Consulting Capabilities

Boxer Advisors has experience helping clients solve their most pressing organization development challenges by providing: meeting design and facilitation, organizational assessment, process improvement analysis, strategic and operational planning, and team building. 

John P. Kotter’s Leading Change outlines an eight-step program for organizational change that is applied to organizations worldwide.  Following the eight-step program, Kotter and Dan Cohen authored The Heart of Change and introduced the “see-feel-change” approach, which has helped senior leaders and executives understand the crucial role of emotion in successful change efforts.  Boxer Advisors, LLC in partnership with Strategy Consulting Team have formulated and implemented the change management framework described below. Team Boxer’s change model leverages years of experience customizing methods and tools to our client needs following a methodology underpinned by the work of John Kotter and Dan Cohen. Our change approach is results-driven, practical, and customizable to client needs. 

Our first step is to develop a plan identifying the critical activities for each phase of the change management process. Our change approach in the initial phases leverages our experience in planning effective communication strategies designed to change stakeholder behavior by engaging in discussion, sharing information, asking for input, and requesting feedback. We recognize organization communications along with change leadership coaching and training, are critical change management mechanisms for achieving understanding, buy-in, and engagement. Compelling communication is key to engaging your stakeholders. Communication must connect with people on both a practical and emotional level. We have experience in developing communications strategies with key messages, timelines, activities, and target audience information. Activities we have conducted include workshops on communications best practices, newsletters, town halls, and outreach events.

Sustained change requires deep personal commitment. Change requires involvement at all levels of the organization and contributions from different types of stakeholders.  We have experience in Leadership Alignment through Leadership Coaching including individual and group coaching sessions, and leadership training. Our leadership training for managing change includes topics such as Emotional Intelligence, How to be a Change Agent, Leading Change, Trust – the foundation of high-performing teams and The Leadership Challenge

In managing culture, change typically alters work processes, organizational structures, systems and relationships. Team Boxer can develop a deliberate program that aligns with the culture to encourage the new ways of working. Managing change will include design and implementation of plans such as:

• Governance plan – structure including integrated project teams to ensure the new way of doing business is monitored and successfully adopted. The governance structure incorporates proactive risk management strategy to monitor progress and risk through various councils, provide feedback, and capture lessons learned.
• Workforce transition plan– need an effective workforce transition strategy articulating why changes are necessary and creating optimism about the future work.
• Learning Strategy and Plan– Provides a framework for assessing learning needs and identifying training opportunities and creating an overall learning program.

At Boxer Advisors, we have a broad range of experienced OD consultants with demonstrated expertise in effective meeting facilitation. Our facilitators create a climate of shared respect and trust in meetings, reinforcing the principles of an equal voice for all, openness, transparency, collaboration, and shared ownership. Our facilitators do not rush to action or solutions; rather, we create the space to allow for a more profound understanding of the context and current state and the time to explore a fuller range of possibilities. We help define concrete commitments to action, accountability, and buy-in for decisions and agreements established during meetings, while consistently maintaining confidentiality throughout the process. 

Strategic planning is a process for deciding what needs to be done today and in the near future to position the organization for success. Conducted correctly, it is a structured and disciplined process of executive decision-making that yields clarity and ownership of a “narrow few” strategic initiatives. Strategic planning is also an effective way for leaders to articulate the impact they want to make. Thoughtful consideration of the process makes strategic planning an effective mechanism for organizational learning and a catalyst for organizational change.

We have conducted strategic planning sessions for hundreds of Federal agencies and organizational subunits. Our network of facilitators represents a cadre of diverse, seasoned professionals with extensive experience in strategic planning. We understand group decision-making dynamics and have the experience and expertise to enable teams to reach clarity and agreement on, and to commit to, key issues.

At Boxer Advisors, we understand that teams must be intentionally cultivated. Putting a group of people together, giving that group a name, and delivering a kickoff meeting hardly constitute a team. A group is only a team when its members work together to achieve shared goals and hold themselves mutually accountable. Boxer Advisors offers a deep and extensive range of strategies, tools, and wisdom to develop high-performing teams by connecting (and, if necessary, reconnecting) team members to a meaningful mission; by aligning (and, if necessary, realigning) resources and efforts to strengthen trust, communication, leadership, and other skills and capabilities; and by building a commitment to action that leads to measurable results.

Boxer Advisors partners with clients to strengthen teamwork at every level of team maturity, from newly formed teams to those challenged by change or blocked by conflict or to mature teams that are ready for an infusion of fresh energy and innovation. We help teams zoom out and consider the bigger picture and opportunities to span boundaries, and we also support teams when they zoom back in to attend to details of structure and process. We recognize the need for organizations to harness the collective wisdom and capabilities of its vast pool of exceptional individual contributors into a fuller collaboration to maximize resource use and achieve mission success.

Our process for providing OD services is illustrated below: 

A team of highly talented individuals has worked with one of our clients in support of an administrative organizational change initiative.  Specific support included organizational assessments, strategic planning, facilitation services, and executive coaching for the management team.  In addition, our team designed and delivered several customized competency-based leadership training courses for managers.  As a direct result of this effort, the client was able to document at least $500,000.00 in direct and indirect cost saving as a result of managers improving their individual performance as well as the effectiveness of their teams. 

Borrowers required a loan processing company to meet financing contingency and closing dates in a timely manner. Preparation and delivery of the Closing Condition Letter (CCL) and Conditional Approval Letter (CAL), provided by Sales, Underwriting and Closing functions, was taking an average of nine days, while customer research and benchmarking indicated that six days should be the maximum. The company gained a “process understanding” that identified opportunities to remove bottlenecks and improve communication between the Underwriting, Sales, and Closing functions. Using process maps and measurement systems analysis, management was able to track accountability and ownership. CCL and CAL were also redesigned. 

Following a merger with another bank, our client faced the challenge of maintaining rapid growth in the retail sector.   Within the bank's call center operations, human capital and its deployment are key sources of competitive advantage.  They recognized the correlation between employee satisfaction,  retention, and engagement in customer service.  A survey confirmed prominent job dissatisfaction among non-exempt employees and pessimism regarding their future prospects with the company.  By enhancing employee satisfaction and improving retention, the career development initiative program has delivered a $1.5 million cost savings to the bank and has also achieved a return on investment of 147%.