I support leaders and the groups they work with to take back their power to change the world.

Too many of us have fallen into the habit of giving away our power – to create change and cause transformation – through the work we do in the world. When we reclaim the possibility of leadership and stand in our power, we can do anything. This is true for anyone who stands for a better world, in entrepreneurial, commercial, non profit and government work. It’s not impossible, it just takes intention and a willingness to stop giving our power away.

In addition to personal one-on-one leadership coaching and leadership development seminars, I support leaders as a consulting partner to help you reframe the way forward into a changing environment such as a new market, new leadership team, and new intentions. As a certified PRIMES outfitter and facilitator, I use The PRIMES extensively in designing and guiding leaders and their teams.

Magus Consulting – Services

• Transformational Strategic Planning
• Facilitation
• Brand Essence & Core Truth Platform
• Government Contracting

Transformational Strategic Planning

A good strategic plan can help you establish power for your organization. You need just enough “plan” to move your business forward and enroll everyone in your collective success, and that’s what I do best. I’ve worked in and around multiple launch, repositioning and aggressive growth initiatives in commercial, nonprofit and government settings, and I have excellent instincts for what matters and what doesn’t in planning exercises. I can get you and your team from “where do we start?” to “action plan” quickly and effectively so the planning tangibly helps the business instead of slowing it down.

I use a CORE PRIME-based methodology for strategic planning that aligns groups around five strategic conversations. When the key people agree on the following five elements of the business, change and transformation become possible. Take one out and you might as well not even bother. CORE PRIME-based planning can scale from the smallest to the largest project by focusing on the following elemental agreements.

• As Is current state
• Environment
• Stake
• To Be future state
• Strategy

When you’re up against big problems, don’t look for a strategic plan to fix them; bring in a transformational plan that distinguishes between CHANGE and TRANSFORMATION. A transformational strategic plan can help the individuals and groups in our organization release the past and dive enthusiastically into a future you design to accomplish exactly what you intend.

The output of this kind of planning approach is a simple, straightforward assessment of where you are, why change is necessary, where you’re going and how to get there. The report is thin and actionable and the action plan itself fits on a single page to guide you day-to-day. Simple and effective. What does it produce?

• enthusiasm from your board and staff about the work you’re doing together an the impact you will have on the world;
• agreement that you are collectively focused on the top priorities;
• goals and objectives statements that you can report against; and
• a strategic management framework which you can use to manage your staff.

In addition to facilitating leaders through these agreements to determine the way forward for their organization, I specialize in developing inspirational vision statements and Core Truth messaging designed to help communications teams “get the word out” to all their stakeholders, generating buy-in and improving chances of success (see below).

Facilitation

Meeting time is precious time and has to be used to reach meaningful outcomes for the group. Otherwise, don’t bother with a meeting and let people do

their jobs. In developing the meeting design, I use a PRIMES-based approach that explicitly establishes and builds the group’s unique power to accomplish its goals. I work independently and with graphic facilitators, depending on the focus and desired output of the meeting.

Why hire me to facilitate your executive meetings? I know how to hear what’s not being said, and where the group is giving away its power. I get the important information on the table for discussion naturally and effectively so each meeting objective is met in the time allotted. I use the PRIMES as necessary to help reframe unproductive dialog and get people working together effectively towards our common goal. Typical facilitation subjects:

• Defining strategic goals;
• Establishing program objectives;
• Prioritizing market opportunities;
• Sizing plans to budget and resources; and
• Identifying key metrics.

To help your teams operate effectively on an ongoing basis without a facilitator, I also outfit leaders and their teams – or any group – to use the PRIMES in operating at higher efficiency and effectiveness through my custom PRIMES seminar series.

Brand Essence & Core Truth Platform

When you’re retooling or creating a new strategy, you have a unique opportunity to simultaneously craft your brand essence and core messages so that they establish the Core Truth and Guiding Intention for your organization. A strong Core Truth Platform provides you a powerful leadership tool kit:

• Vision, Mission and Values statements help you enroll all your stakeholders in your success;
• Guiding Intentions help you and your management teams stay focused on the essential work underpinning your success; and
• Audience Profile focuses expression and anticipates barriers to acceptance.

A solid Core Truth Platform accelerates the launch of your strategy into the world. Don’t expect the marketing agency to do this work for you; even the strongest brands derive their power from an essential Core Truth that is authentic, unique and integral to the business strategy. The marketing teams you hire to help express and build your brand will look to you – the organization’s leaders – for the Core Truth platform, they will expect you to know who you are and what your organization’s purpose is in the world. A fuzzy Core Truth is not only distracting, it wastes huge amounts of time and money as management and design teams miss the mark because the mark was unclear to begin with. If the Core Truth isn’t crystal clear, then everyone’s output just muddies the message. Conversely, if the Core Truth expresses the right essence – the essence of your identity in the context of your business strategy – then others can enroll in it,  expand on it and build on it to help you achieve it.

Dana brings special insight to executive communications and organizational identity work. - Marybeth Fraser, B2B Marketing Excellence

After 15 years of branding, marketing and product marketing experience, I’ve boiled the essence of executive communications planning down to the simple concept of Core Truth. Leaders and their organizations can build on a clear Core Truth platform to create power for the organization and any first-class communications team can execute to get the word out. Without this basic preparatory work, most communications campaigns tends to wander in search of their Core Truth, frustrating the leaders who need it to generate enthusiasm and good will. No matter how good your communications team is they can’t crawl inside your head to dig out the Core Truth of what you want to communicate. That’s the leader’s job and my job is to help you articulate and express it.

In addition to branding efforts, Core Truth Platforms can also be used to support launch and repositioning campaigns of any kind, including for projects, products and initiatives.

Government Contracting

For U.S. government contracts – and many large corporate projects that require deeper and broader resources – I subcontract through The Clearing, Inc. Feel free to contact me directly about your project and if it makes sense for to bring in The Clearing, we’ll get them involved asap.

 

Contact me about any of the services above.