ALOC Group

ALOC Group helps clients from diverse industries identify roadblocks, explore best practices and replicate their successes. With our varied services we work with individuals and groups throughout complex organizational cultures. Some of the following exhibit the varied ways in which clients have tuned our services to their success.

Featured Case Study

Leadership Capacity Development at MEDEC Inc.

Client Snapshot

• MEDEC Inc. (name changed per client request), a large national medical company specializing in workforce health management engaged to operate on-site clinics at three Southeastern US plants of a major automotive manufacturer
• Thirteen-member leadership team responsible for 60 medical practitioners concentrating on occupational and critical health management

Situation

• XYZ preparing to negotiate renewal of 5-year $10M contract
• Critical need to evaluate and improve leadership team performance
• Intense political infighting and "war" with peer level providers
• XYZ staff consists of three previous vendor teams recently acquired in a merger; poor morale and no social or cultural affinity on the leadership team
• Double-digit turnover
• On-boarding of new Project Manager

Key Results

Quantitative

• Better management of employee release plans (injured employees returned to work) at an estimated XYZ client savings of $5,000 per week
• Manager-initiated cross training leading to reduction of two per diem workers at a savings of approximately $123,000 per year
• 100% reduction in late manager reports and elimination of work brought home by site manager illustrating vastly increased productivity in the office
• Elimination of chronic practitioner turnover
• Retention of five high-level practitioners who previously threatened resignation. [The same group developed such affinity that they started planning monthly "theme days" to increase clinic morale.]

Qualitative

• Newly embraced team association, solidifying the "we"; Integration of three disparate employee identities into one coherent XYZ team
• Elimination of a "blame" culture at odds with effective performance
• Core competency discovery and reassignment of tasks based on appropriate delegation and skill assessment (13 leadership team members)
• Complete reassignment of under-performing team manager to a newly created role designed to use his skills to better benefit the team; saved one layoff and increased morale and improved manager's performance
• Shared responsibility for team success and challenges; drastically improved political relationships with parallel vendors at client site
• Key interpersonal development of leadership through coaching regarding active listening, better communications, more effective employee performance evaluations, and innovative productivity enhancements driven by coached managers

Time Line

• Month 1 - Kick-off two-day ALOC-facilitated leadership retreat after key management interviews, surveys and needs analysis; post-retreat evaluation and reporting resulting in Action Forward recommendations
• Months 2-6 - Evaluate qualitative feedback and recommend staff realignment (change the role of one team member and consult Project Manager regarding resignation of a Medical Director opposed to cultural change); employee surveys and results analysis, advisory for Project Manager regarding leadership team development
• Months 7-11 - Personalized weekly leadership coaching and development for Project Manager and Site Manager for largest local clinic
• Present - XYZ leadership reviewing Action Forward recommendations

Other Client Successes

• Organizational Culture Development Around Specific Executive Visions: A 3,500 employee education institution worked with ALOC Group to assist in a system-wide assessment of cultural awareness designed to enhance personalization for students. ALOC ran peer-groups designed to establish best practices amongst various levels of leadership. This approach provided the client with best practices, methods for intervention and application system wide, and established a rank-order list of priorities associated with initial identified challenges. As executive leadership learned of challenge areas within the system they were able to react quickly and effectively to address concerns around collaboration, trust building and communication improvements. ALOC worked directly with senior leadership and second line managers (75 managers total). Other employees were polled and surveyed for feedback designed to enhance initiative adoption.
• Strategy and Implementation of Leadership Development Programs at Business School and Graduate Programs: ALOC contributed to the strategic development of leadership development programming on the graduate and executive education level. ALOC Group consultants used facilitated peer groups to increase knowledge transfer, address potential attrition issues, and help students share best practices through applied methods. The result was a reduction in time spent by students working in isolation, increased productivity associated with programmatic deadlines, and increased knowledge transfer between students.
• Multi-day Retreat for National Sales Management Team: A new "change agent" manager was hired by his large technical services consulting firm to align a team of former C- and Director-level executives around the sales mission of the firm. This self-described "difficult" group of highly competitive late-career professionals had not met together in one location for more than 4 years. ALOC worked on group dynamics and team development for the group to foster conversation, facilitate discussion of the some politically charged topics, agree on action items for future collaboration and position the new manager for success with the team. Counterproductive behaviors were safely and effectively challenged and we worked to realign the team mission to conform with the company mission. Subsequent feedback from our hiring manager indicated managers at clients had noticed a positive change in the affect and professionalism of the sales team which resulted in some long-stalled sales reaching closure.