A small federal organization with a unique corporate environment was accountable for delivering the same full corporate services program as a large department, but with a fraction of the staff. Many new team members – from the executive level to the front line – lacked knowledge and experience in corporate services. By extension, this impacted the effective onboarding and training of new staff. On top of all this, the team needed to understand and apply a host of intersecting legislative and policy instruments, along with numerous supporting service level agreements. This created an "operational fog" that not only made it difficult for the team to move with confidence and accuracy; it also posed a risk to the organization’s ability to ensure the necessary compliance.
Our services: Partnering for performance
We partner with leaders and teams to help them create operational clarity and stability as they move through change.
At the pace of disruption happening all around us, every shift can be an onboarding challenge in disguise. Ensuring teams can quickly get up to speed and navigate those changes is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Using our Rapid Response Orientation System (R.R.O.S.)™, we build practical learning and performance solutions that turn strategic intent into operational reality.
We don’t just build the solutions. We can also equip your team with the internal capability to independently create custom learning and performance tools in-house using our R.R.O.S.™ framework.
Whether you need to close a specific performance gap or require full end-to-end support, see how we apply R.R.O.S. to meet you where you are today.
We apply our system across three core service areas:
Align strategy and operations
We build the bridge between strategy and execution. We identify and connect the moving parts that make everything work together, ensuring leaders and teams are operating from the same playbook. This provides the structure and stability needed to eliminate confusion, improve performance, and successfully operationalize change.
Our approach in practice:A WorkMoves project
We designed a tailored suite of tools to communicate the specific knowledge and context the team needed to work with precision and autonomy. This was accomplished by translating a complex regulatory landscape into concrete, actionable activities organized into intuitive, service-based categories. Rather than just listing rules, we mapped the critical linkages between mandatory policy requirements, oversight roles, and supporting service agreements. This turned a volume of intersecting directives into a coherent, evergreen framework that enabled each member of the team to navigate their responsibilities with authority and recognize how their work contributes to the organization's collective success.
[+] View project details and deliverables- Designed a Corporate Services operating guide to serve as a comprehensive anchor for nine distinct functional areas (from Financial Management to Security), aligning specific oversight roles and work activities with legislative and policy requirements.
- Created an ‘At-a-Glance’ placemat to provide an immediate "bird’s-eye view" of the organizational structure, service agreements, and supporting tools required to manage the corporate services framework.
- Mapped every corporate services function and responsibility directly to the underlying policy instruments and supporting service agreements within a specialized quick reference tool to ensure operational alignment.
- Developed contextual appendices and visual mappings that illustrated how policy instruments and related practices intersect to support strategic goals and regulatory compliance.
By creating a clear line of sight between complex policies and operational practices, these tools enabled a team driven to succeed to move from navigating “operational fog” to a visible path to clarity and proficiency. This was possible through partnering with a client committed to excellence and a determination to empower their team to achieve an even higher level of performance. Project deliverables provided a ‘compass’ that bridged the gap between central policies and the team’s day-to-day work activities. As a result, the organization significantly reduced the risk of non-compliance while building immediate capability within the team. New hires, including senior leadership, now have a clear path for executing their corporate services mandate with excellence, and a blueprint for ensuring their operational practices remain as current and robust as the policies that govern them.
Accelerate performance
We streamline the path to high performance. We build practical learning and support directly into the flow of work, ensuring teams have access to the right information at the moment it’s needed. This accelerates time-to-competence, boosting both team capability and business results.
Our approach in practice:A WorkMoves project
A national federal organization with over 15,000 employees required a sophisticated, comprehensive learning strategy to optimize the performance of its financial management community. The primary hurdle was the dual-requirement of mastering rigorous financial administration practices, while simultaneously becoming proficient in accurately using an updated and newly-deployed enterprise-wide financial system. As the primary financial support for managers and leaders coast-to-coast, this community's "time-to-competence" was critical. Any "operational fog" in their digital workflows or policy application risked data integrity and created bottlenecks for the entire organization's business objectives.
We developed a learning and performance support strategy that moved beyond traditional software training by designing a digital support ecosystem, choreographing access to essential knowledge with the application of accurate and compliant financial practices. This was accomplished by mapping the system’s workflows against the specific financial authorities and administration practices required for both transactional users and financial approvers. We then designed a sustainable digital ecosystem that equipped financial training managers, trainers, and all system users with the framework needed to maintain national user proficiency long-term. By moving away from generic system training toward a curated, functionally-aligned approach, we focused on how users apply professional expertise within their specific digital and work landscape.
[+] View project details and deliverables- Calibrated national change efforts through data-driven engagement insights that aligned the learning solution with the real-world needs of diverse user groups across the organization.
- Synchronized technical implementation with professional financial competency by designing an integrated change and learning strategy that ensured a coherent, enterprise-wide transition to the updated system.
- Architected a user-centric learning portal and digital learning environment that simplified navigation and provided immediate access to support resources within the daily flow of work.
- Transformed fragmented documentation into comprehensive content, rigorously tested against the live environment, enabling practitioners to master routine and complex transactions with speed, accuracy, and intuitive performance support for continuous learning.
- Strengthened financial literacy and compliance by translating multi-layered legislative and policy requirements into high-impact visual “placemats” that clearly illustrated the connection between transactional processes and regulatory compliance.
- Deployed a sustainable content development system and roadmap that empowered the client to autonomously maintain content as the system evolves, ensuring long-term agility and self-sufficiency.
The result was the successful design of a clear, sustainable framework that demystified complex, cross-functional processes and gave trainers and system users a visible path to proficiency. This outcome reflects the client’s inspiring leadership and trainers’ dedication to supporting their respective clients. The combination of working within this very healthy culture and applying the R.R.O.S. methodology enabled this team to shift from fragmented, siloed ‘help’ documentation to implementing an integrated learning and performance strategy. The organization reduced the ‘operational drag’ caused by the institutional noise of well-meaning but conflicting instructions. Instead, providing staff with a structured, intuitive way to build their financial competency ensured they would have the focus and confidence required to support high-level performance at work.
Operationalize change
We turn change into operational reality. We integrate design, communication, and practical guidance to ensure teams have a clear line of sight towards the road ahead. Understanding how work connects to an organization’s vision and strategy – and why it matters – builds the confidence and resilience needed to excel through change.
Our approach in practice:A WorkMoves project
A major federal organization faced the daunting task of transitioning its entire workforce to a new information classification structure and software, fundamentally altering how the enterprise organized its business-related information resources. The technical shift to a new classification structure and software was only half the battle; the deeper hurdle was internal friction. Many long-standing IM practitioners viewed the automation of their work as a threat to their job security and professional identity. This created a potential disconnect where the strategic goal of modernizing information management was at risk of being stalled by human resistance. Without an approach that gave "voice" to these concerns, the enterprise-wide implementation faced a significant threat to its success.
We designed a cohesive change and learning roadmap that aligned the system rollout with the human side of change, ensuring staff were prepared for the transition before the system went live. This was accomplished by architecting a communications and training plan that recognized the emotional impact of this change on self-confidence and professional achievement. We moved beyond simple functional training to create a narrative that helped employees visualize their new roles within this new digital landscape. This created the space for meaningful dialogue between leadership and staff and ensured practitioners were involved in the design of performance solutions that illustrated the how and why of the new system. This approach transformed a potentially threatening transition into a collaborative process that aligned individual agency with enterprise-wide governance.
[+] View project details and deliverables- Developed a roadmap for enterprise-wide implementation that balanced technical requirements and operational needs with specific targets for employee engagement and cultural readiness.
- Orchestrated a stakeholder engagement and "voice" strategy to surface and address deep-seated concerns regarding job security and professional identity, successfully shifting resistance into active participation.
- Designed high-impact visual change implementation maps that allowed diverse client groups to navigate their involvement in the deployment of the new classification structure and, more importantly, visualize their own role both during the transition and in the future state.
- Constructed a multi-tiered transition learning path to facilitate the move to new software and business processes, specifically tailored to the unique performance needs of IM practitioners.
- Developed a sustainable strategic change framework that equipped the organization to manage the "human side" of the transition, helping practitioners adapt to their evolving roles while ensuring ongoing alignment with federal policy and new business objectives.
The result was a successful enterprise-wide implementation where the choreography of technical logic (behind the new classification structure) was harmonized with the readiness of the organization’s IM community. The client demonstrated insight and empathy regarding the IM community’s resistance to this change and was eager to seek both a technical and human approach to easing their transition to a new way of working. By recognizing that resistance often stems from unaddressed concerns, our work fostered a sense of shared purpose, providing a clear, navigable path forward. When practitioners were given an intuitive way to visualize their role in the new digital environment, they regained the focus and confidence required to support high-level performance. The organization didn't just gain a new classification system; it established a state of operational certainty and gained the means to develop a resilient, aligned community capable of sustaining long-term change.
Behind every work move is a shared vision.
Learn about the experience that shapes our collaborative approach to performance.