betterment happens. Our focus when working with people leaders is on interactive learning so that managers (and sometimes first level supervisors) not only learn new behaviors, and also how to apply it and develop “muscle strength” for partnering, working across the organization for enhanced collaboration and knowledge sharing, and learning with each other through the process of becoming higher performing leaders individually and collectively.
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Presence Consulting® is real-time support to leaders and teams to apply and integrate new mindsets and behaviors, going beyond “classroom” training to ensure that people are able to identify opportunities for individual and organization betterment.
Presence Consulting accelerates the rate at which people apply new mindsets and behaviors that support enhanced performance. Onsite consultants add value with real-time, in-the-moment comments and suggestions, supporting individuals and groups as they work to problem-solve actual work situations in real time. They help focus workplace interactions so leaders and others can recognize opportunities to apply the knowledge and skills they have learned from educational events.
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We assist in building confident, skilled trainers who can effectively deliver impactful education programs so that the lessons learned can easily be shared throughout the organization. We also invite these people to partner with KJCG in our presentations, workshops, and webinars, to give them additional experience and guidance in becoming effective trainers.
This creates a cadre of people who are available to assist the organization and give leadership to the effort once KJCG is no longer directly involved with the organization. Our goal is to assist the organization in achieving initial successes, position internal people, and adjust the betterment process, leaving the organization with the leaders, the functions, and the people throughout the organization who can take the lead and keep the organization moving forward.
Creating sustainable internal competencies to lead, manage, and work in a high performing organization into the future
In our nearly 55 years of experience, we have worked with all types of organizations and people around the world. We know that making change requires all people knowing their role in the betterment process. It is our experience in working with people from all levels—entry level to shop floor positions to C-suite—and from all types of organizations—union shops, research labs, NGO’s, for profit, non-profits, higher education, multinationals, startups, and family owned businesses—that enable us to be effective in every environment and every organization.
In our in-person or hybrid workshops, our webinars, or town hall education events for entire organizations we aim to create a common language so the organization can work to build capabilities around behaviors and practices/mindsets needed for individual and organization higher performance.
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KJCG hosts interactive webinars to assist your organization in creating the foundation for individual and organization betterment to enhance and assist the success agile organizations need today and required for future success.
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KJCG helps in building great and more productive interactions with interaction safety. Organizations have to be agile to survive the increasingly fast-paced and competitive market AND they need to have interactions with trust so people can share their “not-yet-formed/half-baked” thoughts. Do people in your organization feel safe enough to…
…speak up?
…offer their best ideas? Their “half-baked” ideas?
…report a problem? What if the problem is with a colleague or leader?
Interaction safety is critical to having a supportive, trusting, collaborative workplace. There are key mindsets and ways of seeking input, listening to others, and responding that build and maintain interaction safety.
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We define agency as ensuring all people, of all roles, levels, tenure, and identities have the power, influence, and voice to make choices and decisions related to their jobs and the betterment of their organization.
When everyone has agency, people know they are full and deserving members of the organization and their voice will be heard. With agency, every person feels a sense of ownership and accountability for the organization’s success. They feel an obligation to share their thoughts and to make things better. They have the decision rights to make things happen within their area of responsibility, and improve things there and throughout the organization. Everyone’s expertise is valued. They are the operations leaders of their jobs. Or as one of our clients defined it, people in the organization lead from any chair.