Strategic Planning

Focus your entire organization on a single, strategic direction by defining a clear vision of the future, the major goals that accomplish the vision, the measurable objectives that will track progress and the specific strategies for bringing about the results. We ensure that your strategic planning effort results in implementable, sustainable strategies and tactics that can make a difference in the life of your organization.

Building a Team

We work with groups who have been brought together to transform themselves into a focused team with a comprehensive plan of action, specific deliverables to be achieved and clear roles and responsibilities. We help get everyone on the same page to understand the purpose, objectives, deliverables and work plan. A work style profile is often used to help members appreciate individual strengths and weaknesses. Various activities are used to gel the team into a working unit with a common set of team norms. The team members learn to hold more productive meetings, resolve conflicts more effectively and manage expectations.

Focus Groups

When you recognize the need and benefits of bringing together a group of key stakeholders (users, members, customers, employees, etc.) to get their feedback in order to better understand their viewpoints, consider having Poertner Consulting Group, LLC facilitate those focus groups. During the design stage, we will help you isolate your key objectives, identify critical success factors, design a process and craft questions that achieve the desired aim. Once the process is designed, our facilitation skills ensure that the focus groups are both productive and energetic. The client is provided with a comprehensive report of the results.

Idea Generation and Evaluation

Professional facilitators are skilled in stimulating groups to discover fresh approaches to idea generation, encouraging each participant to explore and review new ways to meet challenges.

Research and experience indicate that groups usually provide better solutions than individuals. Poertner does an exceptional job of bringing organizations group-based techniques for generating creative alternatives: brainwriting, mindmapping, storyboarding, Six Thinking Hats, forced connections, change your shoes, time framing, visioning and dozens of others.

Meeting Management

A highly-trained outside facilitator can guide meetings, track progress and maintain the tempo, freeing all the key players to focus on the meeting. The facilitator also collects input from all participants and provides impartial feedback, which allows and encourages all participants to contribute freely.

Mediation and Conflict Resolution

Conflict is inevitable. Heterogeneous groups with a variety of diverse viewpoints, backgrounds, functional interests and expertise will naturally have differences. How differences are surfaced, discussed, managed and resolved are critical to the work of a group or organnization. Few of us have received training in how to work collaboratively to resolve our conflicts. Poertner Consulting Group works with parties in conflict to resolve the underlying reasons that gave rise to the conflict initially, using the experience to drive personal and organizational transformation.

When appropriate, Poertner serves as a mediator, encouraging participants to be creative, collaborative and non-adversarial in resolving their conflict. The mediation process is future-oriented and less concerned with deciding who is right or wrong than with solving problems so they do not occur again. As a mediator, Poertner is onmi-partial and on both parties' sides at the same time.

Group Facilitation Case Studies

Brand essence brings clarity to product development

Client was a division of a major publishing company with nationwide reach. The client was challenged by marketplace pressures to differentiate its products and services and to grow exponentially. Shirley designed and facilitated a brand essence session for the client, working with senior planners, editors, designers and key creative stakeholders to identify desired outcomes. The session clarified product attributes and values for the client and resulted in an essence statement that will provide opportunities to better align future product development.

Professional organization establishes certification guidelines

A statewide professional organization was struggling with the task of establishing certification guidelines for those in their field. Because of the strongly held opinions among the membership, it recognized the need to hire an external facilitator who could guide them through the process. Shirley interviewed a number of members within the organization to get a sense of the project, to understand its scope and to identify the potential landmines that existed. She facilitated a series of meetings over a six-month timeframe, with an ever-changing group of members at each meeting. By clearly establishing outcomes for each meeting and firmly and ably keeping the members on task, Poertner enabled the professional organization to establish a set of guidelines that were acceptable to the membership and adopted.


Regional planning off-site

The regional executive team for a national banking organization scheduled a three-day off-site meeting. They wanted to use the time to become better acquainted with several new members of the team and to re-visit and revise their strategic plan. Shirley was a part of the planning team with the Regional CEO from the time the date was set. She helped them establish objectives, set an agenda and plan activities with the objectives in mind. She traveled with the team to the off-site location and facilitated the meetings each day, ensuring that each objective was met and that the necessary decisions were made. Poertner became a trusted confidante of the group and later helped several of the executive team members with leadership and organization needs within their respective financial institutions.