Connecting People and Performance

------How We Do It------

If you are like most companies, you are facing a wide range of challenging and exciting business opportunities... and you're doing your best to manage in a time of growth and change. As you pursue these opportunities, you want to:

• Deal effectively with growth issues such as building and maintaining a culture of belonging and ownership, sustain a sense of purpose and direction, and defining and redefine roles and responsibilities.
• Give good people opportunities to develop and reasons to stay with the organization and contribute.
• Create an environment where people enjoy working and where they can be really productive.
• Help people take advantage of technologies they do their work.
• Identify and develop good leaders and mangers.
• Form alliances and partnerships that bring value and mutual benefits.

Over the past twenty-five years, TRG has worked with clients who have come to realize that these kid of goals are not just "nice-to-have," but are essential in order to accomplish more tangible business results. We've also learned that these things don't just "happen," but require special attention and support.

This is where TRG makes its contribution - we help organizations put extraordinary attention on connecting people and performance. here are a few recent examples:

Dealing with Growth -- An environmental engineering firm rapidly grew from twenty to 200 to 500. TRG helped define a long-term vision for the company and make explicit a set of corporate values. In addition, TRG conducted "just-in-time," and "just enough" management training, facilitated problem solving meetings, and provided individual coaching to senior leadership on issues related to growth, such as dealing with manager whose responsibilities had evolved beyond their ability to perform.

Developing People -- A large multinational energy company sought to create a shared sense of what it means to work as a team member in an organization that has hundreds of staff in countries throughout the world. TRG worked with the organization to develop and commonly accepted "standard" for teamwork, and then carried out a series of training programs and in-unit team-building sessions to help make teamwork an organizational practice.

Creating a Productive Work Environment -- A quickly growing association was having difficulties retaining staff. TRG worked with the organization to first identify the causes of the turnover, and then deal with some of the most critical issues. TRG support included: 1.) defining and clarifying unit and individual roes and responsibilities, 2.) helping staff develop a better understanding and acceptance of each others' working styles, and 3.) coaching for managers on approaches to give staff performance based feedback.

Taking Advantage of Technology -- A coalition of industry, academic, advocacy, and other organizations with provide health care information on the Internet sought to develop a code of ethics that would be accepted worldwide. TRG worked with the coalition to implement a 4-month process designed to achieve a high level of participation and broad consensus. This process included facilitation of a summit meeting to initiate the design of the code, virtual facilitation of a smaller steering group, electronic updates on the status of the code to summit members, and posting drafts of the code on the web for review and feedback. TRG played a key role in establishing norms for working virtually and creating an atmosphere of trust and transparency during the drafting of the code which was successfully launched (in the U.S. Senate) in the Spring of 2000.

Developing Good Leaders and Managers -- A national telecommunications trade association sought to implement a program to raise standards of customer service and to improve the industry image in the eyes of local communities, the media, and the general public. TRG worked with the association to design and deliver a serious of training course in public affairs, communications and leadership skills. One aspect of TRG's work involved researching industry-specific criteria describing "what it takes to be an effective leaders." Based on the findings, TRG designed and implemented a course, with interactive videos, that targeted the skills leaders must have to achieve business excellence and create and sustain the best possible public perception of their companies. Over 2,400 general managers and other key operations personnel participated in this program which won industry awards for excellence in both training and public affairs.

Forming Alliances and Partnerships -- An international consortium of research organizations is currently facing the need to make dramatic changes as a result of increased competition, decreasing revenues, and the growing complexity of research problems. TRG is supporting organizational change in this consortium by strengthening the abilities of these organizations to forge strategic organizational partnerships. We are also working with individual members of the consortium to strengthen multi-disciplinary teams, improve the effectiveness of virtual teams, and develop and carry out a strategy for knowledge management.

TRG draws on a broad range of tools --- training, facilitation, team building, strategic planning, and other performance improvement techniques, but we have a singular focus -- helping organizations to enable their employees, to do their very best -- connecting people and performance.