Organizational
Development
Success depends on holding a vision for the future and creating a plan that moves you ever closer to that ideal scene. At LCG, we help you lay out a vision that inspires and challenges your staff, volunteers and board members to contribute all they can toward realizing that desired future.
LCG consultants distinctly blend our experience in both the nonprofit and corporate environments to support organizational development and growth. This allows us to leverage our expertise in a variety of areas to help identify areas of needed improvement and organizational strength.
Strategic Planning
Where vision requires imagination, planning demands practicality. As our clients can attest, LCG specializes in common sense combined with customized strategies for reaching your goals. Our approach comes through in developing strategic plans that provide realistic roadmaps that guide you toward your vision and business plans. We create our plans through consensus building techniques designed to ensure your priorities are appropriate and that actions can be carried out. Our plans include implementation activities, along with financial requirements, timelines with milestones that keep you on track, and accountability measures to allow you to assess your progress.
Executive Coaching
Leadership can be lonely and stressful. Given the high turnover rate of nonprofit leaders and the shrinking pool of qualified people interested in taking on these demanding roles, it is important for nonprofit boards to invest in a leader's success. Providing the support of coaching may enable an organization's leader to serve longer and with a greater degree of professional satisfaction.
An executive coach serves as a thought-partner, providing a safe environment for a leader to process ideas. An executive coach helps the leader clarify issues by asking guiding questions and providing an objective perspective.
Coaching can also be valuable for second-tier leaders and emerging leaders. Building a bench of future leaders is an important component of any organization's succession plan.
Strategic Alliances & Restructuring
Unlike the corporate world, where such changes are common, nonprofit mergers are relatively rare. One reason is that corporations have the luxury of offering financial incentives to help overcome emotional resistance; an avenue typically closed to nonprofits. No one gets rich when nonprofits merge. Without such tools, negotiating and managing a nonprofit consolidation of any kind requires greater finesse and expertise at understanding the obvious and subtle impacts. Hiring an outside consultant with that expertise is imperative, and the earlier you do so, the less disruptive the process can be.
Advisory & Management Services
The best-run nonprofits operate in much the same way as the best-run corporations. There may be no shareholders to appease, but there are stakeholders—donors, employees, customers, communities, and regulatory agencies—that require you to operate at the highest level of professionalism.
As consulting professionals with experience in the corporate and nonprofit sectors, we deliver training, consulting and coaching that increases operational efficiency and proficiency.
Audits & Assessments
Our systems-based approach provides an excellent tool for evaluating your organization against evidence-based practices. We can provide an accurate and detailed assessment of you operational strengths and weaknesses along with clear recommendations on how to strengthen your operations to enhance results.
Instead of vague ideas or generalizations, our audit targets critical areas that enable you to understand issues and identify solutions. Equally important, our audit process gives you clarity on what's working and why, allowing you to reinforce your strengths.
Retreat Facilitation
In today's dynamic environment, it is not only healthy but also critical for boards and senior management to periodically test assumptions, reorganize priorities, evaluate core competencies, and develop or enhance their strategic plans. This is often most effective when accomplished outside of a regular board meeting in a retreat environment where board members and management can focus on the strategic challenges and opportunities.
Let's Work Together
Vision alone is not enough to create a future. It takes a practical plan with clearly defined activities and achievable objectives. Our common sense approach helps you realistically examine your vision and assess your capacity for bringing your goals to fruition. Since growth requires that you expand your circle of influence, we incorporate marketing and communications planning and actions in strategic development. Where capacity is lacking, we help you look into the benefits of restructuring or developing strategic alliances that can amplify your capabilities.