Transform your team.
T01 Build a High-Performing Team
T02 Employee Engagement
“Fortius worked with us to create a program that fit our specific situation and allowed us to explore the needs of our team. The feedback was terrific and the outcomes—very real. Their skill and expertise in finding the right motivation for my team and pulling the appropriate levers has been outstanding.”
Kevin McManus
VICE PRESIDENT, HUMAN RESOURCES, BAYER PHARMACEUTICALS AMERICAN
Teams achieve what individuals cannot—this is the greatest advantage of teamwork. While making individual goals secondary to team goals may seem difficult at first, it pays off for everyone in the end. Team leaders are accountable for building and sustaining team performance, assigning each team member responsibilities that actively support and drive shared mission and objectives.
What to expect from T01
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A tailored approach to understand what high-performance means for your team and to determine the metrics to measure it
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A plan to achieve better team effectiveness with clear accountabilities to achieve it
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A defined process to govern your plan to ensure your growth
An engaged workforce creates tremendous incremental value for an organization. Just look to the research for validation: increased profitability, higher productivity, less turnover, less absenteeism, fewer safety incidents, and fewer quality defects.
In an effort to reach this holy grail, organizations spend billions annually to improve employee engagement, many times with little success. The reason most efforts fall short? They’re focused on what the organization is to the employee, not who the employee is to the organization and its clients, which is where true purpose is realized and embraced. Through this program, our precise approach fosters true employee brand engagement, establishing a critical link between employees and customers.
What to expect from T02
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Understand how to define and illustrate true purpose
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Learn how to engage your associates in an authentic way
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Form the meaningful link between associates and customers
22%
increased profitability
21%
increased productivity
65%
less turnover
37%
less absenteeism
48%
fewer safety incidents
41%
less quality defects*
*Gallup
T03 Culture Cultivation
T04 Organizational Design & Succession Planning
“Fortius is in an elite group that understands what it takes to build high-performing teams. Fortius has
a unique ability to bring a group of individuals with disparate backgrounds and ambitions and coalesce them into a cohesive unit that’s ready to achieve lofty ambitions.”
Mike Porterfield
PRESIDENT, TITAN PROPERTIES
Senior executives often think about culture as something that’s hard to measure and even harder to change. As a result, many choose not to invest in it despite all the evidence that, when skillfully managed, culture can be a powerful competitive advantage.
The social order of an organization, culture shapes attitudes and behaviors in wide-ranging and enduring ways. Align it with personal values, drives, and needs, and culture can unleash tremendous energy toward shared purpose. Through this program, Fortius connects the dots between culture and team success, helping create an environment that will push associates’ performances further while staying true to organization-wide ambitions.
What to expect from T03
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Articulate your cultural aspirations
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Identify leaders who align with that aspiration as well as those who don’t
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Master talking about culture with your employees
A company can have a crystal clear mission, a talented team, and great leaders, and still fall short of reaching its goals due to poor organizational design. Organizations of all sizes are grappling with accelerating challenges caused by everything from shifting economic pressures and market conditions to changing customer preferences and technological innovation.
In response, many are redesigning their structure to increase flexibility. This enables them to offer new services that unlock hidden value in existing operations, ultimately boosting financial performance.
One key component to organizational design is succession planning for positions that have a significant impact on the company. At its root, succession planning is risk management, and essential to ensuring long-term organizational health.
What to expect from T04
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Understand and articulate the strengths and gaps of your current organizational design
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Enhance your current organizational structure to ensure your talent strategy is driving and enabling your business strategy
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Plan for the future by solidifying your succession plan
Leadership at every level.
L01 Leadership Next
Watching young leaders develop and rise is inspiring, but going from associate to manager can be a challenging transition. This program is ideal for new or aspiring managers and emerging leaders who need to quickly understand that the organization’s success is highly dependent on their ability to realize the fullest potential of their people. With a focus on how to shift their mindset from individual contributor to management as well as how to develop strategic perspectives, this program provides up-and-coming leaders with a path to successfully move forward. It’s also a crash course in top-line business concepts that help younger associates get a firm grasp on the organizational ecosystem as a whole.
What to expect from L01
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Create your leadership brand
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Gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your leadership style and learn how to influence and create impact across the organization
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Learn to create an atmosphere that allows change and innovation to thrive
L03 Executive Coaching
“My coaching experience with Fortius has been eye-opening. We went to work immediately to meet our agreed objectives and after four sessions, we’ve tackled most. This engagement has enabled me to look at how I come across to my peers and has helped me shape my behavior in meetings and other interactions. I am already seeing more positive reactions from my coworkers, my staff, and my superiors.”
Marcy Reed
PRESIDENT, NATIONAL GRID MASSACHUSETTS
Executive coaching is 1-on-1 performance coaching that motivates and inspires C-Level executives and senior leaders to expand their leadership acumen. The goal of developing a single leader must always be pursued within the larger objective of organizational success. Since executive coaching should be conducted as one component of an overall organizational development plan, the coach and coachee must both be aware of the larger organizational strategic objectives before starting this program.
What to expect from L03
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Support in developing future leaders through strategic thinking, vision, and direction; accelerating change, motivating, and energizing people, teamwork, partnering, influencing; delivering results and developing people
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An honest look at how others perceive you as a leader
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A deliberate commitment to creating change
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The creation and execution of a coaching development plan, closely aligned with the leader’s manager as well as other key stakeholders (human resources, business partners)
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Guidance on how to create an organizational culture that values learning, creativity, and continuous improvement
L02 Reaching New Leadership Heights
Sometimes managers who have been leading teams and organizations for several years can start to feel too comfortable or even complacent with their leadership acumen. But what does that next level of leadership look like, and what should they do to reach new heights? This program focuses specifically on developing strong middle managers who are crucial to success. We help leaders understand that they have an obligation to drive the performance of their team, while simultaneously building influential networks and partnerships across the organization.
What to expect from L02
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Influence without authority
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Build trusting relationships and a robust network
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Deliver and leverage feedback effectively
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Lead change and create accountability
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Tackle tough issues and feel confident making unpopular decisions
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Build organizational alignment and drive employee engagement
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Formulate and execute effective strategies
“I brought Fortius in to help with three young members of my team that were at a critical development point in their career as leaders. These were high potential individual contributors that I wanted to be sure made the successful transition to strong team leaders. Each with different strengths and challenges, Fortius was able to find the right tools and build the right relationships to help these executives mature as effective leaders of their group. Fortius helped me understand the different styles and needs of my team; as such they have become a trusted business partner helping me build a high performance team.”
Scott Vuchetich
GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT & GENERAL MANAGER, BRADY CORPORATION
L04 Mentorship Programs
When you jumpstart a mentorship program, everybody wins. Mentorship is a low-cost, high-value way for organizations to help people at all stages of their careers build upon each other’s strengths and make important connections.
The strategic development of individual talent contributes to the company’s growth, innovation, and bottom line, and—more importantly—shows leadership’s interest in their personal potential. In return, organizations reap the benefits of more productive associates who are loyal to the company, building up invaluable institutional memory. Learn how to start a mentorship program in a specific department or throughout the organization in this hands-on program.
What to expect from L04
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Understand the value of mentorship and how to sell it in to leadership
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Build out the structure of your mentorship program and launch it
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Learn to qualify and quantify the benefits to the organization
“Fortius helped our new and emerging leaders realize the value of being an effective leader and provided them with the appropriate tools and frameworks to take their leadership effectiveness to new heights. It is not always obvious for new managers to understand that their team’s success will ultimately be dependent on their ability to get the most out of their people. Fortius has enabled our leaders to embrace this mindset.”
Lars Albright
CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, SESSIONM
“After co-founding my law firm 20 years ago, and experiencing significant recent growth, it was time for us to examine how we had evolved as a firm and as partners—to define who we are today, and where we want to go tomorrow. A lack of alignment had crept into our partnership ranks and Fortius started by addressing that head on. From there, they helped us create new mission and vision statements, and a go-forward strategy that we are now executing. I am not certain of where we would have ended up as a firm without Fortius, but I am certain that with their help, our future looks very bright.” —
David Pfalzgraf
MANAGING PARTNER & CO-FOUNDER, RUPP BAASE PFALZGRAF CUNNINGHAM
What to expect from A01
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Articulate your what, why, where, and how
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Learn how to communicate your strategic plan internally
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Connect the strategic plan with employee roles to define purpose
Recruiting, on-boarding, performance management, employee development, and succession planning are all connected by a common thread—competency development.
A well-built competency framework outlines the knowledge, skills, and attributes required to drive organizational performance. Fortius is skilled at diagnosing the level of cohesion you have in your talent management cycle, designing the right solution, and implementing the core criteria and process for you to succeed. As you design your competency framework in this program, it will become a strategic cornerstone of an integrated process that will unlock a host of other opportunities.
What to expect from A02
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Dissect your current recruiting, on-boarding, performance management, and employee development process
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Design your organization’s unique competency framework that will connect through all phases of the talent management lifecycle
All about execution.
How do you get things accomplished in your organization? Do you rely on rigor and discipline or is it loose and informal? How many of your key initiatives are delivered on time and on budget and how many would you say are successful? More than 80% of strategic initiatives either under-perform or get cancelled. Fortius shows organizations how to build executional rigor and discipline to lead change effectively. This internal capability will ensure that your highest priority projects are executed, governed, and reported in a common manner. This holistic approach to project and resource management will help align standards, practices, and policies with overall enterprise strategic objectives. Ultimately, it’s your people who get things done; not process and frameworks. We will ensure that your talent is trained and properly skilled at leveraging the tools and process that you build to successfully execute change.
What to expect from E01
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Strategic alignment and increased visibility
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Investment prioritization and benefit realization
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Increased delivery execution
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Stronger governance and controls
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More robust methods and standards
Leading change effectively is as much art as it is science. There are hundreds of change management frameworks and processes out there. But what it essentially comes down to is head, heart, and hands. Do your people understand what the change is? Do they believe the change is right for the organization? Are your people capable of performing in the new environment, and are they able to cascade change throughout the organization? This program uses a pragmatic approach to help leaders effectively guide their teams and organizations through change.
What to expect from E02
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Understand the phases of change that people go through
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Build a business case for change and clearly articulate the value proposition
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Learn how to engage and shepherd your team through change
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Create a stakeholder impact assessment and identify change champions
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Develop a communication and training plan that ensures change adoption
Maximize your resources.
“Fortius really helped galvanize our go-to-market strategy. During our offsite, our leadership team gained the clarity and accountability that we needed to operate more effectively. Working with Fortius helped us unleash the power of our team, and I am confident it improved our ability to execute and achieve our goals.”
Jason Dies
EVP AND PRESIDENT, PITNEY BOWES SMB SOLUTIONS
What to expect from R01
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Asses the current-state effectiveness of your workforce allocation
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Consider your future needs by gathering information around what your team needs to accomplish, projected workload changes, and staffing levels. What competencies are critical to achieving your objectives?
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Identify the gaps by determining the skill surpluses and deficiencies that are linked to the strategic work you must accomplish
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Close the gap by assessing opportunities to shift employees to new roles, train and develop your current employees, and consider hiring externally to complement your current teams’ skills
What to expect from R02
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Understand the areas where technology is a true enabler of your business success and where it’s holding you back from achieving your goals
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Identify critical gaps
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Create a business-case to quantify the financial impact inefficient technology is having on your success compared to the cost and benefits of technology upgrades
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Develop a comprehensive project plan to execute and manage the technology change
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Ensure your employees are trained and ready to adopt the new solutions
Get aligned.
A01 Strategic Planning
A02 Competency Development
Getting clear on the organization’s pillars and making them more than just words painted on the walls of your office is core to sustained success. Most organizations aren’t clear on what they stand for or believe in (values), why they exist (mission), where they are going (vision), or how they are going to get there (strategy). Less than 7% of employees in corporate America can tell you the strategy of their organization and how they contribute to it. This means a lot of people go to work every day and are very busy checking things off a to-do list and going to meetings on their calendar without knowing why they are doing it. Through this program, we’ll ensure that will no longer be the case inside your organization.
E01 Building Execution Discipline.
E02 Leading Change
R01 Strategic Workforce Planning
R02 Technology Optimization
An organization’s greatest resource is its people—having the right ones, in the right places, doing the right things, at the right times, and at the right price. To achieve that, you need informed and data-driven strategic workforce planning. Building a competitive workforce for the future requires right-skilling—the purposeful act of making sure your people are adding to their skill sets, while finding new hires that can help fill the gaps. Changing workforce environments are forcing organizations to rethink their permanent and contingent workforce management. We can help your organization identify and set up systems to determine the workforce it needs to execute its strategy, fulfill its organizational vision, and achieve its business goals.
Whether it’s time to create a new vision or put one into place, it’s more important than ever to have a technology advisor on your side to identify new resources to solve your toughest problems—no matter the industry. The team at Fortius will help you pivot into innovative solutions that will differentiate your capabilities, while also modernizing legacy systems so they don’t slow or stifle your growth potential.