Boost staff motivation and performance! Boost team and organisational results!
People are the key to performance in any organisation. But, of course, employees do not work in a vacuum and leaders need to ensure the different parts of their organisation work as well together as possible. As team and organisation development facilitators, we can assist you with this challenge.
An holistic organisational approach to performance
At Owen Morris we emphasize an overall, integrating perspective for achieving organisational performance, with five key ‘levels’ in an organisation to plan and develop together:
- Individual level: the right indviduals with the needed skills, attitudes and motivation;
- Job-level: jobs need to be well-designed, clear, motivational and well-supported;
- Operational teams: these must be well-formed, well-led and members work well together;
- Senior leadership team: this must provide direction, inspire and work well together;
- Organisational-level: the overall organisation needs policies and practices that help pull everyone together effectively and keep it in tune with the external environment
We use such a ‘systems’ perspective to assist leaders at all levels in an organisation – from departmental managers to the top-team.
Operational roles & team development
Everyone in an organisation has a role, of course. Vital factors include not just basic aspects like duties and relationships with others, but how well a job motivates in terms of opportunities for instrinsic needs like meaning, flexibility, automomy and learning.
Most roles also, of course, exist within a team. Few teams function as well as they could. Research indicates that it is the ‘structural‘ elements of a team that are usually most key, for example the team’s purpose, roles, and ways of working. But to make a team really shine, it’s critical also to address a team’s ‘softer’ elements, including team-leader’s management style, relationships between team members and perceived levels of trust, openness and ‘psychological’ safety. At the same time, it’s important to consider the ‘external‘ links and relationships a team has with the rest of the organisation.
We help managers both to establish new teams or develop existing teams. Our approach typically involves both confidential 1:1 discussion with team members and open, collective workshop discussion with the whole team to review issues and shape/agree future action. We also typically make use of one or two psychometric profiling tools (e.g. Belbin, DISC) and we also offer follow-up, more focussed 1:1 coaching support for individual team members.
Senior leadership-team development
Of course, the senior leadership team (the Board and/or executive team) is a key team in any organisation. It’s particularly vital its members work well together (for example, not letting strong egos or functional backgrounds skew objective decision-making) and that they provide strong direction for the organisation, defining key elements like vision, values, strategy and operating priorities.
The CEO plays a crucial role, needing to balance vision and drive with ‘softer’ aspects of leadership like empathy and openness. An external facilitator like our senior partner, Mike, can provide close support to a CEO, including, for example, helping to stimulate open feedback from team-members and challenging of current assumptions or accepted ways of doing things.
Organisational development
At the level of the total organisation, several aspects of an organisation’s ‘health’ and how it functions can significantly influence overall performance. At Owen Morris, we’ve developed a summary model of these elements which we call the ‘Key Drivers of Organisational Strength”.
These drivers are: 1: Purpose & Direction; 2: External links & Intelligence; 3: Structure; 4: Culture; 5: Governance; 6. Leadership 7: Technology & Data; 8: Talent & Motivation; 9: Thinking, Change & Innovation; 10: Performance management; 11: Communications; and 12: Staff support.
We work with an organisation’s board and/or senior exec team to collectively review, assess and discuss all these types of organisational driver and enabling leaders to identify and agree particular areas of opportunity for making changes or improvements. Our approach makes use of a variety of HR and OD tools and methods, ranging from cultural assessment and employee opinion tools to personal interviews, small and larger group workshops and targted coaching and mentorng approaches.
Change management support
We can assist in turning the outputs from team or organisational workshops into firm action. Some issues may just need quite simple action steps. But more complex or strategic issues – for example, transforming an organisation’s culture – may need more extended thinking, consultation or detailed ‘change project‘ planning (involving, possibly, action over many months ahead with many contributors).
Naturally, where needed, we can assist in designing, implementing or running any change project(s). And, of course, as a further part of our change support, we can design and deliver targeted 1:1 or team/group coaching to help with key areas like skill enhancement or changing attitudes.
Contact us
If your organisation is looking to boost the performance of any of your teams or wider aspects of your organisation overall, do get in touch and have a confidential chat with Mike.
Contact us at the office on 01886 881092 or email us via the Contact page on this website.