organizational effectiveness
We know what drives change, how to make it happen, and how to make it last. We know it is essential to translate strategy into the right combination of organizational strength, agility, and leanness and to align all elements of the operating model. We know it is crucial to engage people to make it all work. From people and culture to processes, technology, and structure, our experts provide organization and transformation tools and knowledge to produce immediate impact and lasting results.
Most organizations work hard at driving and managing change. They accomplish what they set out to do and their employees are engaged and happy with their jobs. Yet industry research indicates that only 20 percent of companies achieve that. AaronRichards helps clients improve financial performance and make their organizations better places to work by ensuring the entire organization system is aligned and set up to deliver on the company's objectives.
An effective organization can give companies the edge that sets them apart from the competition. The payoff can be significant: Our research has shown that high performers report total shareholder returns nearly six percentage points higher and their employees are far more likely to recommend the company as a place to work—a powerful indicator of engagement. The secret: decisions. The best performers make better decisions, make them more quickly and execute them more effectively. And they don't spend too much or too little effort in the process.
Our experts can help companies break down organizational barriers and address decision inefficiencies to get to high performance. Working jointly with our clients, we start with a focus on which decisions matter most to overall performance. Small, everyday decisions can matter as much as big strategic ones. We then build integrated organizational systems that are explicitly geared to support these key decisions. We go beyond the "hard" issues of structure, roles and processes to addresses the "soft" elements such as people, behaviors and culture.
Our ultimate objective is to embed new capabilities and repeatable processes so that people at all levels can decide and deliver, again and again.
AaronRichards takes a comprehensive approach to help companies address decision difficulties and other organizational barriers to performance. We have completed numerous organizational assignments spanning every major industry and geographic region. Our areas of expertise include:
- Change management & Transformation: Change is tough and always has been. Organizational change is a particularly emotional process—often a source of tension and insecurity. "Will I still have a job?" "What will it be?" We help companies account for these sensitivities with clear communications and solid engagement plans to motivate people. Our approach draws from experiential learning about what actions make change stick. We help deliver "quick wins" by anchoring change in customer and marketplace needs and by tackling changes in parallel, and enduring success by building organization alignment and avoiding ambiguity around critical roles and decision processes.
- Organization Design & Governance: A well-designed operating model provides a clear and consistent blueprint for how resources are organized and operated to achieve a company's strategic priorities. We partner with clients to help them design and implement operating models that translate strategy into effective execution. Organizational complexity is the new normal, driven by growth, globalization and disruptive technologies; properly addressing it requires time and focus. Our holistic approach helps companies identify and simultaneously address the fundamental drivers of complexity to ensure that its symptoms don't creep back.
- Decision Effectiveness: Our approach to decision effectiveness helps companies identify key decisions, X-ray each one to determine problem areas and reset those decisions for maximum effectiveness. It helps you strengthen weak elements of the organization and embed good decision making and execution in your everyday operations.
- Talent Management & Leadership: No company can turn in a great performance without great people. High performers learn to assess their talent pipeline, deploy their most promising people more effectively in critical decision areas and reduce their demand for scarce skills. Leadership behaviors are one of the critical "soft" elements that research shows are most important in determining an organization's decision effectiveness and thus its performance. Sometimes, however, a company's leadership behaviors and decision style will have to change—adapting to a different strategy or the arrival of new leaders, for example. The key to changing behaviors is reaching agreement on the desired decision style, and then defining and demonstrating the required behaviors.
- Measures & Incentives: AaronRichards helps companies create dynamic performance measurement with a focus on what really matters to the business. We build dashboards that serve as barometers of ongoing business performance, and help companies devise tailored compensation systems that will reward actions and behaviors that advance the organization's goals and drive decision effectiveness.
- Culture: Company culture is at the heart of competitive advantage, because it determines how things are done and how people behave. It is the hardest thing for competitors to copy. High performers create an environment with a unique personality and a passion for performance—so that people make the right decisions and do the right thing wherever they are in the business.