Press Room

Best Foot Forward

Our Managing Partners explain how Schaffer Consulting helps businesses realize their full potential.

M&A: HR and Organizational Growth Strategy: A “Seat at the Table”
December 1-2, New York City

In collaboration with Schaffer Consulting, Cornell University-ILR School, a leader of Human Resources studies and expert on workplace issues, has expanded their Human Resources curriculum. Cornell is conducting a Senior HR leader workshop tackling the complex issues of Mergers and Acquisitions from due diligence to implementation and sustainability. The workshop will be led by Suzanne Francis and Cynthia Maltbie. Register or Learn More

Passive managers; getting paid to show up at work
Managers are expected to make demands of other people. So why do many find it so hard? Ron Ashkenas describes seven mistakes managers should avoid.

Harvard Business Publishing Blog: Conversation Starter

Define Your Personal Brand With Simple Questions		January 22, 2010
Has the Recession Made Your Life Simpler?		January 12, 2010
Why You Should Fire Yourself		December 30, 2009
Restrict My Choices, Please		December 22, 2009
Government Health Care: Like the Postal Service?		December 10, 2009
In Afghanistan, Is the Problem Capacity Or Complexity?		December 2, 2009
Give Thanks — To Your Employees		November 24, 2009
Of Goldman Sachs, the Yankees, and Level Playing Fields		November 20, 2009
Health Care Reform Through an M&A Lens		November 12, 2009
Can We Simplify Financial Regulation?		November 6, 2009
Selling Simplicity - Not Just Marketing It		October 29, 2009
Why Budgeting Drives Us Batty		October 22, 2009
Too Big to Fail - Or Too Complicated to Succeed?		October 12, 2009
Let's Simplify the Language of Health Care		October 2, 2009
The Three Cs of Simplicity		September 23, 2009
How You Can Help Prevent the Next Lehman		September 14, 2009
To Multitask Effectively, Focus on Value, Not Volume		September 10, 2009
The Key to Effectiveness? Focus		September 1, 2009
In Simplicity We Trust		August 27, 2009
Two Steps to Simplify Your Workday		August 20, 2009

SmartBrief's Workforce e-newsletter - Best Practices
Posted by Mary Ellen Slayter, August 4, 2009
7 Deadly Sins of Delegating
This blog, by Ron Ashkenas, offers insights into how managers unwittingly create complexity in how they give assignments to their people.

TakeOut: a dynamic process for constructive cost-cutting
Your organization has to become leaner. Will it be weakened or strengthened in the process? Learn about TakeOut

Preview of Simply Effective
Ron Ashkenas discusses the concepts of his soon-to-be-published book at a reception in Munich on June 17. The event was hosted by BMW Financial Services at their headquarters.

Transforming Your Company through Rapid Results
Listen to an interview on The CEO Show with Vice Chairman & Chief Growth Officer of Zurich Financial Services, Patrick O'Sullivan and Robert Schaffer.

Client Success Is A Winning Strategy
Tough economic times offer internal consultants a unique opportunity to show how valuable their contributions can be. AIMC Newsletter article by Robert Schaffer.

Workplace Flexibility
Schaffer Consulting is co-sponsoring a breakfast in London on November 12. This is an opportunity to hear more about The BOLD Initiative directly from Bea Fitzpatrick, Founder, President, and CEO.

The BOLD Initiative is a non-profit organization which has identified something unique that supports a different work ethic. As a result, teams engage in an unprecedented way with their company and colleagues to increase productivity. Bea will talk about workplace flexibility as a driver of bottom-line results in these challenging economic times.
> For more information click Workplace Flexibility

OD Network Annual Conference
Patrice Murphy and Pamela Moskowitz will lead a session at the annual conference of the OD Network, looking at how rapid-cycle change methods have been used to co-create extraordinary bottom-up results in unionized New York City hospitals.
> For more information click here

Robert Schaffer: Keynote Speaker at Academy of Management
Robert Schaffer will describe the underlying roots of our results-driven organization consulting processes as the keynote speaker of the Management Consulting Division of the Academy of Management in August.
> For more information click here

Resistance to Change: Capturing its Energy for Success
Wes Siegal and Eric Marcus will present "Resistance to Change: Capturing its Energy for Success" at the ASTD conference in San Diego on June 1st.
> More Info about this June 1st Conference Session

Using CAIDI as a Leading Indicator
This article by Keith Michaelson, Rod Kalbfleisch, and Bill Burley describes how CL&P (Connecticut Light and Power) discovered the critical elements of effective outage response.
> Order a copy of the article
> Learn more about Schaffer Consulting's Rapid Results Approach

Healthcare Rx: Start with Results Today
This article by Celia Kirwan and Patrice Murphy describes how Schaffer Consulting has helped hospitals, clinics and health administrations achieve results in patient satisfaction, safety, operating room efficiency and cost containment.
> Order a copy of the article
> Learn more about Schaffer Consulting's Rapid Results Approach

WGHC Interview with Robert Schaffer
Listen to radio station WGCH as Greenwich Entrepreneurs interview Robert Schaffer on getting organizations to produce rapid results.

Are You Making Things Too Complex?
Listen to an HBR IdeaCast featuring Ron Ashkenas, author of the December 2007 Harvard Business Review article "Simplicity-Minded Management."

The Change Handbook 2007
Schaffer Consulting is proud to have authored two chapters, Rapid Results and WorkOut in The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems.
> Request the chapter
> Request the chapter "WorkOut"

The Leader as Capacity Builder
This new article by Ron Ashkenas and Robert Schaffer provides a powerful model of how to succeed in a world of accelerating change.
> Request the article
> Learn more about Schaffer Consulting's approach to Leadership Development

Internal Management Consultants: Deliver Rapid Results
Learn why you need to design projects that deliver interim benefits on the road to your ultimate objective; in an article by Robert Schaffer
> Request a copy
> Learn more about Schaffer Consulting's Rapid Results Approach

Renewable energy in New Hampshire
Learn how Schaffer Consulting is helping Public Service New Hampshire use biomass to produce electricity while also sustaining forests for future generations.
> Learn more about this project

Achieving Tangible Results
Robert Schaffer and Helen Materazzi, of Bowne Marketing and Business Communications, spoke at the AIMC National Conference in Orlando, Florida on April 24. The topic was The Importance of Achieving Tangible Results in an IC Project-and Sustaining Them. On April 25, Robert Schaffer led a workshop providing specific how-to ideas to participants for building results into their projects.
> Learn more about Schaffer Consulting's Rapid Results Approach

Learning Through Success
This article, which was published in the December edition of Harvard Business Review Latin America, describes how companies can be more effective in achieving results by experimenting with small incremental pilot successes.
> Learn more about Schaffer Consulting's Rapid Results Approach
> Contact the author

Senior Practitioner Panel on Change Management
On February 21st, Justin Wasserman will describe the vast changes-from training internal consultants to saving millions of dollars-we helped an iron ore company make in only one year.
> Register for this event hosted by the Organizational Development Network of
    Greater New York

Rapid Results: Easier to Achieve than the Gurus Will Tell You
This article by Robert Schaffer offers a pithy introduction to the Rapid Results concept.
> Order a copy of the article
> Learn more about Schaffer Consulting's Rapid Results Approach

The Conference Board's ExecutiveAction series
The article "The Nuts and Bolts of Execution: Putting Ideas to Work" describes the real work involved in achieving measurable results. Robert Schaffer is quoted extensively, offering real-world examples of results achieved by some of Schaffer Consulting's clients.
> Learn more about Schaffer Consulting's approach to Execution
> Order a copy of the article

Transforming a Business from End-to-End
Ron Ashkenas and Pete Perez, SVP of Human Resources at ConAgra, will be speaking at The Conference Board's 2006 Change Management Conference: Managing the Unknown in New York City on November 14th. They will explain how ConAgra is transforming itself from a holding company to an integrated operating company by, among other things, helping them generate rapid results as a way of increasing their capacity for change.
> Learn more about Schaffer Consulting's Rapid Results Approach
>Learn more about Schaffer Consulting's WorkOut

The Aging Workforce Challenge
A new article in Electric Light and Power, by Keith Michaelson and Leslie Rittenhouse, discusses how to turn supervisors into mentors and build leadership development into the daily job in order to capture decades of supervisory experience before it walks out the door.
> Order a copy of the article
> Learn more about Leadership Development

AI Toolkit featured in The DEAL.com
Integration Navigation by Suzanne Stevens, features Schaffer Consulting's AI Toolkit as a solution for standardizing the integration process.
> Learn more about our AI Toolkit

From Pilot Project to Business Strategy: How to Turn Innovation into Growth
A new article by Wes Siegal and Evan Smith , published in this month's Consulting to Management, explains what organizations can do to involve stakeholder groups in selecting, conducting, and reviewing growth pilots - and how these steps maximize the long-term value of those pilots.
> Order a copy of the article
> Learn more about our Rapid-Results Approach

Stand and Deliver!
Katie Beavan's latest article, published in The Conference Board's Across the Board magazine, describes how newly appointed executives can use the Rapid-Results Approach to deliver immediate improvements and build momentum for success.
> Order a copy of the article
> Learn more about our Leadership Development consulting services