The following is a documentation of some of the projects where we have used IAM ideas and concepts. These client engagements have significantly contributed to the development of the IAM body of work.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina
Focus: Career Development

In 2004-2005, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina tested the IAM concept in a program called “Career Navigator.” The results were so strong that management decided to offer the program to all 4000+ BCBSNC employees.

“The CEO and the Senior VP for Human Resources advised the employees that, ‘we listened to your requests, and as a result, the Career Navigator program is now incorporated into our culture.’” — Carol Sutton, VP State Operations

Kenan-Flagler Information Technology
Focus: Leadership Development

In 2006-2007, Kenan-Flagler engaged KT&A to build on the already strong capabilities of their leadership team and increase their strategic, coaching and employee development capacities. Their project included Personal Everyday Leadership supported by individual and group coaching and Organizational Performance Leadership (with the CIO) followed by individual and group coaching.

“While I knew our leadership team was great, I also knew they could be better. However, to take the “great” to “incredible” would require more fundamental shifts and I didn’t know if our leadership team would be open to those shifts. In the end, KT&A helped us take a huge step forward in developing excellent career and life skills. Our leadership is now asking and getting higher-levels of performance from not only themselves but also their staff. Personal ownership and self-reliance are just as important in a team; each member of management truly understands their roles in the leadership of IT making authentic teamwork a reality. As with all change, it is a journey but this journey has had a truly great start.” — Susan Kellogg, CIO and Associate Dean of IT, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School

IntraHealth Information Technology
Focus: Leadership Development

In 2006-2009, IntraHealth’s IT organization engaged KT&A to help them meet the increasing demands on their organization by bolstering the personal and organizational leadership capacity of their senior team. Their project included Personal Everyday Leadership supported by individual coaching and Organizational Performance Leadership followed by individual coaching. While significant learning was achieved, the original vision for our work was not achieved when organizational restructuring thwarted our efforts.

IntraHealth has since contracted with KT&A to deliver their newly developed Essential Everyday Communications workshop in 2009.

“I personally have created some major drama’s in my life. I hope I’m done with the big crisis. I know that I am now spending the majority of my time glowing and flowing, soundly centered in the unchangeable part of my self even as I navigate the dramas that still arise. I’m seeing places of conflict as liberating opportunities, portals to freedom and challenges to greater capacity.

My leadership team has experienced varied shifts toward being more vital and inspired. Our work with Karen now is to create consistency and discipline in our everyday leadership, breaking down the vestiges of constrictive industrial thinking, unleashing our collective dynamic, vibrant, happy, creative and innovative energy.” –Dykki Settle, Director Information Systems and Technology

Lutheran World Relief
Focus: Leadership Development

In 2005-2008, LWR’s Director of Organizational Effectiveness engaged KT&A to learn about the connections between personal leadership and organizational effectiveness. The lessons learned from this work contributed to the evolution of IAM. In 2007 we are collaborating to bring IAM and Personal Everyday Leadership specifically into LWR as the basis for their leadership development efforts: IAM was introduced to their entire headquarters staff and is being rolled out in a six month pilot program November 2007 through April 2008.

LWR’s External Relations Directors subsequently contracted with KT&A to personally coach them and deliver Personal Everyday Leadership.Results include: stronger ability to experience a calm center, shift from doers to strategic leaders, balance between strength and kindness, gain in confidence to raise expectations with direct reports, improve critical thinking, improve decision making, and access wisdom and intuition.

“Working with Karen has opening up so many new areas of discovery through increasing my consciousness and awakening my understanding of who I am and my connection with others and to the world. This has resulted in deeper relationships with colleagues, friends and family as well as concrete, practical achievements in my career and within my organization. I’m now on a path of ever expanding relationships and ever expanding learning. Bottom line is, working with Karen has helped me become more effective in work and more alive in my life.” — Lisa A Negstad, Director for Organizational Effectiveness

City of Durham
Focus: Leading Employee Development

The City of Durham contracted with KT&A to use IAM concepts and frameworks in conducting a workshop with senior city leaders on leading employee development. Learning objectives included linking employee development to organizational goals, using IAM as a basis for learning, and developing coaching skills.

North Carolina State University – Pack Promise Advisors
Focus: Coaching Skills

NCSU engaged KT&A to help Pack Promise Advisors include coaching skills as part of their approach to supporting students. Student advising had reflected a tone of ‘we know for you what you need to do’. Coaching training helped create a shift to a consistent process for inspiring students to take appropriate self-directed action. NCSU coaches are using their personal skill and the IAM frameworks to ‘put the power with the students.’

A provider of health care products and solutions
Focus: Career Development

In the latter part of 2008 we took on a large project to move forward the work we had conducted with BCBSNC. The project included consulting, an orientation session, online learning and coaching skills training.

In collaboration with our client, we developed a comprehensive career development program for them called Essential Career Savvy (ECS). Some of our successes were:

• Expansion of the Career Navigator content we developed for BCBSNC to be much more robust and complete.
• Establishment of a new online learning delivery system using a Learning Management System.
• Successful implementation of our project plan, meeting delivery targets and accountability goals.
• Implementation of a strategic design process.
• Creation of several new lessons based on market needs and trends.
• Improvement of our lesson design and functionality.
• Customization of content and design based on client feedback.
• We (Diane and Karen) collaborated extremely well throughout the entire process.
• Incorporation of an innovative evaluation strategy to measure effectiveness.

We were disappointed that this client decided the Essential Career Savvy program was not a good fit for their organization. However, we are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to partner with them, and after reviewing the feedback and suggestions for improvement, we are passionately and joyfully enhancing our product for future clients that will provide long-term value and usefulness.

Some of our improvements to Essential Career Savvy include:

• Consulting to include clarification of mutual expectations throughout the project to ensure our client understands, agrees with, and is aligned with our common understanding of the design and business strategy, project goals, and intended outcomes.
• Shifting to more collaborative consulting, framed by the IAM Touchstones to ensure 100% responsibility from everyone for the project’s success.
• Requiring preliminary meetings with stakeholders (leaders and a cross-section of learners) to better understand the organizational readiness for change, their culture (from various perspectives), to develop and convey the purpose and intent of the pilot, and to describe how the project is linked with the business strategy so that natural resistance to change is expected and handled appropriately.
• Emphasizing of the need for coaching with our client and stakeholders to insure effective communications of participant criteria, program expectations and to ensure effective support of participant learning.
• Enhanced packaging of our product, starting with a renaming of it to Career Savvy – keeping it simple and easy to remember.
• Technological enhancements to our LMS delivery to provide more interactivity.
• Refinement of the structure and delivery of our product to be delivered in a phased approach. (Implemented with our new public offering – coming soon.)

We are absolutely sure that everything happens for a reason and grateful that this project has renewed our trust and faith in the value of our offerings, the success that comes from working with ideal clients and the strength of our creative and collaborative abilities. We’re looking forward to our next career development project where all of this learning will be leveraged!

Rho
Focus: Teambuilding and Change Leadership skill development

In 2009 Rho contracted with Karen Tax & Associates to support their HR team in developing greater personal leadership and self-care in the process of becoming more strategic. We worked with the team to develop change leadership skills – to be used personally and as the business continues to adapt to a changing marketplace.

~~~~~

2009 developed as a year where we focused less on corporate projects and more on developing and setting-up the online/passive revenue side of our business. I (Karen) didn’t realize just how much work this would be! As 2009 comes to a close, I’m feeling really, really good about the work we have accomplished this year setting up systems and creating online content to support both individual and corporate clients via the IAM Learning Community.

Most importantly for our corporate work – our vision and strategy has radically shifted. Frankly, I had had enough work with groups who didn’t want to dig in and really change. Our strategy now is to work in organizations with individuals who have personally used and benefited from the IAM body of work and want to see it used for the benefit of others and their business/organization. That means you’ve joined the IAM Learning Community and/or been a client of one of the IAM Coaches.

Our intention is to work with people and organizations who want transformative change and who understand that this is not about delivering services that will tweak ‘business as usual’  and ‘make people stop complaining’ but instead will be about fundamental change from the inside out – recreating how business is conducted.

Ready for things to be different? Let us know …