CLIENTS | Client List | Success Stories | Testimonials
Success Stories
Ruben Consulting Group’s clients represent a variety of business sectors and industries. Therefore, we understand the subtleties, challenges, goals, and critical success factors that distinguish your business. We apply this understanding to assess your situation and devise your solution.
Ruben Consulting Group has provided consulting services to the following industries and companies:
A senior-level executive inappropriately displayed anger in meetings with peers and subordinates. As a result, most looked for ways to work around him, making it more difficult for the executive to lead his function.
Solution
In the first session, Marcia Ruben and the client set goals and aspirations. She administered a qualitative 360 assessment and synthesized the results into a report that provided specific, actionable feedback. After delivering the feedback, she met with this person’s boss to discuss high-level results, goals, and support needed to ensure success in trying new behaviors. Marcia and the client met frequently, working specifically on developing new skills. The approach included both reflective questions and one-on-one skill development. During the engagement, Marcia checked in with the executive’s boss and HR Business partner and periodically polled his direct reports.
Results
After a follow-up survey, the perception of this executive was reversed. He displayed significantly more emotional intelligence and assumed more significant roles within the company.
A young, rapidly rising executive was promoted to lead a new business unit within a financial services company. While he worked well with his boss and the senior executive team, his direct reports complained that he was not managing them effectively. Since this executive was thought to have high potential, grooming him for further promotions was considered mandatory.
Solution
Marcia began the engagement by meeting with the executive, identifying his goals and aspirations, and then administering a 360-degree feedback process along with other assessments. Based on the results, each coaching session targeted specific developmental needs.
Results
We did a follow-up survey using all these executives’ direct reports. This group’s perception of him as a manager was utterly reversed. His staff functioned much more effectively, and he was given more responsibilities.
A female executive was perceived as needing more executive presence and confidence, hurting her promotion chances.
Solution
We met to identify specific goals and desired outcomes. I administered a qualitative 360-degree assessment and relevant assessment tools to help this executive better understand herself, her strengths, and her style. The 360-degree assessment results pinpointed specific behaviors that were undermining her effectiveness. We got to work on making adaptations. The reflective coaching style allowed this executive to formulate her insights.
Results
After working together for several months, this executive was perceived as more confident.
When a new CEO took over this national retail company, he realized it needed to realize its brand potential. The previous management had offered products they liked, different from what the marketplace wanted. While the company had a fiercely loyal customer base, it had no brand or vision of what the company stood for. The new CEO was hard-driving and was expected to turn the company around quickly. The executive team was divided between “his” people, new to the company, and a few of the “old guard.”
Solution
Collaborating with the CEO, we designed an interactive strategic plan that led the management team through a series of planning processes. At the end of the two-day session, the executive team formulated its strategy, objectives, goals, owners, and timelines. They had a clear image of what they wanted the company to be.
Results
Through this process, the entire organization could focus on a common goal. The team left the session with a clear focus and detailed action plans to implement their new vision.
A cross-functional leadership team for a premier high-tech program needed help getting traction. The program the team was leading was one of the company’s top priorities. However, their progress was too slow for the company’s timelines. Team members didn’t trust each other and were not uniformly committed to the team’s purpose. As a result, they accomplished very little at or between meetings.
Solution
Through interviews, evaluation, and observation, Marcia identified some critical areas for improvement. She designed a series of team development sessions that focused on the leadership and team-building skills the team needed, especially decision-making, influence, and conflict skills. She followed up with one-on-one coaching with some team leaders.
Results
This work greatly improved team performance and a successful standardization project. In follow-up interviews, she discovered that team morale and effectiveness had improved, as had others’ impressions of the team members.
A major high-technology company created a cross-functional team to identify essential customer requirements and build a technological solution to meet those requirements. The team included members from the business and technology departments, which had worked independently up to this point. They began the project with little knowledge of or respect for the importance of making their functions interdependent. Not surprisingly, significant disconnects existed and worked against their efforts to develop a solution. As a result, the “solutions” they created didn’t work in the business environment, and everyone was frustrated.
Solution
Through interviews and focus groups, Marcia determined that the two groups had no shared goals, workable communication, or process for raising and resolving issues. Her report to the project leadership team recommended that the team develop processes they could own and implement. The team leaders adopted and agreed to sponsor our recommendations.
Results
The team implemented processes to address each concern. When we followed up 90 days later, we found that the communication, morale, and solutions had improved the team’s working relationships and output.
A Fortune 100 high-tech company had grown exponentially during the 1990s, primarily through acquisitions. As a result, it had many engineering tools and processes, none of which integrated with the others. The company decided to standardize its processes, tools, and procedures to cut costs and become more efficient in its operations. Ruben Consulting Group was called into one of the divisions where a recently reorganized internal service group was getting poor marks for customer service.
Solution
We conducted an audit, including several one-on-one interviews and focus groups with service group members and their customers. The interview data was analyzed and synthesized into themes and recommendations. The customer group delivered a comprehensive report outlining key themes and recommendations.
Results
Based on our recommendations, the service group was reorganized again, and customer satisfaction grew significantly.
A premier Fortune 500 high-tech company grew so fast that it could scarcely keep up with its orders. Each business unit had been operating in its entrepreneurial silo, capturing customer data that was often incomplete or inaccurate. Their independent databases didn’t communicate with each other, which suited the units that believed the data was theirs. The company had to function as a single team with cross-functional information sharing. That change would require consistent technology and processes to capture customer data that could provide actionable business intelligence. Behaviors would have to change, too. All this occurred in a company with a poor history of managing and instituting change across divisions.
Solution
After assessing the situation, RCG provided coaching and guidance to the team, leading the change effort and the team developing the business solutions. We helped the teams create an overall change management strategy and communication plan. We also coached them on influencing stakeholders and designed and implemented a scorecard to measure the involvement of the senior staff who led and influenced the change effort.
Results
RCG successfully transferred our change management methods and knowledge to the client’s implementation teams. With little or no disruption in service, the entire company soon embraced a new technology and way of conducting business. More importantly, the company overcame what could have been a disaster and is still surviving—and thriving—today.
A mid-size high-tech corporation had undergone a series of acquisitions, leaving it working with incompatible software on various platforms. The incompatible software made it difficult for different parts of the company to communicate, share files, and collaborate on team projects. However, ingrained cultural differences between business units, employees’ comfort level with their systems, and decades of data in systems that would be changed made the technological shift challenging. Previous technology change efforts had failed; this one had to succeed if the company was to survive.
Solution
We conducted a comprehensive and collaborative change readiness assessment with a cross-section of all stakeholder groups. With this information, we designed a strategy for managing the change process and oversaw its implementation. The goal was to help the team manage the change process without disrupting the business.
Results
Thanks to the thorough planning and strategy design, the company’s 8,000-plus employees moved to the new system within months, with little or no disruption. The corporation could communicate and collaborate effortlessly for the first time, increasing productivity.