INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT – EDUCATION

We pride ourselves on supporting clients across a wide range of industries. Recently TGG Senior Consultant, Keith McCarthy completed an engagement with a national education and child care provider supporting a customer experience and data structure initiative. Below is an engagement recap highlighting the type of impact our team makes in the education industry.

Can you give us an overview of the situation and scope of client engagement? 

Our client partner was facing a significant challenge because the organization had a large amount of technical needs in order to access and strategically utilize the data sources they had from their customers. The client was in the infancy stages of building out a data environment that would help address this and they were looking for support and expertise to create the data environment structure, systems and metrics, and ensure accuracy and validity.  

The foundational question from the organization was: How can we take our data and our different data sources, and build a strategic Power BI experience in order to help guide and inform our business?

How did you approach the work effort needed to support the organization’s goals for the project?

We started with a thorough thought exercise to identify what data and metrics were valuable to the client. What data points from their customers would provide the greatest insight and meaning to the different business units within the organization. For example: What are the customers’ pain points when trying to digitally interact with the company. The project sponsor also wanted to gain perspective on how, for non-tech savvy customers, the client could make the online experience easy to consume and interact with at a quality level. 

One of the key pillars of the project was that the business had a variety of different data sources and systems in place. We needed to build a dashboard and BI experience that was able to process data from a variety of sources such as: finance, marketing, customer service, and operations. The new Power BI environment needed to not only be able to look at the data from a high level view but also be able to drill into greater detail as well. 

The organization wanted to be able to learn, evaluate, and make strategic decisions for the betterment of the business both in the short and long term. There was a strong sense of urgency because the client wanted to be able to use the data to make decisions as soon as possible and there were new data sources that would become available and a new priority for the business that we would then need to incorporate into our new data system.

What was the outcome of the project? How is it helping the organization now? In the future?  

The client ended up with a Power BI dashboard that provided the various data they wanted, in a view and format that was efficient to use and understand. The way we built the data environment also allows for the client to expand the sourced data and metrics in the future as well. Additionally, we helped train a new analyst on the client’s team in order to help them independently navigate the dashboard, data sets, and strategic functionality once our engagement had concluded. It was important to us to not only help the client with a meaningful solution, but also help equip them to sustain and execute the future moving forward.

As soon as we had completed the project the dashboard immediately started helping the client validate their data at a faster pace across departments and use the data to strategically identify with other teams (finance, marketing, operations, customer service) actionable steps to improve and maximize the customer’s experience with the brand.  

By virtue of the industry the client must continuously be customer experience focused, therefore they want to add this data to their decision making process in an effort to make more informed and more impactful decisions.  

What did you enjoy about the work?

I really enjoyed working with the project sponsor as they were new to the role and were really looking to make an impact with their broader organization and add value to their business. This created a fun and motivating situation to be a part of during the project. Helping someone else succeed is always rewarding.

Were there any personal takeaways or highlights from the engagement?  

One of our Non-Negotiables at TGG is “Thrives In Ambiguity” and throughout the project when new data sources would surface unexpectedly or a new initiative needed representation, it was a great opportunity to pause, evaluate, and adapt in a forward-thinking manner. The opportunity to see our Non-Negotiables play out in real time was definitely a meaningful takeaway. The client also had a couple of tech capabilities that were new to me and it was fun to professionally expand my knowledge and learn these other tools and then analyze how to pull them into our data process.   

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Our team at The Gunter Group has significant and strategic experience supporting education industry clients as they navigate transformational change. If your organization is interested in driving meaningful change in the education industry and beyond, we’re ready to help.

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT – INSURANCE (Part 3)

We pride ourselves on supporting clients across a wide range of industries. Recently TGG Decision Insights and Data Services Manager, Ande Olson completed an engagement with a national insurance provider supporting an actuarial transformation initiative. Below is the third part of our industry spotlight, highlighting the type of impact our team makes in the insurance industry.

Can you give us an overview of the situation and scope of the client engagement? 

Absolutely. Historically in the area of actuarial science over the last 30 years, a lot of work has been Excel based. The result is that actuaries often spend a lot of time copying work books, data tabs, and other tedious and inefficient steps. 

Our client was trying to modernize how actuaries execute their responsibilities, complete their work, and identify elements of the workflow that could be automated across the enterprise. At the highest level, the goal was to free up actuaries’ time from tasks that can be automated in order to increase the actuary team’s opportunity and ability to provide strategic guidance to the enterprise. To get there, they recognized they needed to make not only process changes but technology changes as well.  

How did you approach the work effort needed to support the organization’s goals for the project?

Actually, when I initially started working with the client I was brought in to work on a completely different project involving cloud automation and cloud tools. In meetings I learned the client was strategically looking at how the next generation of the organization would operate, with a focus on high performance and efficiency.

I offered additional support on this initiative as well because I have direct experience with the tools they were considering creating and implementing. It all started with a curiosity and desire to help the client in any way possible.

What was the work you actually did? 

The first step was working with the project stakeholders to understand the vision and help shape the path forward so we could develop a proof of concept to show that a lot of the inefficient actuary work processes could be automated. 

A big milestone in the project was when we built the back and front-end of the web application. We designed the application and I led a team actuarial developers to build the tool. 

What was the outcome? How is it helping the organization now? In the future?  

The initial release of the application is already helping actuaries efficiently valuate liabilities and assess claims impacts. Further releases will help price products and aid with long-term financial planning for the business. 

Looking at it from just a time and value perspective, the processes we’ve automated previously took a team of two actuary modelers three days each to complete, but with the work we’ve done it’s been reduced to 4-5 hours. 

The client is already experiencing an incredibly large efficiency gain, which allows the organization to more conveniently and effectively shift resources across business units when needed. As a result of the project’s early impact, we’re in the process of expanding the application beyond its current functionality, which is really exciting! 

Were there any personal takeaways or highlights?  

The work required on this project was about more than just delivering a great tool; it was about people, placing a premium on shared communication, and understanding a common vision and purpose. I was working on the business side of the organization but the engagement required a strong working relationship with IT, so building bridges and collaborating on the vision was critical for the progress and success of the project. 

Another highlight throughout the project was how we constantly evaluated, refined, and maintained an agile approach. I wanted to lean into an agile team mindset where we were continuously delivering value and iterating on the project. I think this approach was key to the overall impact of the engagement.  

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Our team at The Gunter Group has significant and strategic experience supporting insurance industry clients as they navigate transformational change. If your organization is interested in driving meaningful change in the insurance industry and beyond, we’re ready to help.

Industry Spotlight – Insurance (Part 1)

Industry Spotlight – Insurance (Part 2)

TGG CULTURE IN ACTION:
INCLUSION AND FLEXBILITY

At the beginning of 2023, we implemented a new paid holiday policy at The Gunter Group: we changed all our paid holidays to “floating holidays” so that our team can choose to celebrate the holidays that mean the most to them.

The genesis of our decision started last year when a team of our consultants came forward to the leadership team with an idea for a “Day of Service” for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday. At the time, our holiday policy included 7 paid company-defined holidays plus one “floating” holiday, which could be used on any day during the year. 

The team that brought forward the idea about the Day of Service also asked the question of whether the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday should be one of our “official” holidays. This led to a much deeper discussion about not only our holiday policy, but also Inclusion. In other words, how could we make it so that our policy on holidays would be fully inclusive and reflect our core values and Culture as an organization? Why should the company dictate that employees take off Christmas Day versus Yom Kippur, Diwali or days during Ramadan? Or New Year’s Day instead of Chinese New Year? Maybe the discussion about whether to observe a particular holiday was missing the point.  

Our point of view is that Inclusion is not about a particular holiday, it’s about all of them. This is what led us to change our company policy so that TGGers can decide which days to observe based on what is most meaningful to them and their families.

Back to the Day of Service on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday: a large team of TGGers and their families came together to assemble and deliver 35 Sack Lunches, 20 Winter Kits, and 44 Hygiene Kits to the Blanchet House in Portland, an organization that supports people experiencing homelessness and that is “On a mission to alleviate suffering and offer hope for a better life by serving essential aid with dignity”. I am super proud of the team and the support they provided to such an amazing organization.

At The Gunter Group, we strive to create an environment to support our consultants, clients, and communities such that each can achieve excellence, realize their full potential, and thrive. We live by our Non-Negotiables:  Collaborative, Integrity, Intellectual Curiosity, Thrives in Ambiguity, Emotional Intelligence and Grounded Confidence. Our Non-Negotiables reflect who we are and who we will continue striving to be. We value engagement and creative ideas from our team, and we are always working to make TGG a better and better place to work!

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT – INSURANCE (Part 2)

We pride ourselves on supporting clients across a wide range of industries. Recently one of our Senior Consultants completed an engagement with a large national insurance provider supporting a data integration and data vendor implementation initiative. Below is the second part of our industry spotlight, highlighting the type of impact we make in the insurance industry — featuring the work of TGG’s Frank Gleason.

Can you give us an overview of the situation and scope of client engagement? 

Frank: Our client was trying to implement a data integration and connection project, and independently started the project early last year. However they weren’t making the progress they hoped or needed, and the initiative was stalling and losing momentum. The client brought us in, stating a strategic deadline for the project. The initiative, which involved both an internal team and an external vendor, was closely tied to business objectives, so there was a high need for clarity, planning, and a detailed timeline.  

How did you approach the work effort needed to support the organization’s goals for the project?

Frank: The first thing I did was facilitate conversations with the business to identify and prioritize the actual requirements for the project and work effort. It was critical to develop clarity and responsibilities for the internal team, and drive alignment with the external vendor’s role and work effort. In order to reset and restart the initiative, and meet the organizational deadline, we had to build a focused, realistic, and accountable plan to get the project done. 

After gaining foundational knowledge about the current status of the project, it was clear to me that each stakeholder would benefit from seeing and understanding how they were important to the overall work effort and business goals. To support this I went through each requirement of the data integration with the client team and prioritized the requirements based on the best value opportunity for the organization’s strategy and timeline. From there I created a detailed project roadmap that involved the internal IT team and the external vendor team. This additional step was critical to the project because it aligned and connected the two groups that were vital to the integration’s success.  

What was the outcome?  How is it helping the organization now?  In the future?  

Frank: The client wanted to reduce the amount of time needed to onboard new customer groups’ data sets in order to accurately and efficiently begin the billing process. Previously the process was done manually, which resulted in delays. The project reduced manual steps and created a streamlined process. Additionally, the initiative resulted in cleaner reports for the client throughout the process. These reports also built value for future-state planning analysis. In the future this work will help the client scale faster as the organization grows and builds out new partnerships and onboards a greater number of customer data sets.

What did you enjoy about the work?

Frank: I really enjoyed the people I was able to work closely with from the client organization and the external vendor. It was great to have the opportunity to work with both the IT team and the business team with such frequency and help move the teams and organization towards their goal. It was rewarding and motivating to serve as a bridge, if you will, and not only focus on a single part of the organization.

Were there any personal takeaways or highlights?  

Frank: It was a great group of people and we worked hard to keep engagement high with the different stakeholders in a positive and collegial style. We maintained a great balance of a fun and timeline focused project which made the process even more rewarding.

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Our team at The Gunter Group has significant and strategic experience supporting insurance industry clients as they navigate transformational change. If your organization is interested in driving meaningful change in the insurance industry and beyond, we’re ready to help.

INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT – INSURANCE (Part 1)

We pride ourselves on supporting clients across a wide range of industries. Recently members of our team completed an engagement with a large national insurance provider supporting multiple strategic initiatives. Below is an industry spotlight, highlighting the type of impact we make in the insurance industry — featuring the work of TGG’s Maddie Barbera and Daemon Heydon.  

Can you give us an overview of the situation and scope of the client engagement? 

Maddie: Our client partner was looking to streamline their organizational teams in order to better handle strategic actuarial modeling work across their product lines. Accomplishing this would also allow specific actuaries to focus on responsibilities that drive high level strategy and are more transformational to the business.  

Originally the project sponsors thought they could have internal conservations and build everything out themselves but they realized there was more depth, detail, and complexity than they anticipated, so they requested additional support and expertise.  

Daemon: The client identified that actuarial teams were each doing modeling, but the process being used in order to map out the modeling was being done differently by each team. Each of the models was also highly complicated in its own right and as a result of these two dynamics the client needed a language and continuity that wasn’t there at the time. We were focused on creating a bridge to span all the modeling teams so that anyone from any team could look at a process map and understand its various elements and information. Essentially creating a language for the organization that wasn’t there before.

What was the nature of the work that took place during the engagement? 

Maddie: We started with an in-depth review of the current process map for actuarial modeling and templates, which was supported by a series of interviews and multiple meetings for each process map model within the organization. We were at the table working with highly talented professionals to help articulate their work and process in a way that other members of the organization could understand. And then taking it a step further by creating documentation for different groups if the needed documentation didn’t already exist.

Daemon: In a very consistent manner we were gathering data – inputs, process steps, outputs, and bringing to life a clear description of what team members were doing at each step in the different processes. We also wanted to help position leadership to be able to answer the broader question, “How can we continue to use this information to make strategic decisions in the long run?”

What was the outcome? How is the end result helping the organization now? In the future?  

Maddie: During the engagement we collected and aggregated all the information the client needed in order to support their upcoming organizational redesign efforts. Furthermore, we summarized all the different documentation sources and created an easily accessible universal catalog source to centrally house necessary documents and process information for a variety of groups within the organization. These completed work streams will help position the organization to successfully undertake and execute their broader organizational redesign effort.

What did you enjoy about the work?

Maddie: I enjoyed working with the large cross section of actuaries and how it gave our team insight into different insurance product lines. It was great to be able to work with so many different members/groups of the client team and learn about their roles and responsibilities and how they impacted the organization as a whole.

Daemon:  I definitely agree with Maddie and I’d also say it was really fun and rewarding to have other groups in the organization hear about the process modeling work we were doing and then want to see if it could apply to their specific area.

Were there any personal takeaways or highlights?  

Maddie: I think a big highlight was getting deep into a multi-layered process within an organization and gaining and building trust with the client partner.  

Daemon:  Yes, and also being able to deliver something that will provide tangible benefit to the future of the organization was certainly a highlight as well. It’s always fun when clients immediately want to build off of a completed project.

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Our team at The Gunter Group has significant and strategic experience supporting insurance industry clients as they navigate transformational change. If your organization is interested in driving meaningful change in the insurance industry and beyond, we’re ready to help.

TGG RECOGNIZED AS A TOP AGILE SERVICE PROVIDER

We are excited to share that The Gunter Group was recently named one of the “10 Most Promising Agile Service Providers” by CIOReview magazine. TGG was identified through a nomination process for its ongoing and impactful agile work across a variety of industries and organizational levels. The recognition was part of CIOReview’s 5th annual Agile Edition of the publication.

When asked about TGG’s approach to agile initiatives, Principal Consultant and Agile Services Lead Jim Calko commented: 

“We work to seamlessly develop the agile programs that impact the most important strategic initiatives for our clients. To achieve this we take a collaborative approach which results in consensus among the clients’ teams and leads their organizations forward with ease.”

TGG’s unique approach to supporting client partners’ efforts to transform elements of their businesses starts with a committed focus as noted by TGG Partner Matt Bader:

“Companies don’t seek to transform to become experts at agile, they seek to transform to better support their customers and achieve better business outcomes. Our firm places a relentless focus on our clients’ strategic goals by bringing agile expertise and experiences as a capability to help them get there.”

Read the full CIOReview profile on TGG here: https://www.cioreview.com/gunter-group

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Interested in learning more about agile strategies and practical recommendations – check out TGG’s Agile Blog Series:

TGG PARTNER Q&A:
2022 CONSULTING MAGAZINE BEST FIRMS TO WORK FOR

This fall The Gunter Group was recognized as a “Best Small Firm to Work For” by Consulting Magazine for the fourth consecutive year. This marks the fourteenth workplace award that TGG has received in the last eight years.

We visited with TGG partner and head of TGG’s Nevada team, Tony Schweiss to hear more about the award and the significance of being honored nationally for The Gunter Group’s culture and workplace.

This is the fourth consecutive year TGG has been recognized as a Best Small Firm to Work For by Consulting Magazine. What does this consistency and recognition mean to the team?  

Tony: It’s a reflection of the amount of effort, energy and thought that we put into building a team that is aligning its culture to the work that we do and the outcomes we are trying to deliver as a team. It’s also a reflection of the caliber of people that we have on our team and the commitment our team has to do high quality work for our clients, to support each other, to collaborate and live out our Non-Negotiables, and hold ourselves accountable.   

The consistency, year-in and year-out is amazing and is incredibly exciting in terms of the ongoing acknowledgement of the effort we put into our culture on a yearly, monthly, weekly, daily basis and I think everyone on the team should be really proud of it.  

Not only has The Gunter Group’s team grown geographically over the past 24 months but the location of clients has been broadening as well. How does the Consulting Magazine honor validate these geographic developments? 

Tony: For us it is an essential priority that as we expand as a company and our footprint grows, that we stay culturally committed to what makes us a great team. The pursuit of excellence and the goal over time to create an engaged team no matter where they are, has been a driving requirement for us as we grow.  

To be recognized for this award four years in a row as we continue to grow geographically proves that it is possible to create highly engaging cultural value as we scale up as a firm. The recognition also validates the effort and resources we have dedicated to our team and organization, and serves as a celebration opportunity as well.

You are located in Nevada, what is it like for you to work with individuals across the country in different hubs/areas and how does TGG develop and maintain its strong organizational culture with geographically dispersed team members?

Tony: For me, I think it’s really exciting to work with team members from so many different areas.  Whether it’s the Denver area, Southern California, the Salt Lake City area, the East Coast, or the Pacific Northwest, the variety of experiences and perspectives that generate from a collection of unique locations is exciting to be a part of and see benefit our client partners. 

It’s been fun to experience but also presents a challenge: how do we maintain the value of our culture in a more virtual environment and dispersed geographies.  

Having been geographically removed from our main hub for a while now, the best version of an engaging team and workplace is one that is aligned in terms of its goals and mission as an organization. And for us it’s about helping our clients achieve their goals in a way that is better and faster than what they could have done on their own.  

I think it’s helped bring into focus opportunities for engagement with each other and how we’re doing our work but also how we are connecting as a team. It has forced us to try new things, evaluate quickly and then double down on methods that have really added to our cultural foundation across multiple geographies. As much as possible we continue to utilize not only virtual opportunities to engage with teammates but also encourage our local teammate hubs to spend time together in person and support that activity from an investment perspective.  

What are you most excited about for the TGG team and culture in the coming year?  

Tony: At the end of the day we’ve grown a lot over the last 3-4 years and we’ve grown purposefully so that our team has new and interesting opportunities in the future. As we grow we have to continue to be thoughtful about how we do our work internally, engage and connect with one another, how we collaborate, and how we deliver our work as a team. 

What I’m really excited about over the next year is to continue to mature how our employee experience presents itself and matures across geographies so we can ensure a great professional opportunity for our entire team regardless of where they are located. I think it’s the most crucial work we have in front of us but it will also be the most rewarding for our entire organization in the months and years to come.  

ENGAGEMENT SPOTLIGHT
WITH SCOTT THEENER

Every organization we work with was deeply impacted by the COVID pandemic. Care for people, economics, health and safety: every company and organization has had to adapt to a very different set of priorities.

In the thick of the pandemic lockdowns, leading up to certain businesses opening back up, a multi-campus community college came to TGG asking if we could help solve a problem that had no pre-fab solution.

New state and federal health and safety protocols required the Auditing Team team to quickly react, building new campus regulations resulting in an exponential increase in procedural tracking, documentation, and compliance reporting.

I worked with our client to track the ever-changing regulations in order to develop a method to integrate the changes into scalable processes. The engagement was successful, and engaging for the whole team because there was a vision for the future.

To begin, I had introductory sessions individually with all team members to learn what was going well and what they felt could be improved. This helped inform a prioritized list of opportunities that we could start working on. We identified opportunities to implement automation and create recurring collaboration sessions where the team drove their own solutions to group challenges, rather than deferring only to management guidance.

TGG then supported this process by performing a gap analysis of the state and federal regulation changes and creating easy to consume documents for interested parties. These analysis documents took hundreds of pages of regulation and distilled them into language that increased awareness and increased understanding of the changes. This allowed staff and faculty to quickly create health and safety plans for their colleges that ensure compliance with the regulations while also creating safer environments. 

I also facilitated multiple sessions with the team to ensure new regulations were accounted for in the organization’s processes and the team felt confident the processes could continue the work.

By design, my primary function in these sessions was to ask questions to the team, usually without knowing the answer. The intention was to utilize “the wisdom of the crowd”. This philosophy states that the collection of wisdom from the people doing the work is the best way to improve and solve that team’s challenges. 

Another goal we established for this engagement was to help the team become more “T-Shaped”. Each team member had a specialty and expertise they brought to the team (the vertical bar of the T) while the horizontal bar of the T represents the knowledge they gain by learning about and exercises the expertise of their teammates. While being an expert in a particular discipline or field ensures the team has a wide range of skills, a teammate who is interested in learning new skills from their colleagues, helps to expand the shared understanding of the team as a whole. For example, one result of this effort and focus was that everyone on the team expanded their data analysis and spreadsheet skills.

The final piece of the project was helping the client to level-up and automate their data collection and analysis tools. Helping the client improve their data maturity and strategic data use, helped deliver efficiencies and insights that allowed the team to focus on areas that needed more attention.

As I reflect back on this engagement, the most rewarding component of the work was knowing that the team’s investment in becoming self-organized and deeply collaborative truly helped keep staff, faculty, and students at the campuses safe and healthy. We delivered real, tangible outcomes.

The community college is now well-positioned to continue monitoring for regulation compliance, via data analysis and metrics, to help departments enable health and safety best practices. We helped deliver a safer learning and working environment for students and faculty throughout the institution. The Health & Safety team has new found confidence in their collaboration skills, preparing systems and processes, and the tools needed to successfully complete a health and safety project of this magnitude.

When I look ahead to supporting other clients in the future, I’ll be able to use this experience to advocate for the power and opportunities that data analysis and metrics provide teams, the unlocking of potential when a team sees each other as equals and values collaborations with each other, and that communicating with your partners and stakeholders with transparency and honesty is truly a non-negotiable of success. 

Scott has 10 years of dedicated experience as an Agile practitioner, Scrum Master, and Product Manager coaching teams, mentoring new Agilists, and leading successful projects. With his high attention to detail and a passion for independent research and translating findings into compelling visual presentations, Scott excels at change management, team facilitation, and emotional intelligence. He is known for being a natural detective and storyteller who is committed, organized, and a responsible teammate that prioritizes consensus and transparency in all situations. Scott holds a B.A. in Mass Communication/Journalism from Boise State University. He is also a Certified SAFe 5 Agilist, Advanced Scrum Master, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. Outside of work, Scott loves exploring Oregon’s great outdoors and is an avid college football fan who loves rooting for his Boise State Broncos. He also loves Portland’s independent theaters such as Laurelhurst Theater, Hollywood Theater, and Cinema 21.

ENGAGEMENT SPOTLIGHT
WITH ERIC DUEA

Recently, I had the opportunity to partner with a regional-sized financial institution focused on a “future of work” project. The project was centered on the organization’s plan to permanently transition to a hybrid work environment. The client had navigated 2020 and the associated pandemic-related challenges well by intently listening to their employees and customers. Operational teams were adapting quickly to new standards, technologies, and expectations. The company was confident in their people and they felt ready to be one of the first companies to make such a transition.

As I began my work with the client, it was easy to see how much leadership valued their people and how much employees valued their place of work.  Additionally, leadership also recognized the significance of the change impacts that accompanied this decision. Their highest priority was to maintain a thriving company culture. 

Many of the anticipated change impacts were universal to the employee experience. For example, all employees knew that video conferencing was simply now a part of their everyday experience. For the most part, all employees working onsite could anticipate similar changes. Sharing desks, equipment, meeting rooms, and flexible common areas would be the new normal.

However, there were also different implications company-wide depending on department, team, and role. It was widely understood that not every role would allow for flexible work arrangements. The nature of communication to certain employees that their position does not enable the same flexible work arrangements as their peers, was a critical element of the overall work effort. This process, if not properly navigated, presented a potential threat to company culture. 

We kicked off the engagement through employee surveys, focus groups, interviews, and all-employee communications. We knew that detailed data on employee experiences would be key in informing how we structure work sessions, but it was also pivotal to the expansion of our awareness and empathy as facilitators. Most importantly, all employees were invited to participate in the process, offer input, express concerns, and share what was most important to them regarding this upcoming change. For example: How important is it to employees to have the option to work from home? What resources do they need to work from home? What are their top concerns?

We formed multiple working groups comprising a balanced cross-section of the organization to ensure sufficient representation existed during these difficult conversations. The working groups collaborated over a 3-month period to co-design a hybrid work program that they believed would enable the company and its employees to succeed in this new semi-virtual workplace arena. 

The most rewarding aspect of this engagement was the privilege to be a part of a group of people defining how they wanted to show up for one another on a daily basis. It was truly delightful to observe how naturally teammates gravitated towards themes of collaboration, responsibility, and doing right by one another.

In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been surprising. After all, leadership had given up control and trusted employees of the organization to work through these difficult conversations. Naturally, the employees reciprocated by centering discussions on what was best for the company. This is not to say that some of the conversations didn’t involve contentious debate. For example: Is it an expectation that everyone’s camera is on all the time? And, if someone elects to work from the office every day, can they opt out of desk sharing and reserve their own desk?

Fortunately, the leadership team did not expect the working groups to design the perfect hybrid work experience on the first attempt. Leaders understood that the transition to a new way of working together and serving customers would be a learning journey for everyone. They emphasized the importance of embracing adaptability and a spirit of continuous improvement.

Throughout this engagement, I was reminded that high collaboration, inclusivity, and consensus building are as time intensive as they are worthwhile. The decision to allocate several team members to a change process such as this is always difficult. There is always opportunity cost for where resources could be spending time instead, but it’s an investment.

The result of this investment was an organization of employees that felt included and valued in a change process that was very important to them. The returns on this investment will be realized over the years ahead. While these returns may not be measured and calculated in direct association with the investment made, they will be nested within employee retention rates, employee satisfaction, cross-departmental collaboration, company culture, and of course the experience employees provide to customers. They learned a lot about one another, and I saw the multi-level value of doing change well.

Eric applies a systems thinking approach to problem-solving. He is highly collaborative and genuinely passionate about helping others succeed. Eric’s experience spans across multiple industries including resorts and hospitality, international non profit, sustainable business/social enterprises, and events management space. His areas of expertise are sales and marketing, sustainable business, project management, business development, business process management, and business planning and analysis. Eric holds an M.B.A in Sustainable Systems from Presidio Graduate School as well as a B.S. in Business Administration from Methodist University; he is also a Certified Scrum Master and PGA Golf Professional. Eric is an avid golfer. Outside of work, he can be found strolling the fairways of Central Oregon and Southeast Washington.