Areas of Excellence

Strategy

What do we mean by strategy?

Defining a strategy to guide your future may be hard, but does that necessarily mean that process of defining it also needs to be hard? We don’t think so. We bring a proven process for strategic thinking and planning that can be customized for your organization, department or team.

From our perspective, strategic planning is:

• A state of mind

• A mechanism we can use to align our team

• A tool that allows for innovation and creative problem solving without losing sight of intended outcomes

• The practice of knowing where we are, where we’re going, and what lies between

• A guide that allows us to choose between all of the things we might do (or not do) to realize our vision of the future

• A means to an end, not the end

Leadership

What do we mean by leadership?

Everywhere we go, in every work place, we meet people who are struggling in their executive, supervisory and management roles, struggling with how to effectively lead their organization and teams. They aren’t dummies—they are individuals who care, individuals who have been fabulous at their jobs for years, individuals with the best intentions. They’ve been promoted and are expected to lead in ways they’ve never had to before. The problem is no one helped them develop a leadership mindset and a leadership toolbox.

That’s where we come in. We build strong leaders by helping them develop the mindset and tools for great leaders.

And by the way, anyone in any position at any level can develop their individual leadership skills, and we can help tailor services to a variety of audiences.

Our leadership development services include:

• Leadership development programs for intact teams and cohorts across the organization

• Individual, group and peer coaching

• Team building engagements

• Change management engagements and coaching

• Leadership competency development, communication and practice exercises

• Conflict resolution and mediation

Performance

What do we mean by performance?

We view a high-performing organization as one that consistently defines, updates and achieves its goals and objectives and accomplishes its tasks, in a quality, efficient and effective manner. But it isn’t just about the things we count [such as the number of customers served, the number of violent crimes, high school graduation rate, attendance at community events, admission rates, fund-raising dollars, and so on]. Performance goes beyond that: performance is about the people—both in and out of the organization—who work day in and out toward these goals and on tasks. Performance is also about the programs we are delivering—whether our programs are achieving the intended results at maximum efficiency.

Zelos helps organizations manage performance in four primary areas:

• We’ll help your organization identify meaningful organizational and individual performance measures. We’ll even help you update your workplanning and appraisal processes based on your environment and culture.

• We’ll help your organization understand and demonstrate its program successes and opportunities for improvement through formal, structured program evaluations.

• We’ll help your teams develop the skills, the techniques, and the desire to work together toward high organizational performance.

• We’ll assist individuals with meeting business goals and objectives or improving performance.

What do we mean by customer service?

Consider a scale from BAD to GOOD to GREAT. Now think about how well your organization provides service to its customers. Where on that scale would your organization fall, honestly? Most of our clients—both government and non-profits—believe that their organizations provide GOOD customer service (of course there are pockets of BAD and glimmers of GREAT, but overall, it‘s GOOD).

Is GOOD good enough? We don‘t think so, and neither do our clients.

Since the primary function of governments and non-profits is to serve customers (not generate more money for stockholders; not increase sales), our clients routinely ask us to help them improve their customer service—both internally (staff serving each other) and externally (staff serving their customers and the community). Depending on their needs, we help by:

• Assessing how well they are currently serving their customers, through customer satisfaction surveys and mystery shopping programs

• Recommending, developing and delivering customized customer service training programs

• Inspiring leadership and staff to remember why they chose to serve people in the first place, and to seize their opportunities to make a difference every day

• Training evaluation and other initiatives to identify and document improvements in customer service