Organizational Development

Organizations and employees need more than simple training to build successful teams. Many tools are available to managers and business owners in addition to public workshops—tools that are often more cost-effective than sending everyone to a workshop.

When you call Anne Milkovich, you can discuss the best solution for your situation. Anne will ask questions to discover the underlying issues that are causing the surface symptoms, then help you determine the best plan to address the cause instead of the effect, using tools such as:

Teambuilding
You know you've got good people, but you know their results would improve if they could just work better together. Teambuilding isn't about high-ropes courses or river rafting. Teambuilding builds good teams by teaching people how to appreciate and leverage each others' strengths, while tolerating and compensating for each others' weaknesses.

Succession planning
When long-term success matters, you need to plan for replacement of your key people over time. In Montana's job market, finding the right people can be a serious obstacle. Succession planning prepares an organization in advance by developing replacements from within. Succession planning is like an insurance policy for future job needs.

Goal setting
Sometimes managers just need help getting everyone to pull in the same direction. Or, sometimes, managers feel like every direction they give goes in one ear and out the other. Goal-setting focuses a team on end results instead of activities, and good follow-up on the manager's part develops good follow-through on the team's part.

Performance systems
Large corporations live and breathe performance evaluation systems, which can be burdensome overkill for smaller businesses. There is a happy medium. Implementing reasonable methods of evaluating performance helps workers stay focused and motivated and protects management when difficult personnel decisions need to be made.

Corporate culture audits
What's in your culture? Cultures are hard to quantify but the effects are visible. Good cultures improve efficiency and teamwork, attract and retain good workers, and reduce management headaches. Bad cultures create discontent and distrust, lower morale and motivation, and drag down profit. And, cultures once established are very hard to change. Find out what you need to do to turn your organization's culture into a competitive advantage.

Conflict mediation
As a society, we do not learn conflict resolution before arriving at the workplace. Growing up, we generally heard "walk away" (conflict avoidance), "if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all" (acquiescence), or "go tell an adult" (appeal-to-authority, now the boss or the judge). When you've got good people who are "having issues" with each other, mediation can resolve the immediate problem and build better team relations and resolution skills for the future.