FAQs

What is an Organizational Detective?

An advisor. A listener. A knowledgeable sidekick: whether that’s a Watson to your Holmes, or a Holmes to your Watson. A sounding board. An asker of great questions. A management consultant. A leadership coach. A diagnoser of exactly what troubles an organization. An agent of change who can work with your leaders and managers to bring everything into balance.

An Organizational Detective is more than versatile enough to get to the bottom of what’s happening in your company or nonprofit, then work with you to fix what’s broken in order to drive better results.

My organization is highly technical. How can you help?

When we need help, we are not too proud to ask for it. We have a network of subject matter experts that we call Organizational Forensic Experts (OFEs) whose unique specialties can be brought to bear on your business.

What types of interventions do you deploy?

Our work together usually begins with an organizational Investigation Phase (also known as an organizational assessment) to include preliminary surveys of leaders, an onsite visit, one-on-one conversations with executives, and a day-long workshop with top executives and/or middle managers. This can be sized smaller or larger depending on the case. This work results in an extensive case file report with findings that we present to leadership in person or virtually with a draft of recommendations.

If we feel we are in a position to help rectify any of the problems that were uncovered, we will propose specific solutions and how we might work with leadership to implement change. These are the Planning and Journey phases. Effectiveness is always determined in light of Results, which may require an iterative process of trial and error.

What are the benefits to an organization?

They are many. We especially work hard to make the work in your organization visible, which results in a number of benefits, to name a few:

• Alignment of employees with the strategy and goals of the organization.

• Better retention of champion employees.

• Increased accountability.

• A results-oriented culture with improved collaboration.

• More time and energy for strategy and innovation.

Which level of leader do you work with?

We always want to involve the CEO and/or president of a company right from the beginning to make sure we are properly characterizing the questions that need to be resolved. Is leadership’s priority concern employee turnover, or anemic growth? Rising costs or decreased customer satisfaction? In the case of a nonprofit, is the issue phlegmatic giving levels, or client recruitment? Once we know the priority concern(s), at that point we are eager to work with employees at all levels of the organization — from C-Suite to middle management to frontline workers — to investigate what is negatively impacting an organization’s chain of work.

How do you charge for your services?

Initial organizational investigations are charged at a flat fee and take into account the size of the organization, its location, and the amount of time involved. If we think we can help implement changes, we’ll propose ways of working together that could include a monthly retainer with or without a bonus for helping the organization hit specific KPIs (ex. gross revenue, COGS, EBITA, etc.)

What if I have additional questions?

Please fill out the contact form or schedule a consultation with Eric Larson, our CEO and Lead Organizational Detective, who is profiled above.