Overview

The CEO of a FinTech Trust Charter Payments as a Service start-up engaged Conscient Strategies to address root issues hindering their growth. The company had pre-seed funding and was looking to do Series A raise. The start-up needed to improve its strategic planning, product roadmap, and communications with the board. Conscient Strategies was brought in to advise the organization on strategic planning, product road mapping, board management, and provide leadership coaching to the CEO.

Assessment

We began by undertaking a needs assessment of organization focuses especially on the executive team (CEO, Head of Sales, Chief of Compliance, and Head of Operations). We also had conversations with the board to understand the root of the disconnects between the executives and the board. The assessment focused on the strategic plan and organizational structure.

What we discovered

We identified the following root issues and gaps:

• Lack of a formalized strategic plan and product roadmap
• No clear process for new customer onboarding
• Need to identify potential sources for funding
• Communication gaps between company executives and board
• Need for leadership coaching for the CEO

What we did

Conscient Strategies engaged the CEO and broader executive team to solve these issues in a holistic and iterative manner. Through our work with the whole executive team, we provided targeted coaching services, advised them in writing a strategic plan and then guided them through a communications approach and process to get that plan adopted by the board. We helped the client hire top talent – including banking experts and experienced hires – to fill gaps in the org structure. Additionally, we guided the leadership team as they developed a product roadmap and new customer onboarding process, along with an objectives and key results (OKR) system to ensure they achieved their strategic plan.

Overview

Conscient Strategies provided coaching and strategic advisory services to the Head of Business Development for a healthcare services platform startup. The start-up had Series B funding and the Head of Business Development was overwhelmed in their role and struggling to manage the relationships both with direct reports and with the CEO and Board. These leadership challenges were hindering new business development efforts and growth.

Assessment

Leveraging a combination of coaching models and assessment tools, we worked with the Head of Business Development to understand what he saw as his greatest needs. We then conducted 360 feedback sessions to understand what his colleagues, managers, peers, and direct reports saw as the areas where he needed to grow.

Overview

For nearly five years, Conscient Strategies has been engaged to work with the US Navy and its prime contractor to deliver a culture change initiative to the civilian team operating to repair and overhaul Navy ships.  Through our Performance Coaching program, we help our clients at four Naval Shipyards around the world accomplish their goals—return a submarine or Aircraft Carrier back to the Navy Fleet on time and on budget.  We do this by implementing a coaching based leadership change and increased employee engagement initiative in the Shipyards. We accomplish that mission by providing targeted, high-caliber performance coaching for key Shipyard staff via a time-tested embedded methodology.

Employee engagement is an on-going challenge at the Navy’s shipyard.  In most cases, the leadership structure includes older employees with a great deal of experience, and young employees with relatively little experience, and a divide in terms of ways in which to accomplish and motivate work. When we first began work with the shipyards, engagement was assessed to be at an all-time low. Conscient Strategies has been on the forefront of helping close the gap and boosting employee engagement.

Employee engagement is defined as the degree to which employees are motivated to come to work and contribute fully to the organization’s goals.  Further, there are three common attributes which promote employee engagement: vigor, absorption, and dedication. Vigor refers to a high level of energy and persistence. Dedication results from employees finding significance, inspiration, and meaning at work. Absorbed workers are concentrating on their tasks in such a way that it feels like they are in flow and time is passing quickly.  

Promoting employee engagement requires transformational leadership.  Transformational leaders tap into employees’ intrinsic motivation, which is the only sustainable way to drive high levels of commitment and performance. Tapping into intrinsic motivation requires emotionally intelligent leader behaviors.  When emotionally intelligent leader behaviors are exhibited, employees feel safe and experience an optimal level of excitement (not too much and not too little) for sustainably high performance. Conscient Strategies has been coaching and training shipyard leaders to adopt productive behaviors to promote the type of employee engagement described above. 

Overview

As part of Conscient Strategies’ work with a national think tank located in Washington, DC, following an assessment of the culture of the organization, we found that there was a need to confirm questions around salary equity on the team.  The client requested that we undertake a compensation study that analyzed different salary ranges from organizations similar to the think tank in the Washington, D.C. geographic area. The objective of the study was to enable the organization to compare its salary brackets for the major job levels to those at similar organizations.

What We Did

Conscient Strategies evaluated data from a list of comparable institution as agreed in partnership with our client.  All of the institutions we compared were based in the local D.C. area to ensure we had a like-like comparison to the organization for whom we were working.  Not only did we look at specific organization, we also included an assessment of position-level salary estimates published by a variety of sources, including recruiters, job posting sites, and organizational review sites.   We included the following positions for evaluation:

•  Executive Director/President/CEO
• Deputy Executive Director/EVP
• C-Suite Level
• Senior Director/VP
• Director
• Manager
• Coordinator
• Program Assistant

And, although we look holistically at the organization as it compares to other organizations in the geography, we also tested for disparity for gender and ethnicity based on the findings of our culture assessment.

Overview

Conscient Strategies was engaged by a health care policy organization to establish their five year strategy.   From the onset, it was critical to this organization to ensure that they included diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as the lens through which all work would be done.  During the development phase, we leveraged a DEI lens to evaluate strategic opportunities and embed DEI concepts into decision-making. 

With an increased emphasis on DEI, Conscient Strategies adapted the DEI lens concept and worked with our client to apply a catered lens to both their internal operations and external programmatic work. Through those efforts, we drafted an updated equity principle, crafted an organizational equity lens, developed a process and tool to track equity lens usage over time, and integrated DEI goals into the organization’s 2020 objectives and key results (OKR) framework. Specifically, one of the main areas where we applied this lens was to embed DEI into efforts to attract, recruit, hire, and retain talent.

 Overview

The CEO of a Washington DC-based social innovation nonprofit engaged Conscient Strategies to help them develop an organizational strategy. The organization had been the cusp of shuttering their doors when they received a series of small grants followed by a $25 million investment that launched the CEO and her team into a period of rapid growth and scale.

The company was growing significantly in terms of revenue and team size but had not scaled its organizational structure or processes to match that growth. At the same time, key leaders were preparing to transition out of the organization, leaving significant leadership and skill gaps in their wake. Conscient Strategies worked with the organization to conduct leadership and organizational assessments. Then, in partnership with the CEO and board, implemented a multi-faceted project focused on leadership transition and development, organizational stabilization, operational support for rapid growth, and strategy development.

Assessment

Conscient Strategies launched the engagement by conducting a multifaceted leadership and organizational assessment. The assessment analyzed past experience, current context, and future opportunities in light of the mission, programmatic approaches, structure, competing organizational cultures, leadership capabilities, team dynamics, and practical realities that shape day-to-day decision making.

What we discovered

The assessment revealed that the organization lacked the systems and infrastructure to support growth, suffered from extreme leadership gaps (both in terms of sufficient staffing and capabilities of existing leaders), and that the strain of rapid scale had pushed the CEO and global team into a place of extreme unhealth and ineffectiveness. Without a clear organizational identity, objectives, or strategy, the global leadership team was spread thin and wasting significant resources on inefficient decision-making and processes. Additionally, we identified a set of root issues with the finance function and operations teams that posed a significant risk to the organization’s success and sustainability.

Overview

Conscient Strategies was referred by an angel investor to advise and coach the CEO of a FinTech Payments start-up. The start-up was looking to do a Series A raise and struggling with its organizational structure, strategic focus, and clarity of leadership which was all slowing its launch of new products key their growth strategy. The CEO engaged us to perform an organizational assessment and provide strategic advisory and leadership coaching services to help them achieve their growth objectives.

Assessment

We began by conducting a needs assessment to evaluate the organization’s leadership and organizational structure. The assessment focused on operational alignment with strategy, effectiveness of and gaps in the current organizational structure, and areas for leadership growth.

What We Discovered

The assessment revealed three key gaps, each a significant risk to the organization’s success: 

1. Gap between existing organizational structure and the one needed to reach the strategic goals
2. Lack of operations capability and capacity to launch new products
3. Need for leadership coaching and a sounding board for the CEO

What We Did

Following the assessment, we provided advisory services to the operations team to develop new reporting and processes. We also advised the CEO and Head of Product to improve alignment on strategic objectives and accountability in their achievement. We then worked alongside the CEO to identify key gaps in the organizational structure and what skills were needed to fill the open positions. Through leadership coaching the CEO was able to gain clarity of vision, improve strategic decision making, and drive the company forward more quickly.

Overview

Conscient Strategies was engaged by a national law firm with fourteen offices nationwide. Over a three-year period of time, a West Coast office had approximately tripled in size. This growth presented challenges with regards to a deterioration of alignment between the headquarter offices in New York and the office on the West Coast. This included both a vacuum of leadership to address problems as they arose in the West Coast office as well as specific issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion. The firm reached out to Conscient Strategies as a step towards proactively addressing these issues.

Assessment

We began by undertaking a rapid assessment of the state of the office.  Simultaneously, we worked with firm leadership to understand the desired culture of the firm.

 Through the engagement, we utilized the Conscient Strategies framework, which is built around three key manifestations of culture:

• Shared beliefs and values
• Actions and behaviors
• Physical and space indicators

Within this framework, the Conscient Strategies team focused on a number of elements of particular relevance to the firm, including employee perceptions by specific demographic considerations. We analyzed the information by various employee segments to identify any key differentiators – for example, by position, by gender, by ethnic group, and by years at the firm among other considerations.