Portfolio
People often ask, “what exactly do you do, Sandy?” My short answer is: “I help big companies go through big changes.” What that looks like varies by client. Read on for more insight into the work I do to serve clients.
Challenge: A business unit leader and COO were faced with client service ratings that were less than the stellar ratings they were accustomed to earning.
Solution: Refined the client service delivery model for the 1,700-person global group to better serve its 400+ investment managers worldwide. This included working extensively with senior executives in London, Dublin and Chicago to define the model, optimize key client servicing processes, re-design and align the organization, then team with high potential employees around the globe to identify then scale servicing better practices globally.
Result: Recognized at one of the top three initiatives leading the growth of the business unit. And, the small but nimble project team earned the firm’s annual Signature Service award.
Sandy has been an invaluable resource in enabling our senior staff to plan implementation of a significant strategic change in business strategy. We appreciate Sandy’s role in our success.
Challenge: To address volatile industry conditions, the CEO tasked a senior Finance leader with figuring out how to use the business intelligence data being used across the enterprise to monitor and improve business performance.
Solution: Developed the change leadership strategy to support the implementation of an enterprise performance management (EPM) system. [An EPM system integrates and analyzes data from many sources, including, but not limited to, e-commerce systems, front-office and back-office applications, data warehouses and external data sources.]
The overall change strategy aimed to support primarily the 350 mid- and senior-level leaders who would be most impacted by this change. Three key components of the strategy included:
1. Conducting a stakeholder assessment to identify all impacted groups; then, building and executing a communications plan to support the impacted stakeholders
2. Developing and delivering an organizational learning strategy, including introducing eLearning, revising competency definitions and updating the performance management process
3. Implementing the change management methodology across the company for this and future strategic business initiatives
Result: The broad acceptance and understanding of the new EPM systems and processes streamlined company leaders’ ability to monitor and improve business performance. And, being able to analyze real and accurate data has increased collaboration across teams, creating a funnel of continuous improvements.
Was the first non-employee to receive the annual company Outstanding Service Award.
Challenge: A Chief Security Officer was faced with meeting a new and stringent regulatory requirement to ensure this global financial services institution could continue to operate during a pandemic (an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people).
Solution: Led the definition, design, and operationalization of a corporate risk strategy to enable 7,000+ employees worldwide to work from home and continue to operate the business in certain emergencies. Throughout this multi-year project, was charged with partnering with leadership across Business Units, Technology, HR, Finance, Audit, Operations, Risk, Human Resources, Legal, Education, Corporate Communications worldwide to identify impacts, build the infrastructure, communicate the value, gain executive sponsorship, and engage the employees to support the program.
Result: Leadership recognized the growing positive impact that the work from home program was having on employee engagement. The program is now accepted as a standard way of doing business across the firm in both emergency and non-emergency situations.
Sandy is a terrific consultant. I have worked with her for many years and strongly recommend her. She is particularly good at going into a situation that can be highly charged and sorting through the issues to get at the real concern so that the appropriate resources can be put into play to address the item. Her results are top notch. Her knowledge levels within financial services are deep and she appreciates the challenges of a global firm and how flexibility is key.
Challenge: A CEO of a rapidly growing professional services firm asked me to assist two of his recently promoted high performers in developing more executive presence. In their new senior leadership roles, as heads of corporate functions, these leaders needed to more confidently interact with board members and other business leaders throughout the firm.
Solution: Began executive coaching sessions, following the coaching methodology I’ve developed after working with hundreds of senior leaders on honing their leadership skills.
Result: Board members and senior business leaders are increasingly recognizing and seeking out these two leaders for their respective expertise in their corporate functions.
Sandy is a tremendously talented executive management coach. She has an amazing ability to listen to complex work situations and to ask good questions that allow me to see new insights. She shares materials and ideas from other industries that are very helpful. I feel energized and empowered after a session with Sandy. I would recommend Sandy to coach any executive at any level, including a CEO.
Challenge: A CFO was charged with leading a global privately-held firm to becoming a publicly-traded entity.
Solution: Built and executed an organizational change strategy to prepare the CFO and his 2,700-person Finance division to operate as a public company, which included the roll-out of SAP Financials.
Leading a team of 50 professionals located in North America, Europe, Asia and India over the duration of the three-year program included:
1. Gaining leadership alignment and support
2. A $1M business process and technology training and e-learning effort to re-equip the top 1,000 Finance leaders worldwide
3. Significant one-on-one coaching for leadership coaching and training for junior staff up to partner level
4. Modifying and securing global leadership agreement on changes to competency model definitions and performance management expectations
Result: With leadership solidly aligned for the pending change in company status, the impacts to running the business and client service were less than expected.
Sandy is truly one of the finest professionals I have had the opportunity to work with in my career. In addition to Sandy’s technical and strategic ‘know how’, Sandy has outstanding professional and leadership qualities—she is highly motivated and committed, with the highest level of integrity. Sandy was very well-liked and respected by individuals at all levels in the organization. Her work was exemplary!