Consultancy

Here at Optimus we prefer to listen to you, our customers, to find out what you really want.The more we listen, the more we find out about issues that are unique to your organisation. 

We like to tailor our consultancy programmes to fit our customers’ needs, drawing on our past experience and finding the right way forward for you. However, we’ve also found that you like to know what kind of things we’ve done before – this gives you an idea of our approach, gives you some reassurance that we understand your situation, and also gives you a picture of what might be possible. What follows is what we’ve done, what’s possible, and is only a taster of what might be appropriate for your organisation….   At Optimus, we focus our consultancy and coaching effort on the underlying behaviours of the organisation and the people who work there. 

We help organisations to bring about behavioural change at different levels: 

CONSULTANCY SERVICES 

CULTURAL CLIMATE SURVEYS

BENCHMARKING AND PROFILING EXERCISE

CULTURAL CLIMATE SURVEYS

Employees in an organisation look towards the leadership for their cues on how to behave. When following a leader, there are some unconscious indicators that individuals home in on, such as “Can I trust you?”, “Can you communicate effectively with me?” or even “Do you look like you know where you are going?” Employees look to their leadership and expect to see congruence in their ability to develop the trust of the workforce, an ability to communicate congruent and aligned messages and an ability to set a clear direction that meets the stated organisational vision and purpose To accomplish this, Optimus carries out Cultural Interviews to : 

• Elicit the values of the organisation, and find out how aligned the employees are with the stated values.
• Look at how the organisation is placed as a player in the wider community and with sub-contracting organisations.
• Elicit the vision of the organisation and where it wants to be.
• Clarify the organisation’s mission
• Examine beliefs at every level
• Find values that are demonstrated by behaviours
• Find the capabilities and competence within the organisation – leadership, managerial skills, quality of service and products
• Get real data on behaviours as they exhibit in the organisation – at all levels
• Check out the physical environment to search for alignment and congruence 

The key to the Cultural Climate Survey is finding where incongruence exists between what an

organisation says it does and stands for, and the reality that exists in people’s behaviours and attitudes.

A survey questionnaire is developed to canvas all employees and contractors working for the organisation. Our experience has shown that we can achieve a high level of response with the correct communication and the guarantee of anonymity.

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BENCHMARKING AND PROFILING EXERCISE

Using a Language and Behaviour Profiling Exercise (based on the work done by Roger Baily): 

• Individual employees can be profiled to establish clearly identified ‘good’ behaviours and ‘poor’  behaviours in line with the organisation’s or project’s stated values. From this exercise one can predict the behaviours of individuals from their language, identifying where resistance to change is likely to take place. 
• From the profiling exercise, effective change campaigns and behaviourally-focused  training, management training, coaching, mentoring, recruitment and management communications can be designed. 
• The profiling identifies differences in motivation patterns. In examining the profiles of average performers, it becomes clear where motivation patterns lay and it is therefore possible to identify which motivational patterns are critical for a successful cultural change, and which patterns are contrary to that success.   Profiling your best performers and developing competence training to create a culture of care^TM will have a significant impact on your HSE performance.

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MOTIVATIONAL MIND/BODY AWARENESS SESSIONS (see SafeMind/SafeBody) 

An introduction to behavioural safety, health or environment, we run motivational seminars and sessions looking at the psychological, emotional and physical components of a culture of care^TM. 

Sessions are staged to last from one to four hours, dependant on the level of interaction desired.  The content is designed for all levels of capability and uses both humour and real-life examples to deliver the message. The intention of this session is to ‘switch the light on’ in individuals and help them to realise how the mind works and how this contributes to their own behaviours. 

SafeMind/SafeBody (TM) provides participants with an insight as to what they can do (as individuals, team members, or leaders) to improve behaviour and have a positive impact on the organisation’s success. Sessions always include the importance of effective communication and explain how the subtleties of communication can make the difference to any change – the aim is in empowering individuals to participate in change and prepare them for change programmes. 

This is a standard awareness presentation that is tailored to a particular theme or message (e.g. how to lead positive change in particular environments). 

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VISIONING SESSION FOR SENIOR MANAGEMENT 

Most organisations have a vision.  Unfortunately they tend to be full of bland statements such as “Delivering excellent customer service” and lack a defined timeframe.  As a result the vision may have little meaning to the workforce and therefore it fails to motivate or engage them. 

Using a variety of exciting visioning techniques derived from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and native American Indian vision quests, our skilled facilitators guide senior management into producing a descriptive vision for a defined point in time.

The senior team identifies the enablers that will help their organisation to accelerate through the any short term difficulties and also highlight the blockers that could slow the journey or cause it to fail.  Action plans are developed to optimise the benefit of the enablers and mitigate against the potential negative impact of the blockers. A plan for roll out of this vision is also developed.   

This full day session is aimed at the whole senior management team of an organisation. 

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EXECUTIVE COACHING / MENTORING FOR SENIOR MANAGEMENT 

To deliver the positive changes an organisation is looking for will take strong and consistent leadership from the senior executive.  Congruence between what you say (including the context that tonality and body language can place the message in) with what you do is critical to making the change work. 

A leader’s true beliefs and values will come to the surface from time to time (often when under pressure), sometimes to the surprise of the leader themselves.   We firmly believe that to understand and bring about change in others, you have to first understand and change yourself.  

Optimus employs a team of highly experienced coaches, counsellors and mentors who provide challenging one-to-one sessions for senior managers if they need or want support.  More details on the type of expected outcomes can be provided if required. 

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STRATEGIC COACHING FOR EXECUTIVE LEADERS AND SENIOR CATALYSTS OF CHANGE

Coaching programmes for senior staff involved in visioning and implementing major change 

This is a professional development programme for Executives, Directors and Senior Catalysts of Change who want to bring about changes in people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours at the point where it makes a difference – face to face with the people in their care.

Strategic coaching gives you the HOW of engaging hearts and minds and being able to make a real difference.  It addresses personal impact and influence, and develops a sense of the extraordinary within you in order to inspire and lead others.

This coaching programme is deeply challenging - to understand and bring about change in others, you as a leader have to understand and change yourself. As a leader, you get the opportunity to focus on: 

• The health and longevity of your organisation
• Integrating personal and organisational objectives
• Setting an empowering vision that gets everyone on board
• Developing a charismatic leadership style
• How you personally affect or limit their organisation’s growth and direction
• How your language creates and influences the beliefs of the organisation
• Creating an organisation that can live with and move through change
• Personal accountability to yourself, your employees and the stakeholders within a challenging political environment
• Understanding the your issues around power, honesty and integrity within the framework of the organisation – you’ll learn to take the politics out and put the people back in

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DEVELOP LOCAL GOALS, ROLES AND MISSIONS FOR EACH OF YOUR TEAMS 

Despite the fact that an organisation may have developed a vision to cover the overall activity or sphere of service, each of the organisation’s departments or teams will be at different points in their journey (e.g. production, maintenance, finance, services) and may well have cultural issues that will be specific to themselves.   

From a ‘sports psychology ‘ perspective it is always helpful if each of your teams have their own missions and short-term goals that are aligned to the overall organisational vision. 

Our facilitators help teams to develop their own mission, focused short-term goals and ensure that all of the team are clear as to their roles in delivery.  Plans are developed to deliver these goals and the method for goal achievement celebration is also defined and agreed. Goals may focus on specific detrimental or dysfunctional behaviours or habits that have developed and the plan would then involve a campaign to address these over a period of several weeks. 

The participation of departmental or function management is key in development, together with ‘supervision’ from the teams and any union officials. 

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DEVELOPMENT OF COACHING SKILLS FOR CHANGE TEAM 

The journey towards an organisation’s vision is a long-term investment.  This investment can be daunting if you have to rely on full-time support from external experts over the length of your journey.  For this reason, we at Optimus believe it is necessary to transfer knowledge regarding coaching and behaviour change to nominated people within your organisation and contractor teams.    

It sometimes takes some discussion with yourselves to determine what roles within your organisation this would be best suited for, but initially we recommend that any Change Coach does NOT have any other line responsibility to distract them from their task. A level of intelligence is required to undertake the role and training, although interpersonal skills and personality are key ingredients.  We can assist with the selection process and even undertake  psychometric assessments on your candidates. 

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DEVELOPING A COMMON ORGANISATIONAL PURPOSE 

The aim of this activity is to ensure that all groups are working to a common organisational purpose. This is achieved using workshops, by: 

• Identifying an individual’s purpose
• Identifying the beliefs inherent in the organisation that support or prevent working to a common purpose
• Identifying personal motivations i.e. towards or away from the common purpose
• Identifying the highest level common purpose that everyone can buy into
• Aligning an individual’s personal purpose with the beliefs and purpose of the organisation 

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DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT OF AN EFFECTIVE RECRUITMENT / SECONDMENT / CONTRACTING PROCESS 

Based on the results of the LAB Profiling Exercise, this can be developed for use with parent companies, agencies and subcontractors to ensure the people you recruit or sub-contract to are the best fit for the type of organisation you want to build.  

Job Profiles, questionnaires or interview questions can be designed to attract people with a profile that closely matches your corporate values. An added benefit to this is that mismatched individuals can be managed/monitored effectively by the coach to bring performance or attitude in line. 

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PUTTING MEASURES IN PLACE THAT ARE BAROMETERS OF HOW PEOPLE FEEL 

As a result of the climate survey, the LAB profile, the visual observations and the informal network data gathering exercises, it becomes clear which are the key behaviours that need to be monitored. We establish ‘hearts and minds’ measures that are real indicators of progress. 

There should be some positive (towards) measures as well as negative (away from) measures.  We capture these through a re-invigorated appraisal system and through other informal systems, such as conversations in the canteen etc.

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