Our Clients

We have worked with a variety of clients, including:

• Executives and teams from Fortune 500 companies seeking to improve alignment, collaboration, and organizational performance
• Entrepreneurial startups building leadership and high performance teams
• Social entrepreneurs building capacity and stakeholder engagement

We’ve helped our clients by:

• Coaching leaders for better communication and collaboration
• Improving alignment among different groups, around the larger strategy
• Developing plans that satisfy and get buy in from multiple stakeholders
• Making the case for funding new enterprises or initiatives
• Developing “group mind” across multiple stakeholders
• Aligning newly acquired companies with acquirer strategies and culture
• Designing new processes to encourage innovation
• Making the case for change
• Diagnosing inconsistent or low-performing culture and leadership styles
• Improving accountability and commitment
• Integrating new technologies productively into the organization

Examples of Recent Projects

Alignment around a New Strategy

A fifteen-year old technology company was in the process of "re-startup" - developing a new market strategy that required significant changes in focus, work processes, and organizational culture.  Dan and colleague Susan Skjei conducted an organizational culture assessment, provided the senior management team with feedback as well as individual and team coaching, and developed a strategy map and new performance metrics meant to provide focus on desired business outcomes.

Strategic Conversations

A Fortune 100 resource company had developed a knowledge management system, and created communities of practice around specific technical and engineering issues. Dan and colleague Sera Thompson helped the knowledge management team organize and conduct a series of meetings using World Café and Open Space tools that opened up the conversation, allowed for divergent points of view to emerge, and facilitated the development of action plans for improving the knowledge management system.

Simplifying and Clarifying Board Reporting

Under new management, a large credit union organization was undergoing a financial turnaround. There were concerns that the Board had been in the habit of "micro-managing", and the new CEO wanted a new Board reporting framework that respected Directors' need to know, kept Board meetings focused on strategic issues, and reinforced management's accountability for running the business day to day. Based on extensive interviews and workshops with Directors and management, Dan and a partner developed a Strategy Map which identified the strategic objectives requiring focus at the senior management level. This was presented to the Board at a planning retreat. In the end the Board selected five major issues which they believed required quarterly Board attention, and agreed to allow management to report on the others on an exception-only basis.

Developing and Selling a Multi-Stakeholder Business Plan

A University was seeking local buy in and federal funding for a new campus-based business incubator, designed to encourage rural economic development and creation of new environmentally-focused business. This required an understanding of the views, concerns and needs of a variety of stakeholders, including faculty, students, local and federal government, and economic development agencies. Dan developed a customized approach to this complex multi-stakeholder environment. Working with a team of associates, Dan met with each stakeholder group and identified what they wanted from, and what they could contribute to, this new facility. This was translated into a multi-stakeholder strategy map, which was in turn used to flesh out a detailed business plan and financial model that identified critical resources and activities required to satisfy the various stakeholder groups. With the ability to demonstrate thorough planning and local stakeholder buy in, the university was successful in attracting federal seed funding for the project.

Planning for Rapid Growth

An up and coming developer of body scanning technology for the clothing industry was about to receive a significant infusion of equity capital, with the expectation that volume would increase exponentially. In order to make best use of the new capital, and ensure quality and sustainability, management needed a plan that would allow them to hit the ground running. Working with two associates, Dan developed an approach that involved: fleshing out a future state vision with the management team; identifying value relationships with suppliers, distributors and retailers; and building a strategy map. The strategy map was used as the basis for a detailed plan that addressed needs in the areas of IT architecture, work processes, staffing and organization. At the end of two weeks, the team delivered a report that outlined options, costs and timeframes for required investment and activities in these areas.

Post-Merger Integration

An integrated energy company acquired a smaller electric utility.  Commencing immediately after approval of the deal by the SEC, Dan provided methodology, coaching and facilitation for a cross-functional team that identified needs for organizational change and major process improvements.  Post-merger integration issues were compounded by the emergence of a highly critical performance-based regulatory regime in the state the acquiree operated in. 

Dan used balanced scorecard strategy mapping as a basis for clarifying key financial and customer service objectives.  These formed the criteria for identifying strategic process improvement initiatives, as well as organizational design objectives.  This work resulted in the approval of three major process improvement initiatives, in the areas of performance measurement, electrical system planning, and resource scheduling.  In addition, the Executive used the team’s findings as a basis for creation of a new, more streamlined organizational structure.

Following the acceptance of these recommendations by the Executive, Dan designed and delivered a communications program for employees of the acquired company.  A series of employee meetings included a presentation on changes in the US electric utility industry, new organizational initiatives recommended by the team, and an introduction to change management.

Balanced Scorecard: Measuring and Valuing Intangibles

Dan has delivered his 2-day Balanced Scorecard development workshops publicly through university professional development services and professional associations. In addition, he has conducted private workshops for a number of individual client organizations, including educational institutions, economic development agencies, professional services firms, and manufacturers. As one recent participant put it:

"Dan is able to translate these concepts into layman's terms, and has a practical, hands on approach with a lot of common sense built into it."