Client Successes
Below you’ll find a sample of client success stories. With access to a wide variety of proven methods, tools, frameworks, and coaching practices, LGA tailors each engagement to support the client’s personal, professional, organizational, operational and developmental aspirations and desired outcomes.
Organizational Effectiveness
Strategic Planning
Facilitated a management retreat for a division of a $1.2 billion science and technology company. The division had been experiencing shrinkage in a key market segment and managers were focused on the performance of their individual service areas, rather than the performance of the division as a whole. The retreat resulted in the development of and commitment to a shared division vision, mission, and strategy for developing business in targeted growth markets, with a new sense of team cohesion and compelling purpose.
Strategic and Operational Planning and Development
Designed and facilitated a strategic planning and development process that incorporated team break-out activities and two annual off-site retreats for the entire leadership team of senior scientists working in both research and applications for a large laboratory within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Process reduced interdepartmental conflict over annual funding decision-making and strengthened resource allocation, operational planning and peer partnership.
Strategic and Marketing Planning
Designed and facilitated a strategic planning process for a growing boutique public affairs and communications firm. A high-engagement approach collected ideas and input from all staff and partners. The team produced a road map to achieve marketing, financial and leadership development growth goals and strategies tailored to its creative and entrepreneurial culture. A year after the plan’s completion in 2009, the firm successfully met targets despite the economic downturn.
Coaching
Executive Coaching
Dozens of executives and managers have benefited from individualized coaching by LGA that has helped them prepare for promotion, operate at higher levels of effectiveness, reduce the stress of specific challenges, improve peer and leader communication, strengthen relationships, enhance general and/or targeted performance, master career transitions and find greater satisfaction in their work and life. Individual coaching plans start with client-defined desired outcomes. Coaching plans evolve to reflect changing development needs and actual circumstances as the process unfolds. Session topics are driven by the client. Specific action items, between-session practice, and developmental activities reinforce clients’ learning, behavioral application and personal accountability.
Team Coaching
Coached the management team of a precision machine shop that designs and manufactures highly specialized and finely calibrated measurement equipment for a scientific research and measurement organization. Over a two-year period, the team developed stronger project management skills, crafted and implemented an operations improvement plan, and learned to listen, problem-solve, negotiate and generally work better together as a team. Individual and team assessments and exercises provided understanding and a common language for working with differences in individual styles, and managers learned ways to be more effective in challenging staff and customer interactions.
Performance Coaching for Teams
Coached a budget and accounting team with a history of interpersonal conflict and alienation from their internal clients. A series of coaching workshops enabled team members to collaborate effectively for the first time on presentations to the chief executive and board members. Practicing new skills on the job also provided a lasting foundation for improved ongoing interactions among previously antagonistic colleagues.
Meeting and Retreat Facilitation
Management Retreat
Designed and facilitated the first department-wide retreat for the financial services unit of an organization that was evolving to a values-centered high-performance model. The department had previously been managed in a strictly hierarchical, top-down style. The objectives of the meeting were to build a platform for increased employee engagement and to create a shared departmental vision. A cross-functional, multi-level team defined and implemented a collaborative process that ensured continuing employee participation in ongoing organizational changes.
Board and Senior Leadership Team Retreats
Designed and facilitated six annual retreats for the DC Bar Board of Governors, producing high-priority action plans and practical solutions for a range of complex strategic leadership and stewardship issues, and fostering collaboration among diverse board members. From one retreat, an ongoing governance committee was created which now allows consistent multi-year implementation strategy and initiatives beyond officer and member term limits.
Non-Proft Board Retreat
For another non-profit Board in conflict over significant issues, LGA facilitated a dialogue process that allowed members to openly and constructively deal with the “elephant(s) in the room,” including unspoken critical assumptions, disagreements on goals, and territoriality issues. By the end of the two-day offsite, Board members came to consensus on key objectives, priorities, milestones and accountabilities, and identified viable alternative strategies for working through contentious areas in follow-up meetings.
Program Launch and Planning
Designed and facilitated two annual retreats for a new NIH program leadership team, first to launch the project and foster a cohesive team with a clear mission and vision for mitigating health disparities for people of color. The second retreat built on the first to strengthen and actualize planning and management skills for on-going operations and oversight.
Focus Groups & Stakeholder Engagement
Designed and facilitated numerous focus group and stakeholder engagement meetings to capture broad and deep participant needs, concerns and suggestions for major change initiatives of diverse organizations. Initiative examples have included organizational restructuring, business transformation, organization-wide transition to telework, major process improvements, and managing a physical move and consolidation of operations after an international merger to coordinate communications, cultural integration, move logistics, technology, and cost management. Participants ranged from senior executives and board members to frontline workers, external partners, customers and other stakeholders.
Leadership Development/Training
Diversity/Sexual Harassment Training
Led a team of subject matter experts in developing an award-winning multi-media EEO training program to prevent discrimination and support workplace diversity. Customized case studies and interactive exercises enabled participants to apply practical approaches for working constructively with diverse staff and limiting individual/organizational liability back on the job.
Customer Service Training
Tailored and delivered customer service training to management and staff of a higher education trade association, using customized case studies in a mixed media format. The training focused on the entire chain of communication to ensure consistent responsiveness from the front lines to the back office and executives. Case studies addressed actual and anticipated customer interactions, so participants continued to retain lessons learned back on the job.
Matrix-Management Training
Supported a large federal government organization in their second and third phases of transitioning to a matrix-management approach based on Susan Z. Finerty’s Master the Matrix books. Conducted debriefings with the teaching teams that identified lessons learned for continuously improving ongoing training. Workshops were taught by staff and managers, and a series of structured on-the job follow-up sessions for frontline managers enabled participants to apply the key principles and practices to actual work situations and shared best practices to make their learning stick.
Organizational Assessments
Business and Operations Assessment
Conducted a corporate-wide organizational assessment for a $15+ billion organization that had recently undergone major downsizing, restructuring, and consolidation of multiple operating sites and facilities. Developed strategies and recommended actions to reduce barriers to desired changes in thirteen areas, including leadership development, performance measurement, communication, and overall alignment of organizational systems and structures to support the new strategic and behavioral goals.
Program Evaluation
Evaluated the effectiveness of a pilot community-policing program for a Maryland county government. Also designed and conducted focus groups and identified five key areas to better integrate community policing into daily operations and gain wider acceptance among the troops.
Upward Feedback System for Managers
Designed and implemented a customized upward feedback assessment, reporting system, and coaching process for the senior managers of an 80,000-member professional association. System has now been in place for over eight years, the bi-annual process uses secure web-based access for rating, reports and administration. Six categories of questions enable staff and subordinate managers to rate the management team based on defined and observable behavior-based criteria. The resulting data is used for individual and team coaching, as well as for designing leadership training.
Public/Private Partnerships
Federal Government/Academic/Private Sector Partnership
As part of a multi-disciplined team of consultants and client subject-matter experts, coordinated the selection, vetting, organization and ongoing development of a public/ private consortium with a shared mission to provide technical equivalence for people who are deaf, deaf-blind, hard of hearing, or speech impaired to be able to access critical public services and seamlessly communicate through advanced technology systems integration. The partnership encompassed university academics, technology companies, non-profit community support groups, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders with technical and community expertise. Core group met monthly to identify priorities, make key decisions, brainstorm innovative solutions, schedule action items, and review results, tapping a network of extended resources for research, development, testing and deploying solutions.
After-Action Review of a Congressional Mandated Public/Privae Parntership
Led a multi-disciplined team to conduct an objective third-party after-action review (AAR) of a complex and highly sensitive public/private partnership established to plan and implement an organization-wide headquarters and field operation transformation for a major government healthcare organization. Organizational partners included the federal government, multiple top private sector consulting firms, IT technology contractors, and other niche service providers. AAR tasks included dozens of participant and stakeholder interviews, document reviews, and a gap analysis of actual versus targeted results.
The final AAR report distilled and analyzed what worked well and what didn’t, with key lessons learned. Recommendations to improve future such partnerships and associated program management in several areas included: partner engagement, employee engagement, organizational and program culture, leadership, program planning/structure and organization, governance, roles and responsibilities, communications, and contracting/acquisitions. Upon completion, the AAR results and team were awarded a special commendation for excellence.
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