As an organizational coach, Sherry helps you develop strategic solutions to overcome the obstacles preventing your organization from achieving sustained success. She is quick to grasp an organization's critical issues, as well as assess its performance potential. She then helps you implement strategies to eliminate the gap between your current reality and your desired performance level, including measures of success and feedback mechanisms to determine progress and adjust course.

In addition to her keynote presentations and seminars (see video clips on this page for excerpts), Sherry brings a team of external partners and resources to support you and your leadership team so you can effectively and efficiently eliminate the barriers to sustained success. Among our most frequently requested services are:

According to Cindy Schiffer of the US Forest Service, "Sherry's tremendous insight, straightforward style, and adaptability were perfect. She got to the heart of the matter in a non-threatening way that resonated with the whole group."

Building a Connective Strategic Leadership Team
Traditional strategic planning has accomplished little, if any, of the lasting systemic results it promised. More than a decade ago, in response to needs expressed by client organizations, Sherry developed an iterative process for strategic leadership, called Connective Strategic Leadership. This process assures four critical elements that all organizations need for sustained success:

1. It develops leadership skills and capacity among existing and emerging leaders.
2. It builds a cohesive, connected leadership team that understands roles and responsibilities, practices strategic and generative thinking, and appropriately engages all stakeholders.
3. It replaces the old style of lurching through 3-5 year strategic planning cycles with a smooth, organic process for ongoing strategic decision-making and organizational alignment.
4. It connects people in meaningful ways to their purpose, their customers, their co-workers, and their best selves.

Many organizations that have revamped their strategic planning processes originally came to us for a problem that was actually a symptom of their failure to practice Connective Strategic Leadership. We started with a short term consultation, planning retreat, or leadership training seminar to give leaders the tools to not just patch their old leadership/planning patterns—but to replacer them with a dynamic, results-driven process. Often, when they found themselves achieving their desired results, they returned for more advanced tools and support.

Sherry and Charlie Redmon, Operations Manager of BAE Systems' Anniston, Alabama Vehicle Upgrade Facility, in front of an M1068A3 Command and Control Vehicle

Creating a Constructive Culture
All change initiatives fail to achieve their potential if they are attempted in a defensive organizational culture. The best investment an organization can make in its search for sustained success is the one many avoid—addressing passive- and aggressive-defensive behaviors in the organization. Defensive cultures are the hidden cause of many problems that plague and weaken organizations, such as role confusion, conflict, closed communication, low morale, poor customer service, and a weak bottom line. Leaders often try to fix these outcomes of a defensive culture "downstream," where they are observed, rather than understanding that as consequences of culture, they can only be resolved "upstream" where they occur—in the organization's culture.

We use highly reliable online assessment tools to provide organizations and their work units with a "snapshot" of what members say are their current and desired organizational cultures. We provide a full report on the greatest gaps between current and ideal performance, and outline steps that can be taken to reduce those gaps, helping the organization to build and sustain a connective culture with improved cooperation, customer service, and revenues. Contact us to review the results achieved with organizations like yours, and visit the study reported on this site that demonstrated improved student performance in a school that built a more connective school culture.

Many clients say that addressing their organizational culture was the most needed, toughest, and single most rewarding issue they've tackled. One benefit of our process is that it allows people to address very emotional interpersonal issues and move beyond them without getting personal. It focuses them on what they want for the future rather than what they don't want or problems of the past. One leader concluded, "We were challenged every day, but once we became more connective, we saw we didn't need all the fancy-named initiatives we had hidden behind in the past. We knew what we needed to do because we were working and communicating as a real team—so we just did it."

Helping You Define and Deliver Your Value Proposition
Many organizations have lost that positive connection between people and their work, between staff and stakeholders, between workers and their colleagues, and between individuals and their best selves. The systems and structures put into place to try to rebuild or replace those connections have just the opposite effect—they distance key elements of the organization from one another. Regular staff meetings, for example, may be added to ostensibly promote better communication and cooperation among team members, but often becomes a recital of who has the most work to do with the fewest resources at their disposal.

One powerful way we have found to help organizations break these cycles is by building connections around their value proposition. A value proposition is a clear, specific statement of the tangible (or intangible) results a customer or stakeholder can expect from using services of or supporting an organization. A value proposition can be thought of as the "promise" members, partners, and supporters perceive has been made to them. Their satisfaction is determined by the extent to which they believe that promise is fulfilled.

Through a process we have used successfully with a wide variety of organizations, we help leaders define their target audiences for membership/service/partnership/support, and articulate the value each group is seeking that they can meet better than anyone else. This is consistent with the "hedgehog concept" outlined by Jim Collins in his "Good to Great" research—and according to our clients, even more transformative.

This process moves very quickly, and once the value proposition is defined, it usually is refined by a wider range of organizational leaders, who invariably share and own the "ah-ha" moment. Once key leaders have absorbed and adopted the value proposition, an analysis of all programs, services, and processes is conducted to determine what needs to stop, start, and continue to better deliver the promise of the value proposition. The report and recommendations generated by this audit process then becomes the framework to better align programs, services, and procedures with targeted customer and stakeholder expectations. In the process, staff shift their focus from defensively protecting the status quo to enthusiastically exploring ways to fulfill a pledge they made to their target audiences.

Clients say this process is swifter, deeper, more relevant and lasting than any strategic planning process they've experienced. "It got to the heart of who we want to serve and what we can offer them that they need—and can't get better from anyone else. Our program directors actually proposed letting some "pet" projects go because they were so excited about building programs that could fulfill our promise. If I hadn't experienced it, I wouldn't have believed it!"

© 2008 by Schiller Center|sherry@schillercenter.org