Our values derive from years of working with managers. We focus on work that is meaningful and compelling to managers and reflects their needs in the context of new and existing realities. We enable managers to make better sense of their work now, rather than something to understand in the future. Energizing managers to act efficiently and effectively has a positive effect on their mindset and increases their skill-set and commitment to fulfill organizational goals. Accordingly, we value:

·      Confidentiality

·      Accuracy

·      Timeliness

·      Respect

·      Managers must also be leaders

Founded in 1995, Organizational Concepts is a private Los Angeles-based independent consulting group that helps managers to mobilize resources, assess issues, interpret policies, and manage programs that target various communities. The team advises and coaches managers, and provides written products to managers in state, local and national government, foundations, businesses, families, and communities-of-interest.

Our team includes professional coaches, master-trainers, researchers, consensus planners, community organizers and technical-assistance providers. We have expert knowledge of organizational management, governing and financing structures. Our background includes the successful use of collaborative and multidisciplinary techniques to plan, implement, and assess local, regional, and statewide programs. Our professional experience also includes functioning in leadership and management positions in government, corporations, businesses, and non-profit organizations.

• Improve the capacity of managers to make and act on strategic decisions.
• Build the capacity of managers by designing and implementing strategic evaluations of operations.
• Collaborate with managers of major funders, governing boards, external experts and partners to implement multiyear initiatives
• Work with managers in socially focused organizations, corporations, foundations, and nonprofit organizations to increase social impact.
• Help managers assess and evaluate projects from strategy, design, and implementation, including written reports and presentation of findings in public policy forums.
• Manage the expectations of managers in roles requiring the execution of multiple tasks in highly dynamic environments.
• Use fluency in social scientific methods to assist managers in establishing clear visions and definitions of success.

Our approach to resolving management problems derives from the answers to the two questions above. Let us say that you need to mobilize resources to respond to a specific issue. Mobilizing resources is a "factual” effort. This is what much of your work as a manager is about. We examine the what, when, and why of your efforts.

"What will happen if you do nothing?" Your response to this question is a "counterfactual." Here, we examine what is likely to happen if you, in your management role, make no effort to mobilize resources to be responsive to various issues.!

Whatever the scale, organizational functions are rarely the work of one individual. A collaboratively selected group that includes voices from key stakeholders is a useful way to determine the size and scope of the initial team that will organize work and provide their best thinking guidance to their work, under your management.

This initial group will further define roles, tease-out appropriate controls, and identify specific individuals who share primary responsibility for coordinating communication and distributing resources among team members. You should include stakeholders of institutions that are financing the project at this initial phase. Once convened, the immediate task of the team is to explore the thinking—vision—of project to enable group members to understand the involvement of their organizations. It is essential that group participants thoughtfully reflect on the probable effects of the involvement of their host organizations in the proposed work in the context of the core mission of the organization. Using an external consultant at this initial phase may be useful.

Although examples of the benefits of adequate thinking and planning are evident in all sectors, within organizations of all sizes, considerable resistance exist to devoting adequate time to planning; the exception being those organizations—primarily foundations—that do not rely on external sources of funds. Prevailing cultures of host organizations and individual personalities will largely determine whether group synergy will connect to a real commitment to devote time to a thoughtful expression of ideas about what a project means for those involved.

·      The group must cultivate its synergy and leadership purposively, which cannot happen when people are leaving and joining the group without prior agreement, and with no explanation for missing sessions. Group attrition makes cultivation of team leadership more challenging, since in large-scale projects, there usually is a different leader for each aspect of the project.

·      To avoid confusion and conflict, the initial group must consider whether group membership is open or closed, whether discussion is confidential; the procedure to follow regarding guests or nonattendance, and an honest discussion of time and commitment the group may require. Meeting frequency and other logistical matters will easily resolve themselves after a full discussion of these foundational group issues.

·      Exercising group leadership is both fluid and ephemeral. Effective group leadership will manifest from the consent of all members, whether spoken or unspoken. Formalizing the leadership role is most efficient, especially if the person in that role acts as a facilitator, thereby, making individual, and group success easier.

·      Implicit in the earlier discussion on developing the group process is the selection of the tools around which the group may focus its thinking and planning. Project management devices like theories-of-change, logic models, timelines, work-plans, budgets, flowcharts, benchmarking, activity and event sequencing, network diagramming, and various other tools come to mind.

·      Tasking the group with creating any of these tools prior to socializing group members and their roles is a mistake. The larger the project, the more costly this mistake is likely to be. Remember that a project is nonrecurring, often involves circumstances rarely encountered before, and represents an exception to the normal routine of group members at their host institutions.

The good news is that large-scale project management lies in the skill-set group members already have. The planning, coordinating, and implementation phases merely require a larger world-view and accompanying longer-term commitment that recurring activities. The voice of a funder, informed by considerable experience investing resources in various projects, is most useful in making the transition from project vision to reality. A thoughtful funder can liberate a project work group from unnecessary preoccupation with documents that facilitated funding of the project in the first place. Thereby, allowing the group to create its own style and character, and adopt those project management practices and devices that are most congruent with the skill-set of group members.

Knowing that the project must end allows for considerable emotional and cognitive freedom among group members and facilitates the thoughtful selection of appropriate project management tools, and control elements to make efficient use of the tools selected. The caveat here is that project management tools are both intra and inter-organizational in nature and may require some adjustments to connect with fiscal-management processes in the project’s collaborating institutions. Attention to this circumstance will affect how and when resources are available for use in the project.

If shared respect exists among project group members for each of their needs at the host institution, then members are more likely to identify and advocate for the use of resources at their host institution in the project. A common challenge involves the distribution of resources, once identified, among collaborating institutions. Generally, funders do not act as fiscal agents of grantees. Therefore, one or more institutions will have to take-on that role. The usual scenario will have the institution acting as fiscal agent unilaterally imposing its accounting and fiscal procedures and policies on the other collaborating. The usual justification for this is that, “we got the grant and are accountable to our stakeholders for it is used.”

Scenarios such as this undermine group cohesion and reflect an obvious institutional ignorance regarding the many organizations that seamlessly deal with multiple funding streams, fiscal and accounting periods, fund accounting, and procurement practices with ease and sensitivity. The production of a feature film comes to mind, where fiscal practices manifest to get multiple sets of talent, tasks, equipment, and services coordinated to produce a marketable outcome. Institutions could learn much from film production companies about how to mobilize and distribute resources.

Essentially, an organization’s strategy derives from its vision. The strategy / vision is a meaningful and compelling expression of current reality. Accordingly, the strategy and vision should reflect the present tense, to inspire managers to act as if the strategy / vision is reality, rather than something to grasp in the future. Strategy / vision statements use words that are both meaningful and compelling, that energize managers to act. Strategy vision statements written in the future tense slows momentum and delays a change in the mindset of managers about possibilities. Use a process to build ownership of the organization’s strategy / vision among all stakeholders. Managers must understand and commit to the vision and the strategy that implements it, therefore, it is important that managers know how the vision / strategy changes their ongoing work, so they can decide whether to make a full commitment to it.

·      Although compelling organizational strategy and vision are often associated with charismatic leaders, visions exist apart from the individuals who articulate them. Thus, anyone who can devote time to reflective thinking, define basic work goals, tease-out the important strategic intents of collaborating organizations and the managers derived from those organizations, can produce a clear and useful vision and strategy.

·      The organizational strategy / vision is a frame for collective action, characterized by images and metaphors, in contrast to project goals and objectives, which are generally more limited in scope, normative and proscriptive, concrete, and short-term.

·      The organizational strategy / vision is a state of orientation for the manager’s project team. Shared core values and perceptions of conditions in the social environment connect team members to the project strategy and vision.

·      Since managers have unique ways of thinking and perceiving social reality, the vision / strategy statement facilitates coordination of work by reducing obstacles to communication.

·      Do not restrict the organization’s strategy / vision to any particular context. Allow the organization’s strategy / vision to transcend the boundaries of collaborating organization’s and the project team. Allow the vision to integrate different contexts and function like a social contract among collaborating institutions and team members.

·      Visions form the basic ideology of the project. It distinguishes differences among various projects—often competing for the same resources within the organization. It serves to guide the project’s strategy and interaction in ever-changing social environments over long periods.

·      Managers personify the project vision through their individual and collective behavior. Accordingly, it is sometimes necessary, and often desirable, to reexamine the project vision whenever circumstances change.

·      A useful project vision will minimize project costs, foster orientation and coordination among team members, and build a formidable project culture.