Have you ever wondered how you create a high-performance culture, maintain sustainable staff engagement, build a strong pipeline of leaders, embed change effectively in the organization? Numerous surveys have repeatedly identified these as some of the most vexing questions facing organizations. The workplace is like a complex jigsaw puzzle, and we, OD Consultants, help make sense of the parent disorder. It requires all of our experience, creativity and knowledge as no two challenges are the same.
These puzzle pieces, partnering with clients to create unique competitive advantages through integrated high-performance systems filled with happy, engaged staff, is what gives us a real thrill. The role of an OD consultant can best be imagined as the interplay between three seemingly dissimilar occupations, a medical doctor, a chef and a magician. Like a doctor, the early consultant needs to carefully diagnose what the real underlying symptoms are. Once diagnosis has been completed, we move to prognosis.
Using the available ingredients, we create a recipe that will be appropriate for the client's needs. There is no point serving steak to a bunch of vegetarians. Finally, we need to adopt the skills of a magician to keep our audience amazed. so that we can move them to a new state of belief in previously unfathomable possibilities.
Change management is a crucial imperative in most systemic interventions. Just as the doctor, chef and magician do their best work with accomplices and end-user feedback, so does the OD consultant need to involve the key stakeholders for ultimate buy-in and likelihood of success. Often organizations will embark on company-wide values workshops that expand the desired values. These sessions are usually less interesting than watching paint dry and divorced from reality. We developed a values-focused workshop, but with a significant twist.
We gave people what they value most, skills that will make them successful and which also underpinned each of the company's values. In doing so, we ensured participants were more confident in their ability to actualize these values and therefore more likely to live these values in reality. And staff were clamoring to attend.
We also saw an improvement in the annual Living the Value survey results. We were asked to help change behavior of a fairly young workforce that was consistently making poor health choices. We developed a comprehensive plan that looked at well-being.
Some of the ideas we implemented included decreasing the size of the lunch plates so that the food servings appeared larger and people became less inclined to go back for seconds, starting a rumor, that the lifts were slowed down in peak times, which increased the number of people using the stairs, creating an incentive-based fitness levels program that rewarded staff with time off if they exceeded certain fitness targets. The retention of high-caliber knowledge workers is paramount for organization success. Whilst we know a person's direct leader has a large impact on the person's intention to stay, often some of the most important influences in the decision-making process are neglected.
We realized that close family and significant others are really important when people are deciding whether to leave or stay. With this insight in mind, we started providing free soft skills training for staffs'families and significant others. The attendance and goodwill that was generated was overwhelming, and retention rates were 50% better than the industry standard. So how do you evaluate? an early provider.
Firstly, they should have robust science at the center of their offering. It should be simple to apply. It should be needs-driven and focuses on the real underlying issues. They should align to the business principles and desired culture. They should measure ROI whenever possible.
And ultimately, they should leave the client upskilled, not dependent on the early consultant. Let us help you. By acting as a sounding board, a solutions generator, systems architect, a sequencer, i.e. a person who plans and project manages the intervention, and finally sourcing, providing the skills and resources to meet the action plan.