Survey finds old stereotype of lazy bureaucrat diminishing

Public sector work looking more appealing

By Kathryn May, The Ottawa Citizen - September 2, 2010

Canadians' longstanding stereotype of the dull, overpaid and underworked bureaucrat may be disappearing.

A Labour Day survey by online recruiter Monster.ca found that 55 per cent of Canadians feel there are more advantages to working in the public rather than the private sector. Only 31 per cent felt the private sector offered more advantages.

But the poll of 1,008 Canadians, conducted by Harris/Decima, also found most Canadians said public sector work was more rewarding, interesting and allows people to make a difference, compared to the private sector. About 44 per cent said they didn't think public sector workers were overpaid.

Planning to Fail? Best Practices in Succession Planning

"When boards permit a happenstance approach to succession planning, they have effectively abdicated one their most crucial responsibilities."

Stephen A. Miles & Nathan Bennett
Nov 2009, Forbes.com

The same can be said of business owners. As a business, having a succession plan doesn't necessarily mean having an exit plan. Succession planning actually answers these three questions:

What is the lifespan of this business?

Who will keep the business running?

How will the departure (or sudden absence) of key members/roles be managed?

Threat to the economy

It is in everyone's best interest -- the owner's, shareholder's, employees', customers', suppliers' and the family members of the owners -- for there to be a clear strategy for succession. It is in the best interest of the company's longevity. It comes down to this: if you don't have a plan, how can anyone have confidence in the longevity of your company?

Mike Thompson, CMC, Associate Professor, Management Consulting with the Faculty of Management at Royal Roads University at a recent Surge High Voltage Business Breakfast said, "I suspect that the key issues of succession planning and transition are not being addressed by many companies in B.C. I think that this critical demographic threat is going to have a profound impact very soon." Thompson raises a good point: that failure to plan isn't just a threat to the business, it is a threat to the economy should a lack of succession planning be as widespread as he suspects. Thompson is embarking upon an applied research into the issue of succession planning readiness within the small and medium size enterprise sector in the province of B.C.

I suspect that overwhelm and a lack of seeking support for the development process is what keeps most companies from preparing a succession plan. There may also be another compounding factor: a lack of an overall business strategy. Succession planning should be aligned with the overall business strategy taking into account the vision, goals and objectives. Ultimately it is difficult for a company to fulfill its goals without an effective succession plan. It is equally difficult to create a succession plan without a clearly developed strategic plan.

A savvy approach

Research shows that succession savvy companies use several best practices in their approach to succession planning and management.

Their succession systems are easy to use and ensure consistent, objective processes.
They proactively focus on attracting, developing and retaining talent, rather than replacing it.
They have identified the gaps, as well as the key roles that are critical to the continued success of the company.
They continually refine and redefine, if necessary, their systems based on new information, feedback, changes in the business environment and learning from other business leaders. They align their people strategy with their business strategy.
The succession planning is an open system. Everyone is apprised and is able to give feedback.

A 'Plug & Play' candidate does not exist

Start your succession planning now by taking the time to answer these questions:

Analyze the situation:

What are the most significant challenges the company and its industry are likely to experience in the coming years?
What skills and experiences will key roles within the company need to effectively lead the company or department through those challenges?

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Owners/directors may make the mistake of thinking a future leader should be a replica of current leadership. Consider that future challenges may require different skills/experience. Succession planning is a forward looking process, not an attempt to replicate the past.

Determine a process for development:

Consider that a 'plug & play' candidate does not exist.

Now, repeat the sentence above to yourself again, and again, until it has been fully digested.

If they do exist, they are likely far out of your reach and ability to hire. It is unrealistic to think someone can just jump in and run things successfully. Development is a must.

Will you develop internal or external candidates?
What do they need to know?
How will you enable engagement and empower decision making?
How will you ensure they understand the vision and culture and are committed to sustaining the culture?
What are the relationships they need to develop?

Determine a process for transition:

What will the on-boarding process look like?
How will relationships be developed?
What will be the plan for the first year? How will you engage the candidate in creating this plan?
What will be their milestones and the metrics on which their performance is measured?
What will ensure everyone is working from the same plan?
What coaching will be in place to support successful on-boarding over the first year?

Managers are not leaders

While a company may think they have their succession planning under control, it is equally important to develop the leaders. Solid and successful succession planning is not a static plan. It is an integral part of a company's culture. Nurturing good leadership is an ongoing and active process.

Kevin Groves, in his research paper, Integrating leadership development and succession planning best practices concludes that the "analysis of interview data indicated that best practice organizations effectively integrate leadership development and succession planning systems by fully utilizing managerial personnel in developing the organization's mentor network...". In other words, succession savvy companies are those which actively establish a supportive organizational culture.

While a lot of the literature focuses on leadership development in success planning, I believe it is a mistake to think succession planning is just about the leadership. It involves the whole organization. The planning really should encompass all the roles or future roles needed to fulfill the operations of the company.

Reflections on the 62nd IPAC National Conference
I had the pleasure of attending the 62nd Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC) National Conference in Ottawa this week and thought that this would be a good opportunity to share what I thought were the highlights. The "Guardians of Our Communities, from Local to Global" conference theme was an ambitious undertaking supported by an impressive line-up of speakers including David Dodge (Former Governor of the Bank of Canada), Kevin Lynch (Former Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to Cabinet), Duncan Stewart (author of Deloitte's Predictions for 2010 and Beyond), Tom Jenkins (Executive Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer for Open Text), Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo (National Chief to the Assembly of First Nations), Stephen M.R. Covey (author of The SPEED of Trust), and Jennifer Stoddart (Privacy Commissioner of Canada). The conference appears to have been a great success (well deserved congratulations to the organizing committee); well planned, smoothly run, attended by more than 400 delegates representing 30 countries and almost all of Canada (conference organizers are hoping that they will be able to attract a delegate from Nunavut next time around), and all levels of Canadian government including First Nations'. Yet, I am still left with the feeling that perhaps the "right" public servants were not in attendance to hear the intended messages...

Where are the decision makers?

I tried my best to use all of the available health breaks, luncheons, and networking time to get a sense of who the other attendees were, why they were attending the conference, and, of course, what issues are most concerning to them in their role in the public service. Overall it seems many were first timers, a good number were last minute stand-ins for colleagues, and some were assigned it by a new boss who thought that their group or department should be represented. I had expected to meet Directors, DG’s and ADM’S – the public servants who my boss met when he used to attend the conference. So where were our Public Service decision makers?

It is exciting that so many foreign public servants made the trek to Ottawa from Japan, Nigeria, and Kenya among others (thank you CIDA). However, I was left with the nagging feeling at the end of every really engaging and thought-provoking presentation that the Federal Government had really missed out on a great opportunity for the MESSAGE to be heard by as many senior managers as possible. (Kudos to PPX for continuously drawing an excellent and diverse group of senior public servants to its events.)

The MESSAGE

So, you ask, what was the MESSAGE? Of course there were more than a few messages and stories delivered by the many speakers, but it did seem to me that they had definitely come together beforehand to plan and coordinate their reinforcement of necessary change around the larger issues the public service should be embracing. In reviewing my notes I have found that I could sum it up quite nicely in a mathematical equation. (I apologize to those of you who are visually inclined, but I am mathematically so.)

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Highlights...

Announcement of the launch of "Public Service Without Borders" by IPAC...however, this is open to IPAC members only. Not sure how this requirement leads to a forum of openness, transparency or “borderlessness”.
Call to Tweet and Text questions for speakers.
As we recover from the government spending in 2008-2009, David Dodge cautions us on adopting new health care policies - we need to keep health care spending down and focus on process improvement, project management and especially risk management.
Kevin Lynch urges us to make INNOVATION a priority and pull Canada out of its "innovation deficit". We need to take a leadership role in innovation to address our depressed productivity, competitiveness, and technology adoption.
Chief Atleo - calls for new policies to replace the Indian Act to move forward.
Great story on the use of a wiki from Angelina Munaretto, Library and Archives Canada.
Tom Jenkins stresses the need to ensure that Canada does not get left behind in the "information revolution". We must adopt the new "productivity tools" available. It's all change management - we need to come together on a strategy and take a long term view.
Interesting panel of New Professionals presenting their views, thoughts, and experiences with regard to Public Service Renewal.
Karen ~~Stoddard~~ Stoddart (Privacy Commissioner) underlines how privacy reinforces trust, innovation and growth in a global digital economy.

What was missing...

I would have liked to have heard more about:

The use of GCpedia or other internal wikis as a repository of institutional knowledge
Concern for knowledge loss and knowledge transfer (heard mentioned once by Grant McLeod, New Professionals panel)
Change and culture with respect to new technology adoption

Best presentation award goes to...

Stephen M.R. Covey for the 90 minute condensed version of his 3 day workshop on TRUST. Nothing revolutionary, yet at the same time it makes such good sense. When you start thinking of trust as an economic driver, as a top leadership competency, and as a learnable skill, you can't help but be swayed by Covey's evangelical delivery that "Trust" can make THE difference in the public service by increasing speed, energy, engagement and joy while decreasing costs. "Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust...without trust, it takes you longer and costs you more" (Stephen M.R. Covey, IPAC 2010).

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{images3}I will definitely be ordering my copy of The SPEED of Trust this week. I have already loaned my deck of "Trust Cards" to one of our senior associates this morning to share with a client. And I will be posting my book review and an update on my progress in building a trust dividend next month.

Upcoming Conferences

Although the agenda for the GTEC 2010 (Oct. 4-7th, 2010) looks quite impressive, I am going to be opting out in favour of the PMI OVOC 10th Annual Symposium in Ottawa , "Unleashing the Power of Project Management" (Oct. 12-13th, 2010). I am hoping to explore "it's all risk management" theory more in depth.

Feedback

So, did you attend the IPAC Conference this week? I would love to hear about your impressions to see if they are in line with my experience – please leave a comment below.

Innovation is a Strategy, Not an Epiphany
We recently hosted a business breakfast dialogue in Victoria, BC at which the topic was innovation, specifically how Virtual City Ltd., an East African company, has leap-frogged over North-America and other western economies and developed a unique and ingenious way of managing business transactions throughout the supply chain using cellular technology.

Dr. Don Simpson, of Innovation Expedition Inc., outlined how the young entrepreneurs who started Virtual City developed a means of delivering supply chain solutions to the East African business community which would be impossible if trying to utilize the same infrastructure the 'western' world relies on. Instead, Virtual City invented a new way for each stage in the supply chain to transfer goods and money in which the system is fully automated and no actual money changes hands -- all transactions are done with cell phones. They 'beam' the information from one player in the supply chain to the other, thereby solving the problem of corruption and creating significant administrative cost savings for companies. It is an inspiring story of innovation success.

Innovation is a hot topic in business. It's always a hot topic, but what is it, exactly? Is it the purview of only the large and flashy corporations producing tech gadgets, like Apple or RIM? Or is innovation a common element of a sustainable business strategy, even for ‘Mom & Pop’ shops? There are exciting stories of world changing innovations, however, the business research literature maintains that innovation is a strategy for every business and can be as simple as looking to find unique ways to deliver something to a customer. Innovation is a standard business practice supporting sustainability.

Innovation is a strategy, not an epiphany.

Rather than waiting for the lightening bolt of inspiration to strike, building a strategy that supports innovation helps ensure ideas become success stories rather than ill conceived flops. The first question to ask is:

What kinds of ideas should we come up with in the first place?

This one sets the stage, draws the parameters and helps filter ideas to enable sound decision making. In an amusing article in Fast Company in August, 2009, the author, Dev Patnaik, describes his involvement in the launch of a new product that was a huge flop. The primary reason for the failure was that they designed the wrong product for the wrong target market in a way that the author says, "ensured the deck was stacked against us." It wasn't because the product was terrible, or that there wasn't a need for the product. It was that they were the wrong company to be manufacturing and selling this product and the end-user was not a market known to them. It did not fit with their business.

This highlights several other questions to ask in developing your innovation strategy:

Do you understand your customers?

Who is your target customer? Who do you focus on? What do they want and what are their challenges?

You can't be all things to all people, but you can be a unique solution to your current customer base. By understanding who you serve you can then ask the question: what are we not doing that we could be doing to better solve their challenges?

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks should not be your strategy for innovation.

Do you know what you should be innovating?
What are you uniquely qualified to provide? What are your core strengths?

Clarity and focus comes from answering these questions. You are better able to put energy towards uncovering simple innovations that can set you apart and help ensure that limited resources (time and money) aren't wasted.

A recent Business Innovator Lab™ participant wanted to innovate their business in response to the economic downturn. They provide a fairly specialized service to the construction and development industry, so weren't sure what else they could do to expand their services that wouldn't take them outside their area of expertise. When we explored their core strengths, who their customers are and what their customers rely on them for, they realized that they were already taking an innovative approach to service delivery that significantly differentiated them and provided tremendous value and possible cost savings to their customers. They just weren't clearly communicating this to their customers in a meaningful way.

Rather than strike out in a possibly disastrous new direction requiring new resources, the big innovation for this company was to simply recognize that what they were doing was already innovative in their industry and to just communicate this. This set them apart from their competition to very positive results.

In the above mentioned Fast Company article, the author discusses the 'how' of innovation, such as, hosting a suggestion box or holding regular innovation camps. These can be useful, but only if everyone is actually engaged in the process.

What really supports innovation is ensuring that you and your team are engaged in the vision for the business, are clear on the core strengths that drive the business and understand your customer. Set up open communication channels to support clarity and engagement. Then create opportunities for new ideas to be floated and analyzed. The company servicing the construction/development industry mentioned above does a terrific job of this. They host regular Friday beer and pizza afternoons where everyone is casually engaged in discussion and the question, 'what can we do better' is asked. I believe this one 'fun' activity is what makes them a remarkable company to work for and work with and it has played a key role in their successes.

A senior consultant with Delta Partners, Delaney Tosh, CPCC, is a Certified Professional Coach working with teams and CEO’s on leadership, organizational management, innovation and succession planning challenges. She is co-founder of The Surge Strategies Group Inc. and facilitates the Business Innovator Labs™. Full profile on LinkedIn.

Change Management: necessity or yet another check box?
Many managers are unaware (or chose not to be aware), but the more closely connected change management planning is with project planning, the greater the chances that your project will:

meet its objectives

stay on schedule

stay on budget

Unfortunately many projects are put into jeopardy because we fail to start change management planning early enough - or not at all.

‘Change Management’ is what, exactly?

Change Management is about creating awareness around the overall transformation process: identifying job roles impacted, defining future skills and competencies for employees, developing coaching and mentoring strategies for front-line supervisors, executing change work plans, engaging employees in the change design process, and gathering feedback on the change. It is also about adapting change management plans as necessary, coaching sponsors and training employees. Change is a process that helps move an organization to its desired state, yet recognizes that not everyone in the organization changes at the same pace.

Major change initiatives happen all the time

Change in an organization can come about for any number of reasons - downsizing; mergers; department and company reorganizations; reengineering, management by objectives and matrix management; new compensation programs; implementing a strategic planning process; implementing new technology and software packages; doubling production productivity; relocating facilities; adopting new appraisal processes; and changing work requirements, including doing more with fewer resources, to name but a few.

Change Management vis-à-vis Project Management

To ensure a successful implementation that is on time and within scope and budget, projects of these sorts are naturally undertaken as comprehensive and detailed project management initiatives. However, project management represents the technical side of change. The personal energy/time required for success, which represents the people side of change, is often underestimated or avoided. Upper management makes statements, forms task forces, and waits for the change to rollout. Lower levels do what is forced and wait it out.

Project Managers embrace Change Management?

In my experiences working on various projects with the Government of Canada, many change interventions prescribed for a department or agency come from outside groups such as the Treasury Board Secretariator in the form of recommendations to be implemented following a study or review. Few individuals inside the department or agency psychologically own the solution and "walk the talk".

Recent best practice studiessuggest that project teams are more or less evenly split between those who feel that change management is either critical or necessary, and those who feel that change management is just another activity or a nuisance with no value.

It has been our experience that the odds of project success are significantly increased when:

Project Management and Change Management processes are seamlessly integrated;
Senior leaders connected to the project have experience with, or knowledge of, change management;
Project mangers recognize the importance of change management and support its inclusion in the project;
The organization has previous experience with changes where the people side of change was either effectively managed or ineffectively managed; and,
Change management activities were incorporated into the launch of the project.

So, do you routinely include Change Management in your project plans or do you think it is just another required activity with little or no value? Are there examples where the “people” component of a project is inconsequential to the ultimate outcome?

A senior consultant with Delta Partners, Allen has successfully managed an assortment of projects in several Departments of the Government of Canada, covering a range of issues in organizational management, project management, change management, and organizational development. See his full profile on LinkedIn.

Boomers at the (exit) gates
We’ve all heard it - the baby boomers who have filled the corporate offices, populated the boardrooms, and presided over meetings for the last 30 years are getting ready to retire. They are checking their retirement packages, examining lifestyle changes, contemplating a life of travel and relaxation, to the point where some are winding down now - well ahead of their official departure date.

Simultaneously, the up-and-coming leaders, the Gen X and Gen Y groups are gearing up to take over. They are using the Internet and social media to connect with their peers like never before. And, instead of quietly waiting in the wings, these emerging leaders are actively seeking other opportunities where they are able to jump in, make high value contributions NOW - and learn, learn, learn.

So instead of the seamless transition from the old guard currently at the helm to the capable hands of their existing middle managers, many companies are facing a major drain on their talent pool coupled with a crippling loss of corporate memory.

Can corporate life thrive or even survive in the midst of this churn?

Regrettably, many managers have not stopped to consider the impact the loss of long-time employees will have on their organization. It appears they don’t appreciate how the lack of a strategy to capture and preserve essential corporate knowledge can quickly bite them – until they find themselves in a crisis situation.

We have visited organizations that are taking a close look at what’s required to make the transition with minimal disruption:

Preparing middle management teams by partnering them with mentors and coaches.
Budgeting and allocating both time and money to support the work that needs to be started now.
Taking steps to retain the historical information that will be crucial to their future success.

The Challenge

So the challenge is this: How can organizations re-energize and engage their soon-to-depart employees? This is a group who will not be with the organization much longer and will not be implementing the long range plans. Simultaneously, they must retain highly talented people who are keen to influence the future and take over at the helm so they can make their mark?

Is your organization taking action to address these issues? Are you aware of any unique or highly successful programs to retain both institutional memory and young talent? Or have there been efforts that have no traction and are looking like failures? We would love to hear your stories in the comments below!

Heather Hughes CMC, is a Certified Management Consultant with over 30 years experience in organizational change, succession planning, leadership development and employee engagement. She is a Senior Consultant with Delta Partners and brings a global perspective to her clients that emerges from her work in Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK . Heather also has a strong industrial background from her work in the forestry, transportation, fisheries and mining sectors. She is the author of “L is for Leader, that’s you” a resource for business leaders.

Building the Foundation for a successful Social Media Marketing Initiative
I don’t know about you, but this entire social media wave has at times completely overwhelmed me - the pace at which the whole trend is moving and changing is breathtaking. Yet, as a business owner, I know that one can’t ignore this. It certainly is not going away, so you have to get on the train or be left at the station wondering what happened.

Being a very logical and process oriented individual (OK, I admit I am an engineer), I approached this whole social media thing as a logical, one-step-at-a-time, process. I quickly learned that this is not a linear process. At first glance, anarchy and chaos seemed to be a fitting description of the way things happen.

All You Have To Do.

The most frustrating part for me is the constant stream of “all you have to do is …..” recommendations. Even the first step that we seem to hear - set up a “listening post” for your organization or create a Google alert for your key words - is not trivial for the first timer. Unless your key words are so unique that they rarely show up, you can expect to receive thousands of alerts on a daily basis. Similarly, if you are following lots of tweets via Twitter and news feeds (RSS) the volume can quickly become unmanageable. Just finding and setting up a common feed can be confusing, so a good social media advisor is a huge timesaver. If you are under 30 and a digital native, you’re probably wondering what all the fuss is about. However, those of us who are part of the boomer era are techno immigrants – we didn’t grow up with this stuff, so it is sometimes harder to comprehend why one would do certain things. I digress.

A common theme emerges

After a lot of web cruising and reading – blogs and honest-to-goodness books by the thought leaders of our time (Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith is one of my favourites) - an underlying theme actually did start to emerge. This is quite a relief to a logical mind, and while this may not be an epiphany to most people, it put everything into context for me.

Essentially your website is the focal point of your marketing efforts; consider it the hub for both social media efforts and traditional marketing as these multiple channels bring interested people to your website. These channels include search engines, links from other sites, and the thousands of mentions of your organization in the mediasphere.

Expect new challenges and requirements

The challenge lies in managing these many channels. It requires discipline and time management to ensure that your day is not totally wasted just monitoring the social media channels to the detriment of your business.

There was a time when all you needed to do was put 90% of your on-line efforts towards making your website work well. Now you should spend 75% of your marketing efforts on building communities of interest and building awareness of your organization in these different spaces. This will bring interested visitors to your website (of course this only leaves 25% to your website tuning). To retain their interest and keep them coming back you will need to build a dynamic, content rich, collaborative web space.

At the moment, the common belief is that a blog is the best means to build relevant content and focus for community engagement. The traditional website will still serve to convert visitors to customers.

This is the foundation that needs to be in place before you really get your social media activities going.

Are you ready to take the social media plunge?

How then do you know if your current website is capable of meeting your social media needs?

Perform an audit. Take a close look at your organizational objectives. Can you tie these into the target metrics that you expect your website to deliver? You will then analyze your visitor behaviour by looking at your web traffic statistics – assuming that you are not already managing your website through critical business metrics. There are a number of other tools such as which websites are linking to yours (backlinks), traffic ranking, and so on, which add competitive information to your arsenal.

These steps will allow you to establish your benchmarks for comparing the impact of your social media efforts on your strategic objectives.

Don’t start from scratch

What is interesting is that you really don’t have to toss out the old and completely redesign your website. After all, a successful organization has built a lot of assets into their websites, and customers recognize that value. It is important to determine what those assets are (e.g. content) and dispose of those that don’t bring value to your customers or to you. Again, a good, comprehensive audit is necessary at the onset.

Your canary in the coal mine

Coal miners in the 20^th century would keep a canary with them as they dug. If the canary stopped chirping – usually because they were deceased – this would serve as a sensitive and timely indicator to the miners that deadly gasses were collecting and it was time to evacuate.

Similarly, you need to identify the canary for your mine; the measures you can evaluate to see what is happening with your organization. These are based on your website statistics (total visits, unique visitors, visit duration, number of pages viewed, etc.) as well as other strategic inputs (phone calls, inquiries, new orders, repeat orders, etc.). This is where you and your management team will need to use your intimate knowledge of the business environment, your internal processes, your strengths and weaknesses, and your competitors’ actions to select the relevant measures that are sensitive to the strategic objectives of your organization. These will be identified as your Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). You don’t need many, but you need to make sure that the ones you use are precise and relevant to identify trends and patterns – your ‘canary in the coal mine’. This will allow you to quickly identify trends and to undertake further investigation to better understand what is happening.

The most important criteria for any metric – will it result in an action that improves your ROI?

Build the foundation first

Even if you already manage your website this way (congratulations! you would be surprised how many organizations large and small don’t), knowing that your website will deliver is critical in making your marketing efforts worthwhile. This is why an audit and strategy review is an essential first step – even if you are well on your way with your social media plan, it is a smart move to ensure that your website foundation can support your objectives.

A solid foundation will allow you to focus your efforts on the conversations and relationship building activities that will keep visitors coming back.

Peter de Gosztonyi - senior associate with Delta Partners - is a long time quality practitioner and web strategist. His analytic background combined with a ‘customer comes first’ philosophy yields some interesting insights into what drives visitor behaviour on websites. Visit his LinkedIn profile for more information.

Should a Public Service ‘Community of Practice’ be open to everyone in government?

Ellen Godfrey is a Senior Consultant with Delta Partners whose recent work has brought her to engage in some serious review of the concept of “Communities of Practice”. For those unfamiliar with Communities of Practice (CoP), the basic premise is that a group of people with a common interest around any particular topic will coalesce to share knowledge and gain information on that topic. Much discussion has taken place recently regarding the use of on-line CoP’s as the Public Service struggles to find ways to maintain institutional memory in the face of a massive wave of Baby Boomer retirements.

As she followed this line of research, she has developed some ideas that the internal wiki used by the Public Servants in Canada, GCpedia, might not be an appropriate venue as it does not provide for private communications between sub-groups.

To delve deeper into this topic, Ellen emailed her friend, Dr. Richard Smith, Professor of Communications at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Smith strongly disagrees and an enlightening discussion follows. Both have agreed to allow the full text of their exchange to be published here on our blog.

Enjoy – and please share your thoughts on this most interesting topic in the comments!

- Alcide

ELLEN:

Hi Richard,

Hope you are enjoying this beautiful summer weather and that all is well with you. We are just beginning our Knowledge Transfer Project with a federal government department here in BC. I need to get a better sense of whether or not GCpedia can be of use for a community of practice -- as one tool for knowledge transfer. I am doubting it, as I hear that it can’t be partitioned. That is, if the group we are working with wanted to create their own CoP, it would have to be open to the entire civil service.

RICHARD:

Ellen, Wiki’s don't partition. The concept doesn't exist in a "normal" wiki, but has been important in some situations, I guess, from business culture.

Your client might ask themselves why they want to exclude people from their community of practice. The answer to that question might reveal much that is hindering their progress from becoming one.

ELLEN:

Not sure what you mean here. If you want to create a ‘safe place’ for folks who work in one section of a huge federal civil service, so they can share ideas about their specific practice, what’s wrong with that?

I’ve just read Etienne Wenger’s book on Community of Practice, which if you can get beyond the theoretical abstractions, is very informative. He talks about the key elements of a community of practice. One is boundaries (pdf). Another is identities. These are old sociological concepts you will be very familiar with. To get a true community going, both of these elements naturally arise. Especially in a workplace where people’s natural inclination is to not participate. These folks need a safe place to open up and to feel they are sharing with their group. I don’t yet know how many of the people in the unit are aficionados of the openness that those who flock to social media enjoy. Many are older, and work in an environment where change can put at risk their ability to do their jobs.

RICHARD:

{images1}Not saying it is wrong, but questioning the premise. How is it unsafe to allow other members of the public service to see/edit your wiki?

If you want to talk boundary, put a name on the wiki. That can be the boundary. Canada has a boundary but it isn't impermeable. I think many people would regard permeability of boundaries as one of the best aspects. Would France be interesting if you couldn't go there?

I don't doubt that they might think that it would be safer to lock others out of their digital world, but in reality their physical world has plenty of permeability.

And, it may be true that nothing will happen if the boundary isn't created. The community may never thrive. But it isn't necessary to start out with that assumption.

The reality, in wikis, is that no one is going to notice or care if you start a page or pages. It is more like a park, with lots of green space. If you and your family set out a picnic and play some volleyball, it is almost a surety that no one will bother you. It isn't necessary to draw a big line around your picnic site. And, if someone should drop by, or if you happen to see a friend you'd like to invite into the game, wouldn't it be nice to just have that happen.

Again, I am not saying you have to drop the boundary, only that it may be the case that you can start without a boundary. Or try, anyway.

Suggest to those who need a boundary that they just try without one for a few days/weeks. See if anything bad happens. It won't. If it does, they can always put up a boundary.

...r

ELLEN:

You make very good points and I’d like to reflect on them. As you know, one of the biggest challenges for online Communities of Practice is getting sustained participation of enough members of the community so that the online site functions in a way that is truly useful to members of the work groups meant to benefit from it. And so that they stay interested. In addition, since the CoP is meant to aid Knowledge Transfer, we will want to design it so that it incents very busy people (many of whom do not have the habit of sharing on line) to put useful info on the wiki.

Many of the Communities of Practice Wikis that I have seen, started by enthusiasts within a work group, never spread beyond the founding enthusiasts. My experience, the literature, and a scan of gov’t online wikis shows that more die out within 2 years, without ever gaining the support of any beyond the original 4 – 6 founders than survive to spread.

We are particularly keen to gain the adherence of the 40 – 60 year olds who are leaving the organization, and contain valuable institutional know-how. I have some ideas on how to do this and should know more once we begin the interviews and learn the viewpoints of the people there. During the interviews, we will find out if people will feel uncomfortable posting if they think the entire civil service can read their posts and make judgments about the excellence (or lack thereof) of their knowledge. If there is a culture of not sharing knowledge, it will be a harder sell if the wiki is open beyond the work groups involved in the project.

My experience suggests that telling people few will actually look at the wiki, won’t help.

RICHARD:

A few hypotheses (testable)

If numbers matter, then having it open may mean more numbers.

If quality matters, knowing others will read it may mean better quality.

If getting senior members to participate matters, then something that allows them to share for posterity and not a small group will improve their participation.

Senior members of the public service have more friends and colleagues outside their division than inside. Think about it - as you rise up, there are fewer like you until you are alone in your group - but there are others at your level across the public service. And so you network with those folks.

The reality is, most of all, NO ONE will come and see these pages except the people who care about them.

Second, ANYONE who messes with them is tracked. This is not anonymous; you have to have an ID to get in.

I would hold off for at least a year or two any expectation of "community of practice" or some sort of revelations of "how things really work around here." Instead, try to get useful but mundane things up there. Phone books, meeting meetings, agendas. Work your way up to meaningful, and knowledge. Start by getting information.

In an email a few hours later Richard added

I am irrepressibly and unremittingly optimistic about the positive side of people. I think, unless AND until there is a proven downside you should assume the best. In this case you can't really have much of a downside, given that the whole site is already protected.

Ellen Godfrey holds an MA in Conflict Analysis and Management and is a senior consultant at Delta Partners. She is currently on the board of the Vancouver Island Health Authority where lean design initiatives are profoundly improving health outcomes. Ellen brings 30 years of experience in leadership in the public and private sectors – having won a Canada medal for innovation in working with a worldwide, Fortune 100 clientele – to her views of change management.

Richard Smith is a professor at Simon Fraser University, in the School of Communication, and is publisher of the Canadian Journal of Communication. He is one of Canada’s leading voices on the subject of technology and society. His thoughts are available through many channels, including his blog or follow @smith on twitter. Full contact and biographical information is available here.

Leading with Obsession: Prahalad and Hamel on Strategic Intent

We have invited Jim Taggart to share some of his thoughts regarding leadership on our site, and - fortunately for us - he has agreed . This post originally appeared on Jim's blog 'Changing Winds', and appears here in its entirety.

Jim is a leading thinker on the topics of leadership and organizational development. You can visit his website at www.leadershipworldconnect.com and read his e-book, 'Becoming a Holistic Leader'.

- Alcide

My previous post looked at the groundbreaking 1990 Harvard Business Review article on corporate core competencies by the late C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel. As I noted, this article, though written 20 years ago, is perhaps even more important and relevant now because of the rapid growth of emerging economies (eg, China, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, India).

Well, here’s another keeper, a HBR article co-written by Prahalad and Hamel the previous year, simply entitled Strategic Intent. When they wrote their article, Prahalad and Hamel talked about “new global rivals,” the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing to distant countries in search of cheaper labor, and the creation of strategic alliances to strengthen competitiveness through economies of scale. Here we are in 2010, and what have governments and corporations been fretting over? Precisely these issues, and more.

America, the cradle of modern innovation. As much as this great country gets beaten up in the international media, and despite its rearguard action to tackle such growing problems as corporate espionage (one of China’s core competencies) and new innovative emerging economies such as South Korea and Taiwan, the U.S. is still very much an innovation powerhouse. What it has is a self-esteem problem.

Prahalad’s and Hamel’s article contains a wealth of ideas and information; I’ll leave it to you to read it in full and distill what additional gems you can glean from it. This post highlights some of its key ideas, synthesized with my commentary.

“Strategies of Imitation” are dangerous when it comes to senior corporate executives believing that this will solve their competitive problems. Rather than what the authors call the “seemingly endless game of catch-up–regularly surprised by the accomplishments of their rivals,” corporate leaders need to approach strategy looking through a new lens on the world. Incremental change no longer works.

So what is Strategic Intent? Prahalad and Hamel talk about corporate leaders whose ambitions are “all out of proportion to their resources and capabilities.” These are individuals who are obsessed with winning as they worked their way upwards within their organizations and then continued onwards for global leadership in their field. One person who comes to mind is retired CEO of General Electric Jack Welch, who accomplished amazing things for his company during his tenure.

Although Strategic Intent envisions the leadership position for an organization and how it will get there, it’s also more than blind ambition. Some of the examples used by the authors are Canon and Honda; just look at how successful these two companies have been over the past 21 years. Therefore, Strategic Intent includes a management process that energizes and focuses an organization’s employees through clear communication. People see and understand where they fit within the bigger picture, and are enabled to contribute to the organization’s forward momentum. This is all about having a well-defined mission and shared vision among ALL employees.

In the previous post, I talked about Prahalad’s and Hamel’s work on organizational core competencies. When you talk about Strategic Intent and global leadership in your field, core competencies become extremely important.

In a period of discontinuous change, where economic and geo-political events are increasingly unpredictable with global reverberating effects, a core corporate competency is the capacity for an organization–its people–to have the resiliency and adaptability to weather crises. This is easier said than done, and it’s where senior managerial leadership plays a pivotal role. What we’ve witnessed in recent years is an unhealthy attachment by corporate leaders to short-term financial statements, which in the end eviscerates an organization’s soul.

Strategic intent and corporate core competencies, when applied with integrity and meaning, are essential components to the leadership platform from which an organization will thrive and gain growing momentum towards its vision.

Assume responsibility for outcomes as well as for the processes and people you work with. How you achieve results will shape the kind of person you become.
- C.K. Prahalad

Jim Taggart has been a student of leadership for 20 years, devoting over a decade to applied work in leadership development, organizational learning, and team building. Jim is a recognized thought leader, resulting from his extensive work on leadership, teamwork and organizational cultural change, as well as initiating and leading many change management projects.

He is also an economist, and has conducted research on labor market, competitiveness and innovation issues. Of special interest is understanding the interface between competitive global pressures and how leadership and management are practiced at the organization level. He holds Masters in economics and leadership and organizational learning.

Jim and his wife, Sue, have four adult children and two granddaughters. They live in Ottawa, Canada.

Change Management: Learnings from Virgina Mason Institute
I recently attended an Executive Leadership Seminar presented by the Virginia Mason Institute, one of the leaders in the U.S. in creating cultural transformation in an organization.

Some background

Virginia Mason is a U.S. not-for-profit medical centre, with 50,000 employees. In addition to running hospitals, health centres and primary care, Virginia Mason includes a research centre and an education program.

{images1}The organization has been on a nine-year journey of cultural change. They have gone from being in peril of ‘disappearing’ to now being the leader in the U.S. in terms of delivering sustainable, top quality health care – they consistently combine the best patient outcomes with excellent employee satisfaction. In addition, Virginia Mason’s financial position is sound and sustainable.

Important insights

Here are some of the nuggets that struck me following an excellent 1 ½ day presentation:

A sense of urgency (a crisis) is a pre-requisite for cultural change.
If people figure out something for themselves they will believe it. Therefore, rather than telling their employees what is to be done, it is better for managers to enable people to see what needs to be done.
Managers need to have ‘big eyes, big ears, small mouths’.
The concept of ‘fair practice’ is essential. That is, if people believe that the process by which a decision or a change was made is fair, they will be more likely to accept it even if they don’t agree with it.

Several seminar speakers cited Kotter’s eight steps for successful large scale change - my comments follow in italics:

Increase Urgency - in fact, without a sense of crisis, true change is unlikely
Build the guiding team - the team must be 100% committed to the cultural change
Get the vision right
Communicate for buy-in - this doesn’t mean communicate information, it means get engagement at the grass roots level
Empower action - at the grass roots level
Create short-term wins
Don’t let up - perseverance is key to success
Make change stick - by monitoring if measurable gains are sustained

Recognize the emotions

While there is nothing new here, it was instructive to see how Virginia Mason had put these principles into action, how difficult they found the journey, and how committed they were to not allowing dilution of these principles.

There was discussion about barriers to change - about people who refuse to go along and who have the power to prevent change. An insightful discussion was led by Jack Silversin of Amicus Inc, a U.S. consultancy on cultural change. In response to audience questions, Jack revealed an outstanding ability to see beneath the usual reasons cited for change-resistance and get to the deeper emotional needs and fears of those who resist. During the break, Jack told me that getting to these emotions and addressing these fears were a fundamental piece of any change process. Virginia Mason has developed a compact (.doc file) with their doctors which required a year of mutual discussion. This agreement outlines the responsibilities of Virginia Mason to their doctors - and of their doctors to Virginia Mason. The compact has been essential in enabling change in an environment where many traditions are held sacred.

The most difficult change environments?

Virginia Mason attributes most of their successes to the implementation of the ‘Lean’ management system, and a majority of the seminar was devoted to the specifics of this system. However, the underlying theme was how to implement change in a large hierarchical organization. Seminar speaker Dr. Gary Kaplan referenced literature indicating the hardest organizations to change were higher education, health, and government.

The reasons? If we accept the stated Virginia Mason view that profound change takes 8 – 10 years of single-minded, unwavering commitment from the CEO (Deputy Minister) level, we can easily see how challenging it is for public service institutions and employees who are faced with the shifting priorities and change of focus that arise from the frequent shuffle of senior managers and other high level personnel.

Culture vs Climate in the Organization
Jim Taggart recently posted an interesting and useful blog on the Difference between Corporate Culture and Climate - a subject that I have been working on for some time. As a change management consultant with a social science background, I have watched (and participated) with interest as the idea of ‘culture change’ has taken hold in the Public Service and elsewhere. Based on my experience, I entirely agree with Jim’s assessment that most of the time, “… when we talk about corporate culture we’re actually referring to the climate of the organization”.

The difference between culture and climate

I would caution readers against a tendency to view corporate climate as merely a superficial version of the culture. In fact, among other things, the two concepts differ with respect to substance and evidence. Culture refers to ideologies, values and norms as reflected in stories and symbols. We would look for clues to the culture, for example, in accounts of the organizations founding. Climate, on the other hand, refers to the psychological environment as reflected in attitudes and perceptions. We would look for clues to the climate, for example, by gauging the level of trust between peers or between managers and front-line employees.

But what is the actual difference between culture and climate?

I find it very difficult to articulate this difference in non-theoretical terms, but a couple of analogies might convey my understanding of the difference and the relationship between culture and climate.

Hypothetically, if time were to stop, the organizational climate would cease to exist without trace. On the other hand, the culture would persist, in a manner of speaking, in physical artifacts - the meaning of which could be deciphered by a hypothetical alien archeologist. The analogy here is with a ‘stock’ and ‘flow’ model from the field of economics, where culture would be a stock and climate would be a flow.
A second, more intuitive analogy might be taken from the field of meteorology where:
- organizational climate equates to the weather right now
- and organizational culture would reflect the meteorological climate – think of the Plant Hardiness Zones (Zone 4b here in Ottawa) – that you live in.

This is actually a fairly good analogy, if you can get your head around the unfortunate sharing of the term ‘climate’.

(Having written this, we should embark on a campaign to expunge the use of the term organizational ‘climate’ in favour of something else. This would free up this otherwise perfect analogy (model) for use in analyzing the relationships involved. How about organizational …?)

There is a practical point here.

I believe that change management interventions would be used more effectively if the distinction between culture and climate were better understood. Open Space Technology {images1}for example, which Jim refers to in his blog, may be especially effective in changing the organizational ‘climate’ as I understand it. However, it is still debatable as to whether and to what extent such techniques can or should be used to change the culture.

This is an important issue for managers, change management practitioners, and leaders at all organizational levels. Jim’s blog has prompted me to resurrect my White Paper on Organizational Culture vs Climate which should be of interest to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the issue from a social-theoretical perspective.

I’m very interested in your thoughts on this distinction between culture and climate. Is this information new to you? Is it relevant to you? Do you have any ideas for a new term to replace Organizational Climate? Add your thoughts in the comments section below.

Organizational Culture vs Climate
A major reason why change management initiatives are ineffective stems from a common failure to distinguish adequately between organizational culture and organizational climate, which have different implications for overcoming resistance. This paper draws a clear conceptual distinction between these two dimensions of organizational life and describes a gradation of intervention modalities. The purpose is to help managers of change develop and target their interventions more effectively.

Top 10 Ways to Waste Time in Meetings
Meetings are an essential part of doing business. However, they take up too much of our time leaving most of us eager to actually "get some work done”.

With that in mind, I thought I would offer my “recommendations” for running productive meetings:

1. Invite everyone.

We all have time to kill.
You don't want to exclude anyone or hurt their feelings.
Make sure to invite people who tell good jokes, like to goof around and are generally do good a job of lightening things up.

Note: Beware of inviting anyone who might have an agenda or attempt to reach a decision during the meeting.

2. Don't start the meeting until everyone has arrived.

It's rude to start a meeting on time – we all have unexpected events pop up during our day. Operational schedules should build in slack for these unknowns.
Starting a meeting late lets everyone know that they shouldn't feel bad about being late next time.

3. Do not have an agenda.

Agendas impose too much structure and do not allow you to effectively explore knew ideas.

4. Never keep minutes.

If you do, how would you spend those first few minutes of the next meeting when you should be trying to reconstruct the last one?
Minutes can have the negative effect of assigning responsibility for follow-up on action items.

5. Never assign roles.

There is no need for a timekeeper, minute taker, or Chairperson...you shouldn't play favourites.

6. Let your leaders/supervisors do most if not all of the talking.

They know best, so it's logical that they should talk the most.

7. Only "good" ideas should be presented.

All other ideas should be rejected, laughed at and made fun of.

8. Encourage "multitasking" during meetings.{images1}

Announce that texting, reading e-mails and answering calls during the meeting are not an issue. Everyone will feel that the meeting has been more productive.

9. Do not assign work.

If you assign tasks during meetings then everyone will not enjoy them as much.

10. Do not end meetings on time.

If you do, you have not properly applied these recommendations.

If you can find some flaw in this list of recommendations and would like a different perspective on effective approaches to running a business meeting, I highly recommend Neal Whitten’s book “No Nonsense Advice for Successful Projects” – Chapter 23: How to Run an Effective Meeting.

And, I would be very interested to see if any of you have recommendations you could add to this list of 10 that I have provided? Please leave your ideas in the comments!

Measuring Employee Engagement in the Public Sector
When I started working as a consultant, nearly 20 years ago, employee engagement was a largely foreign concept in the federal Public Service. That’s why it’s gratifying to see the new Head of the Public Service, in his first Annual Report to the Prime Minister, identifying employee engagement as one of his five top priorities for 2010-11.

The efficacy of elevated employee engagement

According to studies cited in The Oxford Handbook of Public Management (OUP, 2005 p.120), participative decision making (the effective behavioural adjunct to employee engagement) “… has a number of positive outcomes in organizations, most of the time”. Although clear productivity or efficiency gains show up in only about half the cases, participative decision making “… enhances employee job satisfaction and individual performance and, through reducing absenteeism and turnover and improving the flow of information, improves organizational effectiveness.”

Universal employee engagement measures

Measuring employee engagement is still a challenge – so it is welcome news that The Conference Board has developed and tested an easy-to-use survey instrument called the Conference Board Employee Engagement Barometer. The Conference Board (and its sister organization, The Conference Board of Canada) is a global not-for-profit organization with a reputation for rigorous, in-depth research on Human Capital and other economic and business subjects. According to their Research Report, the Global Barometer is a cross-culturally valid measure of what appears to be a universal definition of employee engagement.

Interesting? Dig deeper

For more information about the Global Barometer and how it could be used in conjunction with the Public Service Employee Survey, see my white paper on “Measuring Employee Engagement: A Strategic Priority for Deputy Heads in the Canadian Public Service”.

Please leave your thoughts and ideas on this topic in the comments section of this page. I would love to hear what people think.

The times they are a-changin’
In 1989 Delta Partners was incorporated.

Some interesting things about 1989:

Apple pulled out of the AppleLink project, so it was renamed and America Online was born (but it couldn’t be accessed by a non-Apple computer until 1991)
Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the World Wide Web
The fax machine was irreplaceable for its ability to execute nearly real-time exchange of important business documents
Email was largely absent from the business community until 1995
The first of the 24 satellites used for GPS positioning is launched
A new product out of Redmond, Washington is released – it is called Microsoft Office
The “Red Threat” of the Soviet communists comes to an end – Capitalism declared the winner

A few items that did not yet exist in 1989:

the first web page (1991)
a commercial ISP (1990)
the MP3 (1991)
the browser (1993)
commercial websites (1995 - eBay and Amazon)
web-based email (1996 – HoTMaiL)
Google (1998)
Skype (2003)
Facebook (2004)

And the world we see today:

Microsoft Office is now used by approximately three-quarters of a billion people
Worldwide GPS users estimated at 57 million
At least 23 billion web pages on the Internet
There are 1.4 billion email users and 247 billion emails are sent each day (with estimates that 81% of these are spam!)
Facebook has nearly half a billion users (474 million)

Change has happened fast

And it is going to happen even faster as we move forward.

Moving through the past two decades, I have witnessed firsthand the radical changes that have swept through our communities both in the business world and in our personal relationships. The advent of the World Wide Web has brought about a sea change in the methods, speed, and ubiquity by which we humans communicate.

We have moved from traditional “snail” mail, to the fax machine and couriers, to email, to text messages and “instant” messaging systems. We have also moved from systems emphasizing private, one-to-one messaging to new systems that are remarkably transparent and broadcast to anyone who cares to listen. This has been accompanied by a cultural shift from nine-to-five availability to a 24/7 workday.

With this transformation as a backdrop and the looming seismic shift in the workforce as the baby boomers move to retirement – it is time for Delta Partners to change with the times and embrace the technologies that are driving communications and innovation moving forward.

Welcome to our new website

In response to this changing climate, we have re-imagined and re-constructed our Internet presence at http://www.deltapartners.ca. Our goals were three-fold:

Create a place where the world could find Delta Partners and learn more about what it is that we do.
Create a place where our clients and professional peers can find information that is truly useful and applicable to their ongoing challenges – and where they can provide feedback to us.
Create a place where our associates can share the specialized knowledge that make them such valuable “Thought Leaders” in the community – a place where we can leverage the technologies and the networks of the Web to reduce the frictions in communication between professionals with common interests and challenges.

What you can expect

Our plan is to bring a variety of content to the site. We will have in-depth white papers, interesting business cases, thought provoking blog posts, insightful analysis, current news and events, and some lighthearted banter. This information will be developed and delivered by the Delta Partners management team, by our remarkable group of consulting associates, by guest bloggers, and by you. Some of these items will represent the official opinion of Delta Partners Inc., while we will also invite guest bloggers to participate who may share other viewpoints.

Mission Accomplished?

I like what we’ve done here, but time will tell. It seems that every discussion I’ve found surrounding the use of the Internet and Social Media as a communication tool refers to becoming part of “The Conversation”. We aim to join this conversation.

And we have to. For 21 years we have served as trusted advisors to our clients by understanding the challenges of the day and by helping them identify the best solutions to their unique situation. This move to online communications, free information flows, transparency, and sharing are all part of the landscape of today. We must participate and understand this space to provide the best possible value to our clients.

I will count us successful if, in a year, we have created a group of people who can point others to our site and say, “Make sure you visit http://www.deltapartners.ca. There are some really interesting things going on there.”

I look forward to this shared journey, and I hope you will join us frequently as we explore together.

- Alcide

All you have to do is…

Social media is hard.

Unless you have money.

Heaven knows you don’t have to be remarkably intelligent, witty, or engaging to be successful. Of course, these things help – and are likely a requirement if you intend to make any money at it – but mostly you have to be available and willing to work at it.

The back story: I buy the URL and set up this site after I was laid off from my last job. I had time to burn and decided to jump in and play in this social media sandbox. I didn’t expect much from it – just felt like it was a good time for me to fool around and learn about the environment. Of course, I immediately start working a paying job and forget all about this little experiment.

Smash cut – six weeks later and I’m working with Delta Partners, a Management Consulting firm that is well established here in Ottawa. My first assignment – bring a social media strategy to our site.

Hey look at me everyone – I’m a Social Media Consultant!

But then you probably are too. Seems most everyone who has a twitter account and knows that you capitalize the “i” in LinkedIn is.

And here it comes…

“All you have to do is…”

My colleague Peter de Gosztonyi turned me on to this one, and he’s bang on.

All you have to do is: start a blog, start a twitter account, make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete and you are building your bench, be a thought leader, participate in the conversation, be a trust agent, have a corporate facebook page, build a listening post, track your KPI’s, and wait for the money to roll in.

Of course few will tell you how to execute on the tactics behind the overarching strategy or how much sleep you can expect to do without along the way. Hey, don’t be a buzz kill – I’m evangilisin’ here.

The real experts tell us

The point to all this rambling: I attended the OCRI Zone5ive (how hard is that to type?) meeting today titled “Social Media Marketing Experts Reveal All”. Naturally, as an expert, it was critical that I attend to reveal all of the mistakes that these misguided souls would try to sell. Jokes aside, it was an excellent panel:

Michele Bedford Thistle :Enterprise Marketing Manager – Public Sector, Microsoft Canada
Erin Blaskie – @erinblaskie :Founder, Business Services, ETC
Scott Lake – @scottica :Serial Entrepreneur and Founder, Shopify and Swix
All three were far more articulate and intelligent than I could ever hope for. They know their stuff and they were happy to share their experiences in using social media to build a successful business – for that I am grateful.

And to show my gratitude, I got to ask the last question of the day, “This is for all three of you: can you tell us how many hours per week you spend on this stuff?” I had no fewer than six people tell me that I asked a great question. Clearly this is an issue that people are wrestling with.

The answers:

Scott said, “I have found that the new smart phones really let me be productive when I’m away from the office.” I heard, “There are few moments in my day that I’m not thinking about, reading or creating tweets. I do it all the time.”

Michele said, “I don’t spend more than two hours per week on this.” I heard, “I work for a gigantic corporation with cash and lots of resources.”

Erin said, “I’m on the Internet 14 hours per day.” I heard, “I have never been on a run of 27 straight days of 3am feedings. I do it all the time.” (sidebar: this is about to change, congratulations to Erin!)

My spin

My takeaway after chatting with some other attendees: social media marketing is effective when it is done right. But - it is still marketing. Unless you are a fully committed entrepreneur or are young with lots of creative energy and no serious commitments, you can expect to spend your marketing dollars on this activity. It isn’t free – even if many of the tools are. The resource commitment is real. You want to participate in the conversation? It’s going to be time intensive.

And most people still prefer to be paid for their time.

Geoff Schaadt is a new associate who has recently joined Delta Partners. For the past several weeks Geoff's primary assignment has been to guide the strategic development and implementation of our new on-line presence for Delta Partners. This post was originally created for his personal blog following a local event where the use of social media to promote business activities was presented. - Alcide

Are you effectively developing your managers and supervisors as leaders of change?
Managers and supervisors are perhaps the biggest ally and potentially the biggest obstacle in times of change. Are you effectively engaging this group?

The Prosci’s Change Management Centre provided five tips for developing managers and supervisors as coaches of change:

Get them on board - managers and supervisors have to go through their own change process before supporting their direct reports.

Share the role you expect - at both a high-level and a detailed set of actions.

Build competencies - appreciate that "leading change" is a competency that can and must be developed.

Provide tools - including individual change models, tip sheets and information for fulfilling roles.

Provide support - help managers and supervisors succeed at leading change with peer and expert support.

What are your thoughts on these tips?

Community Service
Delta Partners is a proud supporter of The Arthritis Society.

{images1}

The Arthritis Society is Canada’s principal arthritis health charity dedicated to funding and promoting arthritis education, research-based solutions and community-based support. The Society empowers the nearly 4.5 million Canadians with arthritis, 1.8 million in Ontario alone, to live their lives to the fullest by combating the daily limitations of arthritis. In the last 60 years, The Society has invested $160 million towards arthritis research to develop better treatments and, ultimately, find a cure.

' The mission of The Arthritis Society is to search for the underlying causes and subsequent cures for arthritis, and to promote the best possible care and treatment for people with arthritis.'

Training, Coaching & Mentoring
For more than 20 years Delta Partners' associates have delivered effective training, coaching and mentoring programs for executives, managers, and their teams. In addition to our highly regarded Change Leadership Training Program and the OASIS Learning Program, Delta Partners' associates frequently create and deliver custom training packages.

OASIS Learning

Coaching and Mentoring for Managers and Teams: Sensitive, strategic and focused on clear objectives

For Managers

An oasis where you catch your breath, reflect on your situation, learn, and move on.
A professional and confidential service.
A personalized service: the coach will design strategies and research issues or themes for you - the client.
The coach is readily available in person, by telephone or e-mail.
A process that helps reconcile personal and organizational objectives.
A process that fosters relevant and just-in-time learning and integration much more efficiently than traditional workshops.
A practical process that helps generate desired results.

For Teams

Teamwork can produce excellent results under certain conditions:

Teammates must agree on objectives and the path required to attain them.
Each team member must feel that his or her best competencies are put to good use and that they will be complemented by their colleagues’ competencies.
The diversity of individuals and their competencies once harnessed and valued will achieve the desired outcomes.

Teams need to function on many levels:

How will decisions be made in the team?
How will the team solve problems and deal with conflicts?
How will the team attain and maintain a high degree of maturity?

Team coaching helps both leaders and team members attain stated objectives in a friendly and constructive environment.

The Eight Steps in Oasis Coaching

1. Understanding the organization’s objectives and context

What are the organization’s objectives in providing managers and teams with coaching services?
Is there a specific competency that needs to be acquired, a gap that needs to be filled?
Is the objective to help a manager and a team attain a higher potential?

2. Understanding the manager’s and team’s objectives

What are the manager’s concerns and objectives?
What are the team’s objectives?
Are they different than the organization’s objectives?

3. Defining the scope and focus of the intervention

Clients and coaches agree on specific results that need to be attained. They will reconcile organizational and individual objectives. Needs commonly expressed include:
Gaining support to better assist their employees’ acceptance and commitment to organisational change and ensuring a better work/life balance.
Other clients wish to improve a specific competency in order to be more efficient and motivated.
Enhancing interpersonal relations is often targeted as an objective.
In an ever-changing work environment, some managers wish to take stock of their career, set new objectives and proactively invest in their professional future while regaining or maintaining a healthy overall balance in their lives.
Clients and coaches commit to working together and agree on process, values and guidelines.

4. Information gathering

The coach will often want to meet his client’s colleagues, employees or clients in order to gain their perspectives on the situation and its challenges.
In developmental situations, an effective tool for gathering information is 360 degree or multi-rater instrument. This will provide objective and specific data on areas of improvement both for an individual manager as well as for a team. This approach must be acceptable to all concerned.
We use “Benchmarks” for 360 degree assessments. This instrument was designed and validated by the Centre for Creative Leadership, a renowned international organization. Please see our notes for further information on “Benchmarks”.
Other tools such as MBTI, Learning Styles Inventory and Career Anchors could also be beneficial.

5. Providing Feedback

Specific feedback and data are provided to you and your team. They serve to further define and anchor the stated objectives and the process to attain them.

6. Setting the strategy and working towards implementation

You and your coach formalize a strategy and a process to achieve success. The process often includes risk-taking and trying new behaviours emanating from the objectives of the process. You receive feedback from your environment and discuss it with your coach. Adjustments are made.

7. Integration

Your coach helps you systematize and integrate positive changes. You will gain a new degree of self-confidence. This helps you better position yourself and your approach to leadership.
These new skills, be they individual or team based contribute to real improvements and greater satisfaction.

8. Assessment and follow-up

There is an on-going assessment by you and your coach of the progress accomplished in relation to the desired outcomes.
You and your coach agree on further actions in order to further anchor the new competencies. New objectives are set as needed.

Design and Training

There are occasions when traditional training is an appropriate approach for skill development. We have helped many organizations achieve their learning objectives by designing and delivering custom learning programs.

Diagnostic Tools

We offer a range of diagnostic tools such as MBTI and Benchmarks to support learning for both you and your organization.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Learning more about ourselves and others is an important step in the voyage of self discovery. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a self-report questionnaire designed to make Carl G. Jung’s theory of psychological types understandable and useful in everyday life. MBTI results describe valuable differences between normal, healthy people – differences that can be the source of much misunderstanding and miscommunication.

After more than 50 years of research and development, the current MBTI is the most widely used instrument for understanding normal personality differences. It has been employed as a tool by a variety of users in small businesses and large corporations, service industries and manufacturing concerns, consulting and training services, governments at all levels, established firms and new ventures by entrepreneurs, and educational and health care institutions. The MBTI is used in:

Self-development
Career development and exploration
Relationship counseling
Academic counseling
Organization development
Team building
Problem solving
Management and leadership training
Education and curriculum development
Diversity and multicultural training

The MBTI will help you to identify your unique gifts. You can use the information to better understand yourself, your motivations, your strengths and your potential areas for growth. It will also help you to better understand and appreciate those who differ from you. Understanding MBTI is self-affirming and enhances cooperation and productivity.

Delta Partners offers workshops in both introductory and advanced MBTI to individuals and/or teams.

Benchmarks®

360 Degree Leadership Assessment and Development using Benchmarks®

Benchmarks® was designed by the Centre for Creative Leadership ( Greensboro, North Carolina) one of the foremost leadership research and development centres in the world.
Benchmarks® is a statistically reliable, valid and comprehensive 360-degree-feedback instrument.
The Benchmarks® assessment tool is available in English and French.
Benchmarks® goes beyond providing very precise feedback. It provides a detailed development plan which allows leaders to develop professionally and personally and avoid career stalling problems.
Benchmarks® is intended for middle and senior managers.

Confidentiality of the report is assured. Only two copies are produced - one for the client and one for the consultant who gives his copy to the client at the end of the process.

Objectives of Benchmarks® :

As a confidential tool for individual development in addition to rating themselves, managers receive feedback from superiors, peers, direct reports, and other observers.
The 39 page report provides specific data on one’s leadership strengths and areas of improvement.
It also clearly indicates career stalling issues and how to overcome these.
Benchmarks® provides a clear and thorough development plan to facilitate leadership growth.
Benchmarks® allows leaders to compare and confront one’s most important organizational values with those of the observers.

If you would like to discuss your training, coaching, or mentoring needs with a Delta Partners associate, please click here to contact us for a free, no-commitment consultation.

Contact Us
For more information regarding how we might be able to assist you, there are a number of ways to contact us:

Tel: 613 747-8121
Fax: 613 744-5913

Toll Free: 1 888 847-3384

Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Delta Partners
14-5480 Canotek Road
Ottawa, Canada
K1J 9H6

Measuring Employee Engagement: A Strategic Priority for Deputy Heads in the Canadian Public Service
Employee Engagement is a foundational element of Canadian Public Service Renewal and figures prominently in the more recent rounds of the Management Accountability Framework (MAF) assessment process. This paper discusses the use of the Public Service Employee Survey to gauge the level of employee engagement and recommends that future iterations of the Survey incorporate the Conference Board’s “Global Barometer for Measuring Employee Engagement”.

Privacy

Personal Information

The information collected on this site will never be sold or distributed to any third party.

Cookies

This site uses cookies to store session information. This information will not be shared.

External Site Links

This site links to other websites on the internet. Content and Privacy Policies are the responsibility of their respective owners.

IP Addresses and Logging

This site logs information about visitors, including IP addresses, date/time visited, referring website, length of stay, etc. This information is used for site statistics only.

Comment Moderation

Delta Partners Inc. reserves the right to moderate, up to and including complete deletion, all comments left by visitors to our online properties.

All questions and concerns regarding privacy concerns should be directed to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Organizational Challenge
Every organization has a unique set of strengths and challenges. We have developed the following diagnostic questionnaire to help you explore three key areas that will help you identify issues affecting your organization.

The performance challenges for your work unit:

The major capacity gaps impacting the ability of your organization to achieve results:

yes no
We know what our critical skill and competency shortages are.
yes no
An environmental scan has identified the workplace wellness issues impacting our work unit.
yes no
We are on top of HR issues in recruiting and retaining employees.
yes no
We understand the main concerns of your employees.

The priority actions required to address the gaps:

yes no
Action has been undertaken over the past year.
yes no
Lessons learned in managing change have been identified and recorded.
yes no
The most critical success factor is clearly recognized.
yes no
The tools and support required are well known and understood.

If you have identified areas in which you think Delta Partners could help, please contact us for a free, no-commitment consultation.

Free Consultation
We understand that every organization faces a unique situation, and that the specifics of your challenge might not be addressed within the scope of this website. To that end, Delta Partners offers free, no-commitment consultations to allow you to better explore your needs before committing to a professional engagement.

Simply fill in the contact form below and a client services representative will contact you promptly.

News and Events

Procurement Vehicles
For Federal Government departments and other Government organizations, Delta Partners can provide professional services through a range of procurement vehicles. These vehicles shorten the procurement cycle and save valuable government resources.

National Master Standing Offer (NMSO)

To initiate the process click here or copy this url into your browser:
http://www.contractscanada.gc.ca/en/buying-e.htm

Our NMSO Number: 24062-030150/035/ZG

In-Service Support Supply Arrangement

To initiate the process click here or copy this url into your browser:
http://www-app.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/isssa/index.cfm?fuseaction=app_process.home⟨=e

Our In-Service Support Supply Arrangement (ISS SA) Number: E60BQ-01ISSA/E (Auresco Consulting Inc.)

Professional Services (PS) Online

Delta Partners is also registered on Professional Services (PS) Online. You can search either by company or consultant to find us in this directory. Click here to enter the directory or copy this url into your browser:
http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/app-acq/sp-ps/index-eng.html

Temporary Help Services (THS)

We have partnered with a qualified vendor to supply temporary help services (THS). To initiate the process click here or copy this url into your browser:
http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/app-acq/sat-ths/rcc-acm/index-eng.html

Browse our Client List
We take great pride in the client relationships we have developed over the years; long-term relationships based on a foundation of integrity, trust, and exceptional service. We have been called upon time and again by clients who have repeatedly returned to us in search of the solutions they need to lead and grow their organizations.

A partial list of our clients:

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)
Assisted Human Reproduction Canada
Atlantic Canada Opportunity Agency (ACOA)
Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA)
Canadian Coast Guard (CCG)
Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
Canada School of Public Service (CSPS)
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA)
Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)
Canadian Heritage
Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC)
Centre for Infectious Diseases Prevention
Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC)
Consulting and Audit Canada (CAC)
Correctional Services of Canada (CSC)
Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC)
Department of Finance Canada
Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO)
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT)
Department of Justice Canada (DOJ)
Department of National Defence and Canadian Forces (DND/CF)
Elections Canada
Environment Canada
Federal Science and Technology Community Management
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Health Canada (HC)
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC)
Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB)
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC)
Industry Canada (IC)
Library and Archives Canada (LAC)
National Research Council Canada (NRC)
Natural Resource Canada (NRCan)
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Parks Canada (PC)
Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)
Public Safety Canada (PSC)
Public Service Commission of Canada
Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC)
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)
Service Canada (SC)
Statistics Canada (StatsCan)
Transport Canada (TC)
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS)
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC)

Our Client Services program is an integral component of our Warranty and Project Quality Assurance practices. It is our way of ensuring that we are well placed to remedy issues that may arise during the course of a project in a timely manner and that we deliver a final product that exceeds your expectations.

Much of what we do is behind the scenes, but a Client Services representative attends some client meetings such as the kick-off and other key project milestones. Client Services will conduct a Post Project Assessment (PPA) within a few months of project closure to take account of lessons learned during and after the project. Useful information often emerges after the completion of a project such as feedback on the use of the findings or recommendations, and issues around implementation. We believe that we best serve our clients by taking a broader perspective than simply the duration of a project.

Quality and Service Pledge
{images1}Quality Assurance (QA) is conducted from the beginning to the end of the project and ensures that consulting initiatives such as reviews, studies, new processes and systems, etc., are in place and running well, that estimated costs and schedules have a high probability of being met, and that areas of project risk are identified up front. This allows our Associates to work with clients to implement appropriate strategies to alleviate risk and to monitor areas of highest risk, thus enabling containment and mitigation.

Our Approach provides the following benefits to projects:

Assures that consistent, repeatable processes are in use throughout the life cycle to manage the quality of the project's deliverables

Verifies the correctness of plans and processes to ensure a high probability of meeting needs and requirements

Answer the questions: “Did we make the assignment work right?”; “Does the consulting service comply with the client’s statement of work?”; and, “Did we produce the results the client wanted?”. Quality Assurance validates that project plans and processes are properly aligned with the stated business goals and objectives.

Our QA process also identifies ways to eliminate the causes of unsatisfactory results, assessing the impact of challenges and obstacles on the project and recommending corrective actions. At Delta Partners, QA is viewed as a process that begins with the first client contact on a project.

QA therefore includes reviews of project deliverables; walkthrough and testing of project strategies and recommended processes, peer reviews, and any other reviews needed to ensure project quality and standards are being met. Delta’s QA approach should thus provide for early identification of deliverable non-conformances thereby reducing the cost of correction and re-works. QA controls the completion of activities identified in the Project Management Plan.

Our Service Pledge to Clients meets and exceeds the Code of Professional Conduct promulgated by CMC-Canada and CMC International. Click here to view the full version of CMC-Canada’s Code of Professional Conduct.

Your Trusted Advisors
Delta Partners' mission is to deliver excellence in consulting services as we assist both public and private sector clients and stakeholders in their efforts to achieve sustained high performance.

Values

Our consistent message to all of our clients is that success depends upon values-driven leadership.

This means that The Delta Partners' business philosophy and method of operation is driven by the personal values that we espouse: integrity, reason, fairness, reliability, and maturity.

Excellence in our consulting services is driven by:

Skill - Our associates have the knowledge to perform specific tasks and the training to apply that knowledge appropriately.

Professionalism - Delta Partners personnel maintain a positive attitude and professional demeanour, and always appear worthy of our clients' respect.

Results Orientation - To be sure that what was agreed upon gets done, we focus our efforts on specific goals and ensure that tasks are performed in accordance with client expectations.

Responsiveness - Our clients' concerns and requests are handled with the attitude that their' time is as valuable to them as our time is to us. Empathy is a driving factor in our operations; keep the client well informed about the status of requests, and follow-up to ensure satisfaction.

Delta Partners has been providing consistent, reliable, customized, and cost-effective solutions and services for more than 21 years:

We pride ourselves in putting our clients first and are proud of our client-centric practices.
We believe in the importance of nurturing and building strong and lasting relationships with our clients. We expect that these will extend beyond the duration of the current consulting engagement.
Through our Client Services, we make sure that we "Stay in Touch" post-engagement. This allows us to confirm that our associates have not only completed successful projects, but solutions are being successfully implemented and have added value. You should achieve results that you can see and measure.
We strongly believe that the quality and professionalism of our associates will not only provide the results that you expect, but that they will become your "Trusted Advisor".
Delta Partners is a living and breathing learning organization. Our associates are thought leaders who are active in research, writing, and sharing across many platforms, communities and conversations.

We welcome the opportunity to become your trusted advisor.

Service Warranty

We warrant that our services meet or exceed our clients' requirements as specified in contracts and amendments. We will fulfill work obligations through regular reports to the client during project execution and post-project assessments as per our Quality Assurance process.

Why Delta?

Our Consultants

Practice Leaders

Greg Tricklebank
Principal
Practice Leader, Research & Evaluation
Senior Consultant
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Allen Black
Practice Leader, Planning & Policy Analysis
Senior Consultant
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Robert Dénommé
Practice Leader, Business Process Improvement
Senior Consultant

Ian Jackson
Account Executive
Senior Consultant

Lynn MacDonald
Director of Marketing
Practice Leader, Learning Development
Senior Consultant
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Debra Sunohara
Director of Client Services
Practice Leader, Project Management
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Diane Thompson
Practice Leader, Human Resources, Change Management & Organizational Development
Senior Consultant
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Bert Zethof
Pacific Region Account Executive
Practice Leader, Innovation & Executive Coaching
Senior Consultant
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Associates

Raphael Amato
Senior Consultant
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Gita Baack
Senior Consultant
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Todd Barker
Senior Consultant
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Vaughan Bentley
Senior Consultant

Julie Cloutier
Senior Consultant

Richard Dare
Senior Consultant
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Peter de Gosztonyi
Senior Consultant
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Mike Garner
Senior Consultant
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Ellen Godfrey
Senior Consultant
Pacific Region
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Doug Griffin
Senior Consultant
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Barbara Hickey
Senior Consultant

Scott Hodge
Senior Consultant
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Heather Hughes
Senior Consultant
Pacific Region

Ron Hysert
Senior Consultant
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Synandra Lechner
Senior Consultant
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Colleen Moore
Senior Consultant

Ken Nelson
Senior Consultant
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Abdeljalil Qandar
Intermediate Consultant
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Janet Roberts
Senior Consultant

Geoff Schaadt
Intermediate Consultant
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Norman Son Kee
Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Lead
Senior Consultant
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Delaney Tosh
Senior Consultant
Pacific Region
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Michelle Winkel
Senior Consultant
Pacific Region
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Social Media and Web Analytics
The Internet space is rapidly evolving from a relatively static website environment to a dynamic interactive social community. Is your organization prepared to handle the multitude of social channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and blogs? Which channel should you use, how does your current web strategy fit with all that is going on today? Does it really matter?

The simple answer is absolutely it matters because Social Networking and social media has come into its own and if you are not even considering deploying some form of Social Media strategy then opportunities may have already passed you by. Regardless of the type of organization you are in you cannot ignore this trend because it won’t go away.

The challenge is knowing whether it is suitable for your organization and what areas need to be addressed, since some organizations do have limitations and restrictions in getting involved in many of the Social Media channels available today. All this means is that you have to use the tools available to you which our knowledgeable associates will be able to maximize the benefits while maintaining the requirements of your organization.

Jumping right in is the wrong way to do it, not only will it be frustrating and time consuming but extremely difficult to get funding and resources to build and maintain these channels. You need to approach the whole Social Media as an integrated web strategy starting with your website as the focal point and treating the social media channels as a means to reach your diversified audience..

Delta Partners has a six step web strategy development program that can help you:

Assess your state of readiness by reviewing your existing web/social media strategy

Identify the key elements of your strategy based on client needs

Assess the current visitor behaviour patterns

Develop a social media strategy that integrates with your organizational and website strategy

Implement the key elements of your strategy

Monitor and improve on the benefits

Approach

We firmly believe in knowledge transfer and our highly trained associates will work with your team to develop a sound integrated Social Media strategy that builds on your team’s knowledge and skills as well as your existing organizational and web strategy deployment. When we leave you will have developed a sound approach to integrate Social Media into your organization, developed effective means to measure the effectiveness and the tools and knowledge to build on this framework that will make it easier for your clients to interact with your organization based on the channels that they want to use.

Each stage can be applied as a standalone element, which enables your organization to proceed at the pace you need. We will be on hand to assist you through each stage of the process, providing the expertise you need but either do not have in house or you really only need it the one time so you don’t have to dedicate or train resources needlessly.

Performance Measurement and Program Evaluation
Our services are conducted within the Treasury Board Guidelines for program evaluation, which are a foundation for every evaluation project in which we participate.Evaluation and performance measurement are part of the modern management agenda of the federal government, as expressed through the thrust towards Results-Based Management and Accountability Frameworks (RMAF), the Modern Comptrollership initiative and the Service Improvement Initiative. More recently, they are seen as key parts of Treasury Board Secretariat’s Management Accountability Framework (MAF) and Program Activity Architecture (PAA), with the focus upon client focus, results, measuring performance, and resource reallocation.

Evaluation and performance measurement contribute to the achievement of Results for Canadians. In this context, rigorous evaluation against performance measures and targets becomes an integral part of ongoing management of programs, in terms of planning, execution, and reporting. It is important for both external and internal stakeholder audiences, including Parliament, citizens, senior departmental management, central agencies, clients, partners and program managers/staff. A formal program evaluation, as well as an approved RMAF, has also become requirements for the approval of funding for programs involving grants and contributions.The Program at Objective Level structure (POL) implemented for Program for Energy Research and Development (PERD) is intended, through its planning and reporting activities, to link program level activities, outputs and outcomes (with associated performance measures and targets) to the Departmental and governmental goals and priorities. These then form a basis for interim (mid-course adjustment if necessary) and final evaluations of programs attached to the various POL's.

The importance of such frameworks to decision-making, that the frameworks properly reflect the programs and that they are used appropriately, are stressed by the questions raised in any evaluation and their focus upon relevance, success, design and delivery, and the application of Results-based Management.We have provided leadership in the areas of performance measurement, service standards and measurement of client satisfaction.

Our Approach to Program Evaluation

In performing a program evaluation, we typically propose the following approach which is then customized to specifics in the Statement of Work.

Profile
Initial review of program/policy documents and orientation including the original Treasury Board submission, business plan(s) and program promotional material. At this initial stage we also propose a briefing session with program management staff.
Logic Model
The Methodology Report includes a draft logic model for the program. The draft logic model will be developed based upon the initial review of documents and in a working session with the Program Manager and selected staff.
Identify Evaluation Questions
The Methodology Report includes the final evaluation issues and interview guide(s) related to them. The interview guide(s) will include questions related to each of the evaluation questions.
Data Requirements and Collection Strategy
1. Interview Questions
  In formulating the interview questions, as well as in our other data collection activities, the notions of incrementality (i.e., what was achieved by the program that would not have been achieved in its absence) and attribution (i.e., who has achieved the benefit / incurred the cost) will be important to capture. Multiple lines of inquiry (e.g., document review, interviews with different stakeholder groups with different views / relationships with the program, surveys, case studies, comparison with other jurisdictions) are used to ensure balance in information collection.
  
  Interviews with key players and stakeholders including individuals representing program staff and management, participating communities and private sector partners, academic participants, and project-level management.
  
  Interviews are in the official language of the respondent’s choice. Interviews with respondents in the National Capital Region and its near proximity are face-to-face or by telephone, as preferred by the respondent, while those with respondents in other parts of Canada could be by telephone or in person depending upon project requirements.
2. Surveys
  Surveys are designed to collect information from respondents in a form that is useful for further analysis. The survey design considers who (the respondents – population, sample), what (the questions to be asked), how (survey approach – e.g., mail-out, telephone, in-person, Internet-based), when (timing) and other factors. Before the survey is administered, approval, as required by government policy, is obtained from Public Works and Government Services of Canada (PWGSC).
  
  It should be noted that if the survey is to go to clients to measure their satisfaction with program services, then the use of the Common Measurement Tool (CMT) is recommended. The CMT, developed as part of the Service Improvement Initiative (SII), provides a government-wide standard and core set of questions for inter-program comparisons. Reporting on the results of the SII and improvements in client satisfaction are also part of each Deputy Minister’s reporting requirement.
3. Case Studies
  Preparation of case studies for a sample of current projects to acquire a more detailed knowledge of activities and outcomes at the project level.
  
  A selection of projects is chosen for case studies that cumulatively cover the activities, outputs and outcomes documented in the logic model.
4. Data Collection Report/Presentation
  The Data Collection Report / Presentation summarizes the data collected from the file review, interviews and case studies. The report is presented to the Project Authority and project governance structure.
Reporting Strategy
The Draft Evaluation Report presents the results of the evaluation, conclusions, lessons learned and recommendations. The report is presented to the Project Authority.

The Final Evaluation Report incorporates input received via Audit and Evaluation Branch (AEB). It is prepared in accordance with AEB’s guidelines.

We allocate resources to each individual project to provide the best “package” to our clients. This means the right mix of categories (e.g., Project Manager, Senior Evaluator, etc.), the right numbers in each category and the right language profile for our team.

Project Management Consulting Services

Consulting Solution

In simplest terms, Project Management is the art of organising resources and efforts in such a way as to achieve the desired outcome(s) of a contract to the full satisfaction of the client, on time and on budget. All contracts have requirements, face risks, and have limitations. Project Management provides a structured framework, a manner of thinking, and a clearly defined approach to ensuring that all requirements are met, all risks are identified and mitigated and that all limitations are taken into consideration in the planning and conduct of the contract. Thus, Project Management knowledge and skills can be beneficial to all practitioners in all practice lines and is applicable to all Delta Partners’ contracts.

Project Management within Delta Partners

From Delta Partners’ perspective, since project management applies to all practice lines, all practitioners must be aware of the basic principles of project management and understand how these principles may be effectively applied to their service delivery. Delta Partners will provide opportunities for all its practitioners to participate in internal and external information and educational events to develop their project management skills.

Consulting Services

Delta Partners will provide a full range of Project Management services including:

Individual Practitioners:
- Project Managers (Senior, Intermediate and Junior)
- Project Leaders
- Project Administrators
- Project Schedulers
- Project Comptrollers
- Risk Managers (may include certified Risk Management Professionals)
Project Management Teams:
- Comprised of any/all of the above practitioners, plus experts in other areas (such as systems development, financial analysis, technical writing, etc), depending on the size and nature of the project
Project Management Offices:
- May include all the skill above, plus financial, HR and administrative employees
Project Oversight:
- Applicable to all Delta managed projects, comprises first line of Delta’s PM Quality Assurance program
- Includes
  - over-view by a senior project manager (normally practice leader), ideally experienced in the project area
  - provides guidance and assistance to project members
- Identifies, forestalls and/or resolves potential conflicts or frictions between project team member(s) and clients
- Assists in deconflicting contentious issues, such as scope creep.

Change Management and Organizational Design
All strategic change initiatives - ranging from new IT systems, business process adjustments and organizational mergers to 'softer' organizational development projects - run the risk of encountering significant resistance from employees and/or external stakeholders. This results in cost overruns and, in some cases, outright failure. Based on an easily understood formula for assessing the people-based barriers to change, we can offer your organization a sound, common sense approach to organizational change management that saves time, saves money and increases the overall effectiveness of project outcomes.

Consulting Solution:

We have been a leading advocate and purveyor of organizational learning solutions since 1989 – making ours a pioneering practice in ‘Learning, Innovation and Change Management’, a foundation element of the Management Accountability Framework (MAF) which was formally adopted by the Public Service in 2003. We have continued to develop this practice in alignment with MAF expectations, and we offer a mature solution to the challenge of developing and maintaining a flexible, responsive organization with an integrated management regime.

Our approach to Organizational Design (OD) and Change Management maintains a balance between the technical tools and techniques of data collection and analysis and the experiential facilitation of stakeholder engagement and commitment. We balance the art and science of OD & Change Management while encouraging innovation by approaching your organization’s situation from a holistic perspective.

The result is a full-service OD and Change Management practice which has earned the trust and confidence of our clients for over twenty years.

Consulting Services

Organizational Review and Assessment

The first step in any improvement initiative is to identify your current strengths and weaknesses in relations to your objectives. Our organizational review employs multiple lines of evidence to provide a fact-based assessment including governance, structure, key processes and organizational culture and climate.

Business Transformation

Business transformation, whether it is slow and gradual or more sudden and dramatic, requires a change management strategy and plan. We can assist your organization by providing a consultative approach to planning and implementation, where success is assured through the optimal level of management and employee engagement.

Culture Change

More and more organizations are realizing that they need a culture change in order to move forward effectively. Our specialists can assess the gap between your current and your preferred organizational culture and assist in making the transition.

Knowledge Management

For organizations that depend upon the corporate knowledge and subject matter expertise of their soon-to-be retiring cadres of “knowledge workers”; we offer an effective solution based upon an in-depth understanding of communities of practices and how they work.

IM/IT Implementation

We have developed an integrated change management solution, specifically designed for IM/IT project implementation in line with the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) Enhanced Management Framework.

Stakeholder Consultations

Whether it is to meet a statutory requirement, Office of the Auditor General (OAG) direction or any other reason to conduct a formal stakeholder consultation exercise, we offer professional assistance for your organization which assures a balanced impartial approach – even to the most sensitive issues of the day.

Planning and Policy Analysis

1. Scenario Analysis

By using Scenario and Contingency Planning, your organization can:

Achieve a higher degree of organizational learning;
Raise and challenge both implicit and widely held beliefs and assumptions about the business and its strategic direction;
Identify key levers that can influence the company's future course;
Turn long-range planning into a vital, shared experience;
Develop a clearer view of the future; and
Incorporate globalization and change management into strategic analysis.

Our approach: We can help your organization by providing complete Scenario and Contingency Analysis solutions through research necessary to identify and monitor key trends, wildcard factors, predetermined events and critical uncertainties; by identifying trends and events likely to influence the future of your organization using systems thinking and creativity; by exploring the cross impacts of the various trends or factors on your organization; and, by inventing scenarios to develop alternative robust strategies.

2. Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning is a systematic way for your organization to renew the departments as well as analyze the economic and competitive prospects. Through Strategic Planning, your organization can chart a long-term course of action to:

Capitalize on their strengths,
Overcome their weaknesses,
Take advantage of opportunities, and
Defend against threats to their organization.

Our approach: We can help your organization by providing complete Strategic Planning solutions for program planning & design, program implementation and management, and program evaluation. We also provide a strategic reporting and marketing action plan by working closely with your organization and the stakeholders to develop strategies and run through possible scenarios, organize and systematize the program planning, develop strategic frameworks, identify and collect the data needed to monitor and improve programming, and, by involving and engaging stakeholders in the design, processes, and the use of evaluations. This expertise, extensive experience and a flexible approach enables us to work closely with your organization leading to successful outcomes.

3. Operational Planning

Operational Planning helps your organization to:

Effectively execute the goals identified in your strategic plan,
Determine where to focus attention and where to take a step back, and
Adjust and develop controls where efficiencies can be increased and where time and costs can be reduced.
Operational Planning focuses on implementation.

Our approach: We can help your organization by providing complete Operational Planning solutions through working closely with your organizations and the stakeholders to identify and collect the data needed to monitor and improve organizational layouts, develop and update business plans, create business cases that display the financial results and other consequences of a business action, and forecast business decision results in terms that are clear, concrete and credible. We provide complete Management Review solutions through assessing opportunities or challenges that Managers face in particular situations that will help to evaluate priorities, assign resources and maximize the benefits of the opportunities or challenges.

We can also assist your organization’s project teams to design activities and outputs that will support strategic priorities.

4. Business System Planning

When your organization is faced with legislative or policy changes that result in the need to restructure existing departments, with associated changes in Information Management (IM) requirements or the need for improvements to the policies and procedures for the planning and management of IM systems; you will need Business System Planning.

Our approach: We can help your organization by providing complete Business Systems Planning solutions for your organization’s IM systems through analyzing, defining and designing information architecture of the various departments within an organization. We will work with your organization to define the data, processes, strategies, and cross-functional procedures within the departments; clarify the issues and opportunities with the current applications and technical architecture; develop a future state and migration path for the technology that supports the enterprise; provide business executives with a direction and decision making framework for IT capital expenditures, and, provide a blueprint for the information system development. Overall we provide an actionable roadmap that aligns technology investments to your organization’s business strategy.

Business Process Improvement
By using Delta's business process improvement solutions, tools and techniques your organization can:

Improve client satisfaction;

Increase innovation in service delivery;

Foster a culture of continuous improvement;

Reduce delays, lead times, inventories and costs;

Eliminate waste and focus on value-added activities;

Capitalize on effective teamwork and partnerships; and,

Improve quality, productivity and efficiency.

Our approach: The business process improvement solution we can provide your organization is one that recognizes and maintains a balance between the technical tools and techniques of data collection, analysis and the experiential facilitation of stakeholder engagement and commitment. We balance the art and science of process improvement while encouraging innovation by approaching the situation from a holistic perspective.

Our choice of tools and techniques on both the technical side and the people side are determined by a combination of the actual objectives (based on what prompted your organization to initiate the improvement project at this time), the stated objectives, the operating environment, the allocated budget and the culture of your organization as indicted by the your preferences in terms of intensity of collaboration, degree of analytic rigor and desire for employee and/or other stakeholder engagement.

We can provide you services in the following areas:

Organizational readiness assessment

Business process modeling

Action research process

Business process management

Management of change

Project management strategies

Developing transitions / implementation plans

Options analysis

Organizational alignment

Human Resources Management

1. Transition

By using Transition planning, your organizations can:

Recognize the human impact of organizational change;
Place a priority on communication at all levels;
Provide opportunity to receive valuable feedback;
Acknowledge and plan for resistance to change;
Structure a clear transition phase with identified actions and timelines;
Identify early any unanticipated gaps or delays; and,
Engage employees in a shared responsibility for success during the transition phase.

Our approach:
Transition solutions are planned in collaboration with your organization and your system. We clarify the current situation and communicate with those affected by the transition to identify impacts and receive valuable feedback. A variety of methods are used to receive input and feedback, such as personal interviews, on-site observation, focus groups, literature research and action research. A well-planned Transition engages your employees in a shared responsibility for success during the transition phase as well as going forward with the new situation.

2. Talent Management

A strategic Talent Management process views humans as assets who contribute to organization effectiveness by fostering innovation and flexibility. A Talent Management process aligns and integrates Human Resources and the business goals of your organization to:

Analyze positions and capabilities at risk;
Assessing talent criteria;
Identify critical positions;
Develop retention strategies;
Customize a development model;
Plan for loss of talent;
Adopt human resource practices that ensure highly qualified people are recruited;
Meet targets for workforce quality and diversity;
Reward superior performance;
Use personnel practices, such as training, to attract and support productive people; and,
Develop policies to deal effectively with unproductive workers.

Our approach:
Our Talent Management Solution necessarily examines all aspects of your organization’s recruitment, retention, development and succession planning. At the outset, an analysis of every position within the organization is essential to identify capabilities that are at risk and the critical positions involved. For positions that involve a high risk of departure, retention strategies need to be put in place, along with a career development model. Once risk is mitigated, recruitment strategies can be developed to attract highly qualified talent, along with a staged on-boarding process to support long-term career development. Once in place, the Talent Management process serves to align human resources talent with the business goals to ensure future workforce productivity.

3. Recruiting and Retention

By developing Recruitment and Retention strategies, your organization can:

Maintain a clear picture of critical positions, critical skills and risk;
Determine in advance strategies to deal with loss of talent;
Develop in advance recruitment strategies to address identified gaps;
Understand that retention is a critical component of stability and productivity; and,
Know they need to compete for the best talent.

Our approach:
We provide complete Recruitment and Retention solutions your organization based on our research, knowledge of trends, knowledge of recruiting and retention practices in both the public and private sectors and through your organization’s experience.

4. Employee Development

Employee Development helps your organizations to:

Motivate employees toward their desired career interests;
Provide skills and experiences to succession candidates in order for them to succeed at higher levels;
Structure a single development system that integrates experiences with competencies;
Focus the individual on long-term development;
Provide new hires the networks they need to succeed; and,
Ensures that the new hire understands the organization`s long-term commitment to them.

Our approach:
We can provide complete Employee Development solutions by working closely with your organizations to implement the processes that research and experience tell us contribute to employee development and higher levels of career satisfaction and retention. These may include designing training programs to build supervisory skills, the creation of communities of practice, designing engagement opportunities, creating recognition events and creating development programs that have built-in progression opportunities for your organization.

5. Productivity

Your organization is faced with the challenge of creating the conditions that contribute to higher levels of productivity. The successful development of a Talent Management process provides the optimal conditions for your organization’s employee engagement at the time of hire and ongoing commitment to individual career interests and individual development. Successful retention of talent elevates capacity and contributes to higher levels of productivity for your organization.

Our approach:
We provide your organization a complete Productivity planning through analyzing, defining and designing processes that contribute to elevated levels of performance. We collaborate with your organization system, using a variety of data collection methods, to clarify the current situation and to identify opportunities for improvement and redesign.

Case Studies
Coming soon...

Delta Blog

White Papers

Partner Firms
We have ongoing collaborative relations with the following companies:

BMB Consulting

DAMA Consulting

Hill & Knowlton

Landmark

Lansdowne Technologies Inc.

LNV Consulting Inc.

Nexus Human Resources

PricewaterhouseCoopers

RFP Solutions

Tiree

Commitment to the Environment
{images1}In line with the government’s new policies and initiatives on green procurement and green stewardship, Delta Partners has implemented corporate policies and procedures to create a more paperless work place, thus reducing our footprint on the environment. To this end, we have created a secure virtual project management office (PMO) and active project collaboration portal to better meet the needs of our clients and partners.

We encourage our clients and associates to do the same.

Careers
At Delta Partners, our associates are the key element of our continued success. We are always seeking knowledgeable, creative and committed individuals who are ready to grow with us. If you want to experience the spirit of an entrepreneurial organization, while working on challenging and rewarding projects then you should consider Delta Partners. We have been in the consulting business for over 20 years and we pride ourselves in having top-quality professionals as associates.

Delta Partners is always eager to hear from people interested in submitting their resumes.

Other Services
As a full service management consulting firm, Delta Partners can provide an array of services to support the requirements of nearly any organization. Examples include:

Organizational Design and Change Management Services

Organizational Review
Reorganization
360º Review
Culture Change
Knowledge Management
IM/IT Implementation
Stakeholder Consultations

Procurement Services

Procurement Requirements Definition
Procurement Advisory Services

E-Services

Visitor Pattern Analysis
Website Evaluation and Redesign
Social Media Strategy Development
eLearning

Other Services

Internal Audit
Program Evaluation
Process Improvement
Gap Analysis
SWOT Analysis
Benchmarking
Environmental Scan
Surveys
Literature Review
Communications Review
Quality Assurance

If you would like to discuss any of the services listed here - or if there is some information regarding our services that you have been unable to locate - please click here to contact us for a free, no-commitment consultation.

Project Management Services
Delta Partners is committed to an internal culture of project management as a primary operational support in the delivery of the quality assurance program that is key to our own strategic success. This environment has allowed us to develop deep expertise in the delivery of Project Management Consulting Services that include:

Project Management Maturity Model and Strategy Assessment

Assessment of Organizational Project or Program Management Capabilities and Effectiveness

Benchmark of Project Management Capabilities

Define Project/Program Management Framework/Governance

Cultivate a Project Management Culture

Plan and Implement Project Management Office (PMO)

Assessment and Selection of Project Management Software

Select and Implement Virtual Project Office

Implement Project Management Processes and Procedures

PRINCE2 Fit Assessment and Implementation

Project Management Process Training

Project Management Tools - PMBOK and PRINCE2 based.

Prepare Project Initiation Documentation for Treasury Board Submissions

Project Set-Up and Launch

Project Planning and Implementation

Project Audit and Gap Assessment

Project Review

Project Rescue

Project Risk Assessment and Planning

Project Manager/Team Training, Development and Coaching

Project Implementation Leader

Real Property Project Manager

If you would like to discuss your project management needs with a Delta Partners associate please click here to contact us for a free, no-commitment consultation.

Management

Alcide DeGagné, MBA, FCGA, CMC{images3}
Chairman and CEO

Alcide DeGagné founded Delta Partners in 1989 after a distinguished public service career in which he championed strategic thinking and public sector modernization.

As a former Assistant Deputy Minister in the federal government, Alcide understands the challenges faced by senior managers. At the municipal level, Alcide served as Chief Administrative Officer for the City of Ottawa, Chief Financial Officer for the City of Oshawa, and Commissioner of Management Services for The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto.

In his role as Chairman and CEO of Delta Partners, he guides the strategic vision, continuing to serve clients and advise senior managers faced with the challenges of modern management.

Alcide has an MBA from the University of Ottawa. He also holds the FCGA designation from the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada and is a Certified Management Consultant.

During his spare time he enjoys painting and photography.

To see a more complete review of Alcide's professional background, please visit his LinkedIn profile.

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Greg Tricklebank, MA, CMC{images4}
Principal

As a seasoned social science professional, including over 15 years as a senior consultant with Delta Partners, Greg Tricklebank has been largely responsible for developing Delta's practice in Organizational Development and Change Management.

Greg began his career as the Coordinator of a national health study group, where he managed a multi-centred clinical research project funded by Health Canada. He later joined the National Headquarters of the Canadian Red Cross Society as a National Programs Officer. This led to a secondment to the International Services Division, where he coordinated the first humanitarian assistance project to the Former Soviet Union under the auspices of DFAIT. Subsequently, Greg was engaged by the International Red Cross to head up a diplomatic mission, establishing a new permanent Red Cross delegation in Ukraine.

He received a Bachelor Degree in Economics and a Master Degree in Sociology, both from Carleton University in Ottawa. While completing his Master thesis on "Job Satisfaction", he was awarded an Advanced Studentship by the University of Oxford, Nuffield College, where he spent 3 years studying Organizational Theory and the Sociology of Work. Greg also holds a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) designation.

During his spare time, Greg can be found on one of his favourite golf courses or cruising in the Caribbean.

For more on Greg's background, please visit his LinkedIn profile.

{images2}

Ian Jackson, BComm (Economics){images5}
Executive Account Manager

The Managing Partner of Nexus HR Solutions since 2001, with the acquisition and merger of Nexus HR Solutions in 2009 Ian joined Delta Partners as a principal responsible for executive account management. Ian’s approach is to work collaboratively with an organization’s executive team acting as facilitator to identify key issues and provide advice to leaders in developing innovative business transformation solutions.

A graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada, Ian has over 35 years of experience in the Canadian Forces and the Public Service. He is a strategic thinker, problem solver and change leader who has consistently assisted organizations achieve their goals and objectives.

Facilitation
Quite simply, facilitation is the act of assisting groups run effective meetings. However, as with any seemingly simple task, the reality of the situation is that running an effective and efficient group process - one that includes a variety of personalities, emotions, ideas, biases, positional power, and personal influence - is rarely straightforward. It is often most productive to bring in an outside facilitator to coordinate your sessions in an unbiased, timely, structured, professional fashion.

Several of Delta Partners' associates have acquired professional certification as facilitators, and can provide the critical direction needed to make decisions and reach goals in a group environment. Some examples of recent facilitation sessions include:

Employee Engagement Session

Management Planning

Focus Groups

Brainstorming Session

Conflict Resolution

Strategic Planning

Training and Skill Development

If you think a professional facilitator might be useful for your group, please click here to contact us for a free, no-commitment consultation.

HR Services
"Our people are our most valuable asset."

This statement has been repeated so many times in every kind of organization of every size that most people no longer give any thought to the underlying message. However, at Delta Partners we still understand that nothing of value happens without skilled, engaged, and well-led people.

Every organization has challenges in some aspect of their human resource operations, so we work hard to maintain a full complement of HR Services to meet the needs of our clients.

These include:

HR Advisor

Classification Services

Job Description Writing

3rd Party Evaluation

Staffing & Recruiting Services

Talent Management

Recruitment, Learning and Retention Strategy Development

HR Strategic Planning

Leadership Development

Continuity Planning

If you would like to discuss your HR needs with a Delta Partners associate please click here to contact us for a free, no-commitment consultation.

a Workshop
Our associates frequently present workshops across a variety of topics and competencies for both large organizations and small groups. Some of the workshops that we have recently conducted:

Risk Identification

Visioning

Organizational Culture

Organizational Change

Results-Based Management

Strategic Planning

Change Management Communication Strategies

Team Building

If you would like to know more about our workshops or are looking for something that is not on this list, please click here to contact us for a free, no-commitment consultation.

a Business Case
A business case provides a structured plan that provides organizational decision makers with the data required for proper evaluation. Where strategic planning efforts paint in broad strokes the overarching strategy, resource allocation and organizational structures of the unit - the business case drills down into the details of a specific service, program or product. Common components of the business case will include:

Risk/Benefit Analysis

Market Evaluation & Risk Analysis

Competitive Intelligence Reports

Operational Requirements

Financial Projections and Analysis, including:

Return on Investment (ROI) Analysis

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Analysis

Net Present Value

Cash Flow Forecasting

If you would like to discuss your business case development needs with a Delta Partners associate please click here to contact us for a free, no-commitment consultation.

Strategic Planning
Strategic planning allows any organization to take proactive steps to identify the most effective path into an uncertain future. Unlike a business case that will focus on the details surrounding a specific service, product, or program, the strategic plan should provide a framework for the operations of the overall organization. The activities involved in the process of developing a strategic plan can be complex and multifaceted, but will ultimately distill inputs from these critical areas:

Strategy

Defines the systematic approach that will be used by your organization to reach its goals;

which will require a careful analysis of both internal capabilities and external challenges;

and identification of the most effective methods for application of these capabilities, and;

the policies and practices that will best support these activities.

Resource Allocation

Determines the best approach to the timing and distribution of human, material, and funding assets;

to the projects and organizational units that will most effectively support the organizational strategy.

Organization

Identifies the optimal organizational structures;

that will be directed by leadership teams and;

supported by internal culture;

to best allow the human resources to achieve the goals of the organization.

Delta Partners' associates can provide deep expertise and experience to guide you through your strategic planning process. This process will include a variety of activities across a range of areas, and might include:

Organizational Review

Visioning Workshops

Strategy Evaluation and Development

SWOT Analysis

Environmental Scans

Process Mapping

Benchmarking

Gap Analysis

Cultural Review

If you would like to discuss your strategic planning needs with a Delta Partners associate please click here to contact us for a free, no-commitment consultation.

Contact Us

Process Mapping
Process maps are created to allow an organization to better understand exactly what is happening within the activities that are being undertaken.

Rigorous analysis of organizational activities allows managers to see:

What is being done

Who is doing it

How are they doing it

To what standards they are expected to perform

Deep insight into these activities are critical for effective design and implementation of:

Organizational strategic planning

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) evaluation

Six Sigma programs

Lean organization and manufacturing processes

Regulatory compliance

Value stream mapping

If you would like to discuss your process mapping needs with a Delta Partners associate please click here to contact us for a free, no-commitment consultation.

KnowledgeShare

About Us

Solutions
When in-house resources are stretched to their limit it is often necessary to obtain outside assistance. With no slack in the system it can be nearly impossible to develop and implement strategic solutions and respond to changes in your organization. Our solutions focus on the people, the systems and the processes of an organization, and are tailored to the concerns and requirements of our clients. Over the years, this has led to the development of seven complimentary core "practice areas" that provide a well-rounded solution base for organizations of any size:

I need…

H1N1 Contingency Planning - Are you ready?
The Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser, has taken the federal government to task over its lack of preparedness to deal with disasters; she emphasized the need to plan ahead. The problem is that planning for a disaster that no one can predict is problematic, if not futile.

Dealing with a disaster is one thing; how to plan ahead is another issue. Generally, organizations in this situation are often faced with a lack of consensus around how to organize themselves to undertake disaster planning, with a lack of a structured way to sort through the clutter of ”what-ifs” for something which is not imminent, and with how to create a focused organization that relies on contributions from throughout the organization.

Scenario Planning has a role to play in Disaster Planning. Scenarios are one of the best ways to wrestle with the uncertainties and complexities that emerge from the issues addressed above.

It starts with engaging stakeholders in thoughtful analysis and dialogue about the situation, accepting of different possible futures, identifying and creating buy-in for strategic investments to prepare the organization, and being able to quickly understand and react to situations as they unfold.

Delta Partners Management Consultants

Survey finds old stereotype of lazy bureaucrat diminishing

Public sector work looking more appealing

By Kathryn May, The Ottawa Citizen - September 2, 2010

Threat to the economy

A savvy approach

A 'Plug & Play' candidate does not exist

Managers are not leaders

Where are the decision makers?

The MESSAGE

Highlights...

What was missing...

Best presentation award goes to...

Upcoming Conferences

Feedback

Innovation is a strategy, not an epiphany.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

‘Change Management’ is what, exactly?

Major change initiatives happen all the time

Change Management vis-à-vis Project Management

Project Managers embrace Change Management?

Can corporate life thrive or even survive in the midst of this churn?

The Challenge

All You Have To Do.

A common theme emerges

Expect new challenges and requirements

Are you ready to take the social media plunge?

Don’t start from scratch

Your canary in the coal mine

Build the foundation first

ELLEN:

RICHARD:

ELLEN:

RICHARD:

ELLEN:

RICHARD:

Change Management: Learnings from Virgina Mason Institute I recently attended an Executive Leadership Seminar presented by the Virginia Mason Institute, one of the leaders in the U.S. in creating cultural transformation in an organization.

Some background

Important insights

Recognize the emotions

The most difficult change environments?

The difference between culture and climate

But what is the actual difference between culture and climate?

There is a practical point here.

Top 10 Ways to Waste Time in Meetings Meetings are an essential part of doing business. However, they take up too much of our time leaving most of us eager to actually "get some work done”. With that in mind, I thought I would offer my “recommendations” for running productive meetings:

1. Invite everyone.

2. Don't start the meeting until everyone has arrived.

3. Do not have an agenda.

4. Never keep minutes.

5. Never assign roles.

6. Let your leaders/supervisors do most if not all of the talking.

7. Only "good" ideas should be presented.

8. Encourage "multitasking" during meetings.{images1}

9. Do not assign work.

10. Do not end meetings on time.

The efficacy of elevated employee engagement

Universal employee engagement measures

Interesting? Dig deeper

The times they are a-changin’ In 1989 Delta Partners was incorporated.

Some interesting things about 1989:

A few items that did not yet exist in 1989:

And the world we see today:

Change has happened fast

Welcome to our new website

What you can expect

Mission Accomplished?

All you have to do is…

Social media is hard.

Hey look at me everyone – I’m a Social Media Consultant!

The real experts tell us

My spin

OASIS Learning

Coaching and Mentoring for Managers and Teams: Sensitive, strategic and focused on clear objectives

For Managers

For Teams

The Eight Steps in Oasis Coaching

1. Understanding the organization’s objectives and context

2. Understanding the manager’s and team’s objectives

3. Defining the scope and focus of the intervention

4. Information gathering

Change Management: Learnings from Virgina Mason Institute
I recently attended an Executive Leadership Seminar presented by the Virginia Mason Institute, one of the leaders in the U.S. in creating cultural transformation in an organization.

Top 10 Ways to Waste Time in Meetings
Meetings are an essential part of doing business. However, they take up too much of our time leaving most of us eager to actually "get some work done”.

With that in mind, I thought I would offer my “recommendations” for running productive meetings:

The times they are a-changin’
In 1989 Delta Partners was incorporated.

Organizational Challenge
Every organization has a unique set of strengths and challenges. We have developed the following diagnostic questionnaire to help you explore three key areas that will help you identify issues affecting your organization.

Procurement Vehicles
For Federal Government departments and other Government organizations, Delta Partners can provide professional services through a range of procurement vehicles. These vehicles shorten the procurement cycle and save valuable government resources.

Your Trusted Advisors
Delta Partners' mission is to deliver excellence in consulting services as we assist both public and private sector clients and stakeholders in their efforts to achieve sustained high performance.