How can you get your organization to come together as a team? This challenge is common among our clients. In a complex, fast-paced work environment, it is important for all employees to have shared responsibility for delivering the organization’s mission. CG Strategy is experienced in helping our clients bring individuals together to achieve common goals.

Leaders often talk about creating a unified organization where staff and stakeholders work together to achieve a common purpose. They envision an organization where there is a shared understanding of the vision and the organizational values, and where staff can clearly articulate their contributions to achieving the mission. They understand that when the organization is unified, the whole system works in symphony to meet the needs of its customers.

At CG Strategy, we believe that the best options for meeting the mission emerge when many members of an organization have an opportunity to bring their ideas to the table. A key part of organizational development is the idea that some of the best ideas come from the people on the front-lines of the organization. And, when we ask front-line workers in an organization to help inform decisions, it not only creates more buy-in for the decisions, it also enables additional, innovative ideas to come to the fore. By building on what works in an organization, and taking improvement and change ideas from many of its members, CG Strategy is able to help organizations of all kinds evolve and prepare for the future.

• All employees, regardless of level, understand how their work contributes to the mission.
• Leadership mines for ideas from the across the organization or from a representative sample of the organization.
• Through comprehensive communications efforts, leaders create transparency about both daily operations and strategic changes.

• Leaders often feel responsible for achieving the mission, but many employees don’t see and understand the impact of their work.
• Leaders collect ideas from known high-performers while resentment builds among other employees who don’t feel heard.
• Most staff are unaware of how the organization is performing and what changes are being made and why.

A CG Strategy federal client is designing a new way to do business in the future that is responsive to the changing needs of customers. The client brought CG Strategy on board to help engage the entire organization in exploring what customers need, what the organization does well, and what others do better to determine the optimal role for the organization.

CG Strategy has helped guide the organization through the project by…

1. Facilitating a cross-organizational work group that led the effort to develop a set of recommendations for the organization’s future business model,
2. Supporting development and implementation of a communications and engagement strategy that gave all employees around the world opportunities to participate in the effort,
3. Spearheading data collection efforts including an environmental scan, staff survey and stakeholder and partner interviews,
4. Supporting design of a governance model to implement the recommendations, and
5. Helping design a change management plan to foster adoption of the future state based on the needs of all stakeholders.

This project exemplifies the idea of unifying an organization, as every employee was invited to contribute through multiple avenues. A staff survey had almost 800 people respond, and many employees around the world participated in webinars and other learning discussions. Additionally, more than 300 people attended in-person and virtual summits where small groups provided real-time feedback on the cross-organizational work group’s proposals for the organization’s future.

By facilitating the project, CG Strategy helped the organization proactively shape its future in two ways. First, the organization will continually evolve its product and service offerings in order to perform its mission well even as the global economy changes. Second, CG Strategy’s work has provided a model for how the organization can engage all of its members to achieve its mission. This model can be used as the organization faces different challenges in the future. As a result, CG Strategy has helped the organization prepare for the future while uniting around a common cause.