Center for Business-to-Business Consulting

Our Approach

We offer clients three ways to establish a consulting relationship with the Breckenridge Institute® – all of which are predicated on identifying the degree to which the client understands: a) the root causes of the problem, b) actionable solutions, and c) the results they want to get. Since consulting services are intangible, it is important to clearly define the explicit and implicit expectations between the Institute and our clients - especially what the deliverables will be. The Breckenridge Institute® will assume one or more of the three roles described below, and then move between roles over the course of a project depending on a client’s requirements, needs, and desired outcomes.

Expert-Services Role

Some clients choose not to use their own internal expertise and resources to accomplish key organizational development tasks, so they ask the Breckenridge Institute® to provide the service for them through the Expert-Services Role. The Expert-Service Role works best in circumstances where the root causes of the problem, actionable solutions, and the desired results are clear to the client. This includes services such as:

• Strategic Planning
• Business Process Improvement
• Implementing the Recommendations of Organizational Assessments
• Change Management
• Meeting Facilitation
• Process Facilitation
• Improving Group Dynamics and Teambuilding
• Training, Mentoring, Coaching, and Leadership Development
• Business Systems Integration
• Building IT Infrastructure

The deliverable for the Expert-Services Role is providing the agreed-to product or service on-time, at the agreed to price, to a high-level of quality. The Expert Services Role also includes providing on-going support for implementing improvements to day-to-day operations that have been identified as part of the Diagnostic Role described below.

Diagnostic Role

Clients who choose the Diagnostic Role want an “objective” third-party perspective on the performance of work-groups, functional units, or an entire organization. The symptoms of the problem may include the inability to achieve goals and objectives, rework, down-time, poor or inconsistent quality, high turnover, and customer complaints; but it’s not clear to the client what the underlying root causes are in the structures, systems, and culture. The Diagnostic Role works best when the symptoms of the problem and the desired results are clear to the client, but the root causes and actionable solutions are not. The Diagnostic Role is particularly effective when:

• Setting a New Direction, or Defining a New Strategy for an Organization
• Improving Plateaued, or Declining Organizational Performance
• Performing Root Cause Analysis to Improve Execution and Operations
• Conducting Management Reviews for Senior Managers or a Board of Directors
• Preparing for Change and Transition (Leadership Changes, Reorganizations, Mergers & Acquisitions)
• Improving Organizational Climate
• Assessing and Changing Organizational Culture

The deliverables for the Diagnostic Role are usually a written report that summarizes the data gathered and analyzed and makes recommendations for getting the desired results, and a presentation that outlines a recommended path forward. On-going support for implementing improvements to day-to-day operations identified as part of the Diagnostic Role is provided as part of the Expert Services Role described above.

Organizational Analysis™ Role

Clients who choose the Organizational Analysis™ Role are often experiencing high-levels of organizational “pain” and the symptoms and root causes of the problem, actionable solutions, and the desired results are not clear to them. They’ve made multiple attempts to correct performance problems and make positive change, but have achieved failed or marginal results. Frequently, the financial and non-financial forces and pressures of the external and internal environments have placed them on a “burning platform.” Managers and employees often experience this as having reached an Organizational Impasse™.

Traditional organization development and business consulting use organizational models and techniques that focus primarily on the conscious material of day-to-day organizational life and working-level assumptions and beliefs. Organizational Analysis™ uses the models and techniques found in Mark Bodnarczuk’s book, Making Invisible Bureaucracy Visible: a) to help integrate the tacit, unquestioned, taken-for-granted, and undiscussible material in work-groups, functional units, and entire organizations into organizational awareness, and b) to facilitate the interdependent dynamics between the conscious material of day-to-day organizational life, and the tacit, unquestioned, taken-for-granted, and undiscussible material that is a key element of organizational culture. More specifically, an Organizational Analyst™ helps clients evaluate the business results that their organization is getting and identify the cause-and-effect relationships between those results and: a) the configuration of an organization’s structures and systems, b) the day-to-day patterns-of-interaction between work-groups and key personnel, c) the tacit, unquestioned, taken-for-granted, undiscussible assumptions and beliefs that underlay day-to-day operations and decision-making, and d) the business context within which an organization is embedded.

The deliverable for the Organizational Analysis™ Role is the creation of a relationship in which the client organization is taught how to self-identify and self-correct Invisible Bureaucracy™ that frustrates, undermines, and derails organizational performance and getting the desired results. The Organizational Analysis™ process helps clients build an Intended Culture™ that restores an organization’s freedom to choose its response to the forces and pressures of the internal and external environments. The essence of the relationship between an Organizational Analyst™ and a client organization is captured by the saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Some of the key indicators that an organization will benefit from conducting an Organizational Analysis™ are listed below.

• It’s difficult for an organization to make key decisions, and (once made) many decisions go unimplemented.

• An organization has a gap between the formal (written) rules for how things get done, and the informal (unwritten) rules for how things “really” get done.

• Vital business information gets filtered, altered, or stopped as it moves up and down through the organizational structure.

• Projects that seem to have the full support of top managers and key personnel often die a slow death and no one knows what happened to them.

• An organization is unable to change in the face of forces and threats from the external environment, so it falls prey to the same problems over, and over again.

• The universal principles of organization development and business excellence do not seem to work in an organization.

• The change and improvement initiatives that have been conducted in an organization have shown failed or marginal results.

• Managers struggle against the flow of overly complex systems and are frustrated by an invisible force that undermines their attempts to effect positive change.

• People are not free to present the unvarnished truth about organizational matters because they fear retribution.

• People find their work to be a substantial part of life’s problems, rather than one of the solutions to life’s problems.

Throughout the consultation process, the Breckenridge Institute® continually clarifies the explicit and implicit expectations of both clients and our staff, so that both are clear about a project’s status, process steps, and deliverables.

Personality in Context^®