A CMO is more than just a team of experts in change; it’s a central hub in your organization for planning, implementing, and supporting your various change initiatives. These experts act as partners to leaders and employees across departments to ensure smooth transitions, minimize disruptions, and maximize the benefits of change. Even if you haven’t faced significant change-related challenges yet, investing in a CMO can be a proactive step towards building a more agile and adaptable organization. Let’s explore the reasons why a CMO might be the missing piece for your future success.

Why You Need a CMO:

Imagine your organization as a ship sailing through a stormy sea of change initiatives. Without a skilled captain and crew, each new change can feel like a rogue wave, throwing everyone off balance. This can lead to:

• • Eroded Trust: Repeated, poorly managed changes breed employee and customer skepticism and resistance.
  • Change Overload: Conflicting initiatives overload employees, leading to burnout and decreased productivity, diminishing agility and potentially losing key market value and opportunities. 
  • Wasted Resources: Uncoordinated efforts result in duplication, wasted resources, and conflicting messages.
  • Inconsistent Experiences: Employees face a confusing patchwork of change processes, hindering understanding and acceptance.
  • Limited Collaboration: Siloed change efforts struggle to consider the wider impact and address interconnected challenges.

• Rocky Transitions: Change can be highly disruptive to customer-facing operations and services, which can lead to issues in customer satisfaction and brand consistency.  

When You’ll Need a CMO: 

It’s best to be ready before your next change happens and have your team in place, but we know that’s not always possible. Start thinking now about what changes are planned or may be upcoming for your organization to help understand how a CMO can help. These changes can include: 

• Large-scale ERP and technology implementations
• Team and company reorganization and restructuring 
• New market expansions and proactive responses to changing economic factors
• Upgrades and changes required by new regulations 
• Member expansion or changes to software
• Reimagined digital experiences for customers and employees

A Well-Structured CMO is Your Anchor:

A well-developed CMO acts as a strategic partner, guiding your organization through the choppy waters of change and toward calmer seas. It provides:

• Clarity and Consistency: Streamlined processes and clear communication foster understanding, acceptance, and trust.
• Prioritized Efforts: Resources are directed towards changes with the highest potential impact, maximizing results.
• Efficiency and Elimination of Duplication: A central hub ensures initiatives align and complement each other, saving resources and avoiding conflicting messages.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Different departments work together, considering the wider organizational impact and addressing interconnected challenges.

Building Your Best CMO:

So, you’re ready to set sail with a strong CMO? Here are some key considerations:

Charting Your Course

When you’re ready to build your CMO, we recommend getting started with the following decisions and considerations to best position your organization for success. 

• Delivery Model: Choose the model that best fits your needs and structure. Consider models such as a Center of Excellence, Pool of Resources, Community of Practice, or Enterprise-Level CMO.
• Organizational Placement: Align your CMO with relevant teams (e.g., PMO, Strategic Planning) for optimal impact.
• Resource Access: Decide who can access CMO support. This may be sponsor-drive, strategically aligned, or open access.
• Team Roles: Build your CMO team with the right specialists, from Change Management Specialists to Training & Communications Leads, to ensure your team is trained and ready for the change initiatives ahead. 

Ready to Set Sail?

The Gunter Group has a team of experienced change management professionals ready to help you build your high-impact CMO with Prosci certified expertise, cross-industry experience, and custom solutions to meet your unique organizational needs. 

Reach out today to discuss your change management journey and chart a course for success!

References: 

Prosci Webinar & Slide Deck: How to Stand Up a CMO

McKinsey: How to Manage the Change Journey

HBR: Change is Hard: Here’s How to Make it Less Painful

Prosci: the 5 Levels of Change Management Maturity 

The post Navigate Change Like a Pro: Your Guide to Building a High-Impact CMO appeared first on The Gunter Group.

The era of junior finance employees spending countless hours on manual data tasks is fading, as AI now accomplishes these tasks in seconds. While this technological advancement boosts efficiency, it also poses challenges: employees, especially those early in their careers, may miss out on essential hands-on training and skill development.

To address these challenges and ensure employees at all levels—from the mailroom to the C-suite—develop a strong sense of ownership and alignment with the firm’s strategic goals, Stephen outlines three key strategies for financial services firms:

1. Adapt to Automation and AI: Embrace AI’s efficiency while creating opportunities for employees to engage in strategic, value-added activities that foster experiential learning. For instance, some firms are redeploying staff from routine tasks to roles that enhance business integration and change management, ensuring that automation complements rather than replaces human talent.

2. Focus on Outcomes, Not Outputs: Shift the emphasis from the quantity of work to the impact and strategic value of contributions. This involves aligning individual and team objectives with the organization’s strategic goals, fostering a culture where employees understand how their roles contribute to the firm’s success.

3. Hire for Capabilities, Not Just Skills: Prioritize candidates with adaptable, cross-functional thinking and problem-solving abilities over those with narrowly defined technical skills. This approach recognizes the value of attributes like creativity, critical thinking, and the ability to navigate complex, interdisciplinary challenges, which are increasingly important in a rapidly evolving financial landscape.

By implementing these strategies, financial services firms can empower their workforce, engage junior employees, and align their teams with corporate objectives—benefiting employees, the firm, and clients alike.

Explore the full article to discover how to effectively align and engage your organization for success in the AI-driven era. Read more here.

The post TGG in the News: Global Banking & Finance appeared first on The Gunter Group.

With the numerous methods, techniques, and approaches to change management how does an organization identify and pinpoint the best path forward? 

It will help to briefly travel back in time to understand the roots of the formalized practices that flourish today and break down three foundational pillars of change management that organizations can utilize today.  

The Migration From Psychology To Business

Change management has roots in the study of human behavior. The intellectual beginnings trace to the early 1900’s, into the work of the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep. When looking at rites of passage in different cultures, Gennep began to notice common behaviors. 

Even though he was looking at a variety of different cultures, he noticed that there were three overall states that ran common in the experience of social change. The first state was a “pre-liminal” stage, where the coming change was acknowledged and prepared for by the community. 

The middle state was the “liminal” stage, which he defined as a threshold of ambiguity and disorientation. Change managers everywhere will chuckle at the accuracy of adjectives like “ambiguity” and “disorientation” when describing the liminality of change. 

The final state in a rite of passage was “post-liminal,” where the transition in status was recognized and normalized in the community. Across cultures and belief systems, Gennep was able to identify these common movements in the human experience of change. 

By the mid-20th century, when psychology began to blossom into a robust and complex discipline of study, Gennep’s three states gained popularity. In the 1940’s, Kurt Lewin became a pioneer in social and organizational psychology by turning his attention to understanding change.  Lewin borrowed from Gennep’s structure and described a three step process for change: unfreezing, changing, and refreezing.

There was some academic buzz from several sources in the years following Lewin’s work, but no substantial leap from psychology to business had yet been made. This changed in 1982, when a consultant at McKinsey named Julien Phillips published an article in the journal Human Resource Management. 

In his article, Phillips introduced a model for organizational change management specifically designed with businesses in mind. His model defines four steps that were intended to build momentum for change within an organization: creating a sense of concern, developing a specific commitment to change, pushing for major change, and reinforcing the new course of action. 

In the years following, change management took off. Books were published; articles became more frequent; new models were advanced. Businesses were in need of assistance with change, and consultants pursued thought leadership that would help address this need and grow their business. Peters, Waterman, Kotter, and dozens more developed robust philosophies and methods for change, and organizations bought in and helped the field to grow.

Today, there are as many models for change management as there are consulting organizations. Looking for a 4 step process? Try PDCA. Interested in 5 steps? Try ADKAR. How about a 6 step approach? Try Pulse. Need more? Try Kotter’s 8 Steps, or Prosci’s 9 Steps. There are symposiums and communities of practice such as Prosci and ACMP; and naturally a veritable cornucopia of certifications abound. Change management is so saturated with models and approaches that some even try to push “beyond change management.” 

100 Frameworks, 1 Idea

The Gunter Group does not subscribe to any one framework. Our clients are too unique for a single set of steps to be the answer. We proudly proclaim ourselves to be “methodologically agnostic,” much more interested in understanding the organization than blindly peddling a process that fails to fit the people it is meant to help. 

That is not to say that we don’t know the methods. Our consultants have expertise in Prosci and ADKAR; and we have a number of tangentially relevant certifications (Six Sigma, SAFe, PMP, and HCD to name a few); we attend local ACMP events. We do not, however, learn a method to become disciples. Rather, we expose ourselves to frameworks and study methodological vocabulary to leverage those aspects of the frameworks that might be helpful for our work. Our clients appreciate a tailored approach that is grounded in the best practices of 100 frameworks.

This approach to consulting reveals something obvious: all change management methods are basically the same. Decades of scholarship and praxis have not changed the core phases of change, and wisdom that dates back a century still lies at the heart of responsible change. There are 3 basic phases in change (before, during, and after), and every change management framework simply iterates on the approach taken within those three phases.

So what runs common throughout all change management? What activities should you keep in mind as you tailor the process to your specific organization? We’ll run through the basics below.

Step 1: Pre-Change

Change is coming. Perhaps it is a changing regulation, a new technology, an upcoming merger, or a poor quarterly report; whatever the reason, you see change on the horizon and understand that you will need to prepare for it. Though the various frameworks approach preparing for change differently, three key activities take place during pre-change: analysis, planning, and influencing.

Analysis comes first. Before you can plan for change, you have to understand the people and processes that will be impacted. Who will be your champions, sponsors, and resistors? Helpful tools for this phase include stakeholder matrices, current state and future state process maps, and change impact assessments. The change manager must also understand the change itself. Without a powerful grasp on the “why” that is driving the change, planning and execution will fall short. 

Planning comes next. Change management occurs somewhere between the intersection of strategy, people, and execution, and planning is the bridge that brings these three elements into alignment. This includes planning for the change itself, communication that will accompany the change, and the training that will make the change possible. 

Influencing should follow. ADKAR describes this as fostering awareness and desire. Prosci speaks of sponsors and champions. Other schools of thought suggest using concepts like vision or need. We have found that a cocktail of all these approaches is usually the best way forward.

Step 2: Change

You’ve spent time interviewing stakeholders, mapping processes, and planning training sessions; now it’s time to introduce the change. This is messy, confusing, and difficult for the people impacted so change managers often rely most heavily on a methodology in this phase. However, mid-change is where a generalist approach could be most advantageous, adapting to the ongoing needs of the situation. There are four activities that always occur in any well-managed change approach: communication, training, changing, and reinforcement.

The most important activity surrounding change is communication. This is where you lean heavily on the results of your analyses. You know who needs communication, what they need to hear, and how it will affect their work flow. Armed with this information, you can plan accordingly, communicating the upcoming movements to the right people, early and often.

Another essential activity is training. This often goes hand-in-hand with communication, and is best when designed from the viewpoint of those impacted. Recent developments of tools such as Human Centered Design help maximize the value of training.

At a certain point, the change will happen. Kotter recommends an approach of small-slicing the change to create short term wins, but often the change manager is not the one driving the project timeline. When it comes to go-lives, change managers serve a thousand roles. They become SME’s for elements of the change impact; they attempt to remove obstacles from stakeholders; they act as cheerleaders or bulldogs, whatever is called for in the moment. 

As change occurs, another important activity is reinforcement. A big part of this is engaging program or organizational-wide leadership to enforce the change. This activity truly begins in pre-change and extends through the end of post-change, but it becomes extremely important in the midst of the change. There are approaches coming out of organizational psychology that can be helpful here, such as Vroom’s Theory of Motivation, McClellan’s Theory of Three Needs, or McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y.

Step 3: Post-Change

Follow-through is a must. As Gennep would say: the new status must be confirmed and the change must be reincorporated as the new norm. This is done a little differently in each framework, but necessary activities include reinforcement and reanalysis. 

As said above, reinforcement is heavily featured in post-change activities. The goal is longevity, driving the change through ongoing champions and dwindling resistance. Success is celebrated, momentum is reinforced, and improvements are consolidated. Through these activities, the new order is anchored in behavior.

One often-forgotten activity that takes place after the change occurs is reanalysis. Throughout this whole process, you’ve generated a mountain of information, from stakeholder input to process metrics. Current-state assessments performed before, during, and after the change are a great way to analyze that information, evaluating the effect of the change. 

Change management is the study of human behavior. Change is inevitably difficult for humans, yet change is unavoidable. As professionals in change management, we bring a people-centered approach to our work. We partner with clients to ensure employees and stakeholders understand, support, and adopt the desired change and it starts with a very critical element: listening.  We view our clients’ change as if it was our change, and their people, as if they were our people, with a foundation of respect. 

The post CHANGE MANAGEMENT: <br> THE PAST, PRESENT, AND TGG appeared first on The Gunter Group.

Great change leaders think systematically. They’re fluent in the interwoven nature of change. For example, the reliance on, and the potential impact to, a long-term strategy: the new business opportunities that are presented, the operational impacts, the cost impacts and implications, and the efficiencies that could be gained from a change. 

The best change leaders are those who recognize that there’s an absolute, inextricable, undeniable criticality of engaging their people and their teams in bringing about change. No process, no strategy, no business model, no ROI, no calculations will matter if there’s an absence of engagement on the team.

When faced with challenging situations effective change leaders have the ability to:

1. Respond in a timely manner to a market force or operational inefficiency. 

2. Understand that change is a necessary process, and that it will happen again.

3. Learn from the challenges in front of their organization and learn from the change process they undertake.

4. Challenge the status quo and ask strategic unbiased questions with a focus on improvement and solutions.

5. See how change can and will impact their organization at an enterprise level.

6. Explore new processes and tools to support and scale change and improvement.

7. Communicate clearly and effectively to their team so that team members know the “why” behind the change and understand how their role fits into both the process and the outcome.

Large-scale change takes place across all industries with some of it intentional, and some of it unexpected. Regardless of the forcing mechanism, effective change leaders find ways to engage teams at a more human level, and in doing so choose engagement over exclusion and as a result prioritize organizational health and success.  

As professionals in change management, we bring a people-centered approach to our work. We partner with clients to ensure employees and stakeholders understand, support, and adopt the desired change and it starts with a very critical element: listening.  We view our clients’ change as if it was our change, and their people, as if they were our people, with a foundation of respect. 

The post WHAT MAKES FOR AN IMPACTFUL CHANGE LEADER? appeared first on The Gunter Group.

In the thick of the pandemic lockdowns, leading up to certain businesses opening back up, a multi-campus community college came to TGG asking if we could help solve a problem that had no pre-fab solution.

New state and federal health and safety protocols required the Auditing Team team to quickly react, building new campus regulations resulting in an exponential increase in procedural tracking, documentation, and compliance reporting.

I worked with our client to track the ever-changing regulations in order to develop a method to integrate the changes into scalable processes. The engagement was successful, and engaging for the whole team because there was a vision for the future.

To begin, I had introductory sessions individually with all team members to learn what was going well and what they felt could be improved. This helped inform a prioritized list of opportunities that we could start working on. We identified opportunities to implement automation and create recurring collaboration sessions where the team drove their own solutions to group challenges, rather than deferring only to management guidance.

TGG then supported this process by performing a gap analysis of the state and federal regulation changes and creating easy to consume documents for interested parties. These analysis documents took hundreds of pages of regulation and distilled them into language that increased awareness and increased understanding of the changes. This allowed staff and faculty to quickly create health and safety plans for their colleges that ensure compliance with the regulations while also creating safer environments. 

I also facilitated multiple sessions with the team to ensure new regulations were accounted for in the organization’s processes and the team felt confident the processes could continue the work.

By design, my primary function in these sessions was to ask questions to the team, usually without knowing the answer. The intention was to utilize “the wisdom of the crowd”. This philosophy states that the collection of wisdom from the people doing the work is the best way to improve and solve that team’s challenges. 

Another goal we established for this engagement was to help the team become more “T-Shaped”. Each team member had a specialty and expertise they brought to the team (the vertical bar of the T) while the horizontal bar of the T represents the knowledge they gain by learning about and exercises the expertise of their teammates. While being an expert in a particular discipline or field ensures the team has a wide range of skills, a teammate who is interested in learning new skills from their colleagues, helps to expand the shared understanding of the team as a whole. For example, one result of this effort and focus was that everyone on the team expanded their data analysis and spreadsheet skills.

The final piece of the project was helping the client to level-up and automate their data collection and analysis tools. Helping the client improve their data maturity and strategic data use, helped deliver efficiencies and insights that allowed the team to focus on areas that needed more attention.

As I reflect back on this engagement, the most rewarding component of the work was knowing that the team’s investment in becoming self-organized and deeply collaborative truly helped keep staff, faculty, and students at the campuses safe and healthy. We delivered real, tangible outcomes.

The community college is now well-positioned to continue monitoring for regulation compliance, via data analysis and metrics, to help departments enable health and safety best practices. We helped deliver a safer learning and working environment for students and faculty throughout the institution. The Health & Safety team has new found confidence in their collaboration skills, preparing systems and processes, and the tools needed to successfully complete a health and safety project of this magnitude.

When I look ahead to supporting other clients in the future, I’ll be able to use this experience to advocate for the power and opportunities that data analysis and metrics provide teams, the unlocking of potential when a team sees each other as equals and values collaborations with each other, and that communicating with your partners and stakeholders with transparency and honesty is truly a non-negotiable of success. 

Scott has 10 years of dedicated experience as an Agile practitioner, Scrum Master, and Product Manager coaching teams, mentoring new Agilists, and leading successful projects. With his high attention to detail and a passion for independent research and translating findings into compelling visual presentations, Scott excels at change management, team facilitation, and emotional intelligence. He is known for being a natural detective and storyteller who is committed, organized, and a responsible teammate that prioritizes consensus and transparency in all situations. Scott holds a B.A. in Mass Communication/Journalism from Boise State University. He is also a Certified SAFe 5 Agilist, Advanced Scrum Master, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. Outside of work, Scott loves exploring Oregon’s great outdoors and is an avid college football fan who loves rooting for his Boise State Broncos. He also loves Portland’s independent theaters such as Laurelhurst Theater, Hollywood Theater, and Cinema 21.

The post ENGAGEMENT SPOTLIGHT <br>WITH SCOTT THEENER appeared first on The Gunter Group.

As I began my work with the client, it was easy to see how much leadership valued their people and how much employees valued their place of work.  Additionally, leadership also recognized the significance of the change impacts that accompanied this decision. Their highest priority was to maintain a thriving company culture. 

Many of the anticipated change impacts were universal to the employee experience. For example, all employees knew that video conferencing was simply now a part of their everyday experience. For the most part, all employees working onsite could anticipate similar changes. Sharing desks, equipment, meeting rooms, and flexible common areas would be the new normal.

However, there were also different implications company-wide depending on department, team, and role. It was widely understood that not every role would allow for flexible work arrangements. The nature of communication to certain employees that their position does not enable the same flexible work arrangements as their peers, was a critical element of the overall work effort. This process, if not properly navigated, presented a potential threat to company culture. 

We kicked off the engagement through employee surveys, focus groups, interviews, and all-employee communications. We knew that detailed data on employee experiences would be key in informing how we structure work sessions, but it was also pivotal to the expansion of our awareness and empathy as facilitators. Most importantly, all employees were invited to participate in the process, offer input, express concerns, and share what was most important to them regarding this upcoming change. For example: How important is it to employees to have the option to work from home? What resources do they need to work from home? What are their top concerns?

We formed multiple working groups comprising a balanced cross-section of the organization to ensure sufficient representation existed during these difficult conversations. The working groups collaborated over a 3-month period to co-design a hybrid work program that they believed would enable the company and its employees to succeed in this new semi-virtual workplace arena. 

The most rewarding aspect of this engagement was the privilege to be a part of a group of people defining how they wanted to show up for one another on a daily basis. It was truly delightful to observe how naturally teammates gravitated towards themes of collaboration, responsibility, and doing right by one another.

In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been surprising. After all, leadership had given up control and trusted employees of the organization to work through these difficult conversations. Naturally, the employees reciprocated by centering discussions on what was best for the company. This is not to say that some of the conversations didn’t involve contentious debate. For example: Is it an expectation that everyone’s camera is on all the time? And, if someone elects to work from the office every day, can they opt out of desk sharing and reserve their own desk?

Fortunately, the leadership team did not expect the working groups to design the perfect hybrid work experience on the first attempt. Leaders understood that the transition to a new way of working together and serving customers would be a learning journey for everyone. They emphasized the importance of embracing adaptability and a spirit of continuous improvement.

Throughout this engagement, I was reminded that high collaboration, inclusivity, and consensus building are as time intensive as they are worthwhile. The decision to allocate several team members to a change process such as this is always difficult. There is always opportunity cost for where resources could be spending time instead, but it’s an investment.

The result of this investment was an organization of employees that felt included and valued in a change process that was very important to them. The returns on this investment will be realized over the years ahead. While these returns may not be measured and calculated in direct association with the investment made, they will be nested within employee retention rates, employee satisfaction, cross-departmental collaboration, company culture, and of course the experience employees provide to customers. They learned a lot about one another, and I saw the multi-level value of doing change well.

Eric applies a systems thinking approach to problem-solving. He is highly collaborative and genuinely passionate about helping others succeed. Eric’s experience spans across multiple industries including resorts and hospitality, international non profit, sustainable business/social enterprises, and events management space. His areas of expertise are sales and marketing, sustainable business, project management, business development, business process management, and business planning and analysis. Eric holds an M.B.A in Sustainable Systems from Presidio Graduate School as well as a B.S. in Business Administration from Methodist University; he is also a Certified Scrum Master and PGA Golf Professional. Eric is an avid golfer. Outside of work, he can be found strolling the fairways of Central Oregon and Southeast Washington.

The post ENGAGEMENT SPOTLIGHT <br> WITH ERIC DUEA appeared first on The Gunter Group.

In our People Practice work we empower companies across all industries to align their people and strategic objectives in order to maximize results.

In this Q&A we explore our People Practice in greater detail — as we visit with Kara O’Connor, Service Delivery Manager – People Practice.

Tell us a little bit about the nature of work TGG focuses on within the People Practice:

What separates our People Practice is the unique and focused way that we ensure people and culture are cared for and prioritized in any big change. We frequently assist organizations with large complex change initiatives that balance technical proficiency (project management, business analysis, etc.) and people proficiency (change management, employee engagement, etc.). Our team focuses on being well-rounded so we can thoughtfully bring both perspectives to the table.

What is the most rewarding aspect of supporting clients in TGG’s People Practice?

If we do our jobs well, people feel like we’ve helped them prepare for and overcome something challenging. We’re helping avoid burnout, helping find clarity, and helping design a future with people at the forefront. This truly makes a difference for people’s lives, when their human emotions and reactions are respectfully accounted for. When we’re able to support change like this, it’s very meaningful and very rewarding.

What are recent trends you see impacting businesses in the People Practice space?

I’ve really loved seeing more conversations about integrating change management into agile projects. You’ve typically seen change management presented in very traditional, waterfall methods and these methods are not the only way! 

What do you anticipate impacting organizations over the next 3-5 years in this area?

I think People Practice issues are becoming more mainstream. A few years ago, change management was really on the periphery, not many people were prioritizing it in their projects. Now, we’re seeing more acknowledgement that without addressing the human component in the workplace, you’re missing half of the picture. 

Tell us about one of your favorite projects your team has worked on:

Right now we have someone working on a social and emotional wellness program for a large public school system. At a time when school staffs are being stretched thin, it is great to know we have someone to help organizations strategically plan for and build programs that support the mental wellbeing of their staff. This ultimately has a huge impact on our community as a whole in light of school staff connecting with parents and students.

More about Kara O’Connor:
Kara owns a diverse background in organizational change, team leadership, project management, communications, and marketing analytics. She is passionate about keeping “people” at the center of change management and large-scale initiatives and has enjoyed bringing strategic, people focused solutions to her clients for over 10 years. Kara is very skilled at considering issues with a fresh perspective, which results in her suggesting and implementing viable solutions that may not have been previously considered by an organization. She has worked in a wide range of industries for many nationally-recognized brands, in technology, healthcare, sportswear, and education. Kara holds a B.S in Business Administration and Marketing from Central Washington University. She is also a Certified Scrum Master and PROSCI Certified Change Practitioner. In her free time, Kara enjoys spending time in the great outdoors with her family of four.

The post PEOPLE PRACTICE Q&A WITH <br> KARA O’CONNOR appeared first on The Gunter Group.

Thoughtful action. Tangible results. Just like the website says. 

But since our inception in 2011, The Gunter Group has been (and will always be) a people centric organization. Because ultimately every decision we make comes back to people. How we develop people, how those people contribute to growing the firm, and how we collectively serve our clients in their most critical endeavors. 

With all that said, it should come as no surprise that a crucial component to our success formula over the past 10 years has been the caliber of individuals we select to join the TGG family. 

Our “people always” organizational philosophy is delivered through an interview and hiring process that is, by design, strategically unique.

As we engage with consulting candidates we are diligent and purposeful in our “listen-first” approach. The same “listen-first” approach that drives our client work also drives our interview and hiring process.  

It is with this mindset we commit to explore seven focused themes to understand a candidate’s unique potential to move our firm and our clients forward. 

1. 1. Who Are They?: To build a people powered organization you must get to know the people. We seek to understand who the individual is. What is their story, their unique history? Equally important, what led them to The Gunter Group? Why us? Why now? 

2. 2. What Have They Done?: What is their professional map? What are their experiences and skills? Do they have the core competencies to be successful within the dynamic nature of the work we do for our clients? We have long sought talent from non-traditional consulting backgrounds by recognizing the value of unique and diverse personal journeys.  

3. 3. What Are Their Values?: How well do they embody our “Non-Negotiables?” Throughout the conversation can we hear and observe our Non-Negotiables from the individual? Do these characteristics not only drive the way they go about their work, but also what they are seeking in their next team. 

4. 4. Is There A Pattern Of Success?: Are they over-achievers? Do they have a story where they delivered under challenging or doubtful circumstances? We will always value a pattern of success over pedigree. People who have demonstrated an ability to make those around them better in pursuit of a common goal will always be appealing candidates. 

5. 5. Are They Team Players?: Have they shown the ability to bring people together to accomplish a goal? What was their role in the process and how do they talk about that experience? It is more than just working “well” with others, do they thrive with a team?

6. 6. What Are They Looking For?: It is not just us buying into them, it is also them buying into us. Are we a great fit for them? What type of culture are they looking for? Can we support them in realizing their professional goals?

7. 7. Can They Help Us Better Serve Our Clients?: Will they make us better with something they bring to the organization? If we have a team of consultants that all have the same approach and skills, then we are limiting our ability to help more clients solve more unique and challenging problems. We take pride in seeing talent in uncommon places to build the best team…… not just the best collection of impressive resumes. 

Do these questions always provide the same level of insight? No. These questions have, however, served as a critical barometer throughout the last 10 years to ensure we are bringing in the best people to thrive in our culture and exceed our clients’ expectations. 

We are often asked if this philosophy is time consuming. The simple answer is… yes. Yes it is. It takes time to explore each of these questions in depth with a candidate. But the time spent is an investment. It’s an investment in growing our firm, building relationships and our team capabilities, and enhancing our culture the right way. Not just the expedient way.  

Since our early days as a firm this investment has been a conscious choice by our TGG team, and it will continue to be in the years to come. With our “people first” mindset, we wouldn’t have it any other way.  

More about Matt Bader:
Matt’s passion and leadership purpose is all about helping teams reach their highest potential. He loves building and leading high-performing teams and seeing what can be accomplished when strong values, sound strategy, and a relentless commitment to execution collide. He is a trusted advisor who thrives on building lasting partnerships and driving high-quality solutions for clients. With more than 13 years of strategy, program leadership, and organizational transformation experience in a wide variety of challenging and ambiguous environments. Matt has advised clients in the retail, education, finance, and professional services industries and served as a leader in the military and nonprofit sectors. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with a B.S. in Business Management and is a Certified Scrum Master, a Certified SAFe 5 Agilist, and has certifications in program management, LEAN, and contract management. Outside of being a loving husband and father, Matt enjoys the intersection of all things hockey, heavy metal, fitness, and beer.

The post 10 YEARS OF PEOPLE FIRST appeared first on The Gunter Group.

That morning, my manager and I went for a walk along the Willamette River. After some getting-to-know-you chatter, I turned the conversation to the job: “What do you think my first 30 days should look like?” 

My manager, Matt Bader, considered my question for several more steps. He answered, “All I want you to do is learn. Treat every experience as a teachable moment. Just worry about that, and the rest will come.” 

All the growing I’ve done at The Gunter Group has flourished in the garden of that conversation. Every experience has been a learning experience. I’ve had the opportunity to create internal development tools, write copy, build surveys, facilitate engagement sessions, spin up a center of excellence, and support an enterprise ERP implementation. All of these experiences have been new in some way, and all have been opportunities to learn lessons that make me better at my job. 

My time as a consultant has confirmed this one truth: the only thing guaranteed in every experience is the opportunity to learn. 

I’ll pause to make an important distinction: the act of learning is different from the opportunity for learning. In 2020, TGG consultant Stephen Bacon led a series of coffee chats about change management responses in the time of COVID-19. Stephen’s most important message to professionals in the pandemic: There is no guarantee that we will learn from this. We have to be intentional. Learning is not guaranteed, but opportunity is. 

This message is timely: the pandemic introduced most of us to a new reality. We are now familiar with remote work, the shrinking pool of small businesses, chart-topping unemployment, constricting budgets, and lifelines of federal aid. The one guarantee among all these earth-shattering elements is an avalanche of learning opportunities. 

This raises the question: how do you take advantage of these learning opportunities? Here are a few pointers I find helpful: 

Foster the Right Mindset: New experiences can be hijacked by negative emotional responses. It can be easy for learning to get lost in the fog of fear, anxiety, exhaustion, rebellion, flight, etc. At TGG, “Thrives in Ambiguity” is one of the non-negotiable characteristics we look for in team members, and it is our target response in adversity. But it can require a mindset shift to see a new, ambiguous experience as an opportunity to thrive. A good approach: reframe your natural fear response by saying “this is an opportunity” every time a new challenge pops up.

Remove Obstacles: The book Atomic Habits by James Clear suggests that the first thing you can do to break a bad habit is to raise awareness of triggers and reduce your exposure to them. If fear is one of your responses to a new challenge, try to understand where that fear is coming from, and respond accordingly. Narrow your focus to the present by writing down what you can do today, and ignore everything else. This builds valuable and purposeful momentum.

Pay Attention: Do you journal? Because you should journal. The most common objection to journaling is the time commitment, a problem that is easily solved. Start small: every day before closing your computer, write one sentence about something you learned that day. Really, that’s all it takes. Months later, when you can look over 100 different things you learned, you’ll be grateful for the 10 seconds of effort you put into it each day. 

Be Honest: It’s easy to make mistakes, but even easier to make excuses. “It wasn’t my fault, I just ran out of time,” or “We couldn’t have predicted the curveballs we had to face.” The more you make excuses for mistakes, the harder it is to learn from them. Radical honesty can help. When something goes wrong, it’s actually better for your career if you own up to the mistake and learn from it. Otherwise, all you learn is the skill of shifting blame away from yourself at all costs. 

Take Risks: Access to more opportunities means access to more learning. Volunteer for that internal project, raise your hand to own that action item, throw your hat in the ring for that new job. Expose yourself to new challenges, new colleagues, new activities; this will not only expand your skill set, but also your appetite for growth. 

Like most other habits, learning is not a talent: it’s a skill. A skill you can cultivate, and with a little time and patience you’ll start to reap the benefits. 

A great place to start is by reading some other articles on our TGG blog! Here are three of my favorites: 

• Understanding employee engagement and how to leverage it
• Agile project management’s future: beyond the basics
• Ebola, change management, and embracing the people-side of things

The post HOW A FIRST DAY SHAPED A CAREER appeared first on The Gunter Group.

Afterward we sat down with our host, Stephen Bacon, to get his perspective on how to navigate through large-scale change.

In case you missed the webinar series, you can view replays here:

Part 1: How Things Have Been Disrupted
Part 2: How We Are Adapting
Part 3: What We Are Learning

More about Stephen Bacon:

Stephen is passionate about understanding the overarching strategic goals of an organization and leading the changes that are so often necessary to implement those strategies. His expertise is managing strategy and change projects across a variety of organizations. Stephen has spent twenty years leading initiatives at Fortune 500 companies, academic institutions and not-for-profits in the education services, technology, financial services, consumer products, and healthcare industries, including extensive international experience. Stephen is a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM), holds a green belt in Six Sigma, and is accredited in various psychometric assessments (MBTI, ESCI, NBI). He holds a B.S. in finance and marketing from Boston College and an M.A. in organizational psychology from Columbia University. In addition to his service on not-for-profit boards, Stephen has three young children and a chocolate lab. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

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