It’s the same from first contact to closeout

We believe in strong collaboration: from our first contact with our clients, our emphasis is on sharing expertise and building trust. We work with each client to accurately assess the current situation and to identify goals and aspirations. We are sensitive to your organizational life cycle, your strengths and areas for development, your passion, and what is important to you.

You are younique

We don’t offer ‘cookie cutter’ or ‘off-the-shelf’ interventions. No two clients are the same. We respect your uniqueness, your wisdom, and your experiences, all the while listening intently to what you aspire to be and achieve. Blue Apricot Solutions helps to strengthen the core of the client organization or team by applying what we call a “systems approach.” Apparent weaknesses in one area inevitably impact not only the area concerned, but the larger system, too. We don’t simply address the symptoms. Instead, we acknowledge the complexity of your organization:  a myriad of interconnected systems, processes, goals and people. With your unique DNA in mind, we find where the leverage is, for real and enduring change.

As part of the systems approach, we recognize that leading, managing and working in today’s organizations call for an extraordinary range of skills. In many cases our clients have most of the needed skills, but they don’t realize it. To help you identify and draw out those skills, we bring non-judgmental curiosity and effective coaching and facilitation, helping you to gain fresh perspective. We work with you  to help you work through the issues, tensions, and decisions with up-front, agreed-upon outcomes in mind.

Formula for success

We believe that organizations are essentially made up of people and so we place an emphasis on humanistic values. We pay attention to change resistance, morale, turnover, conflict, ineffective teamwork and weak leadership. Throughout all engagements we are mindful of the inevitable resistance to change (RC) at all levels. This is why we:

• focus on identifying the level of dissatisfaction with the status quo or current state (D)
• support the client with ‘destination modeling’ to create a vision of the future (V), and
• help you to execute first steps (FS) to the new future

Our experience in leading change and working with our clients has given us a perspective on resistance: resistance is normal!  In the past, management and leadership often acted in ways that exacerbated any resistance by forcing people to act in ways that made little sense to them. In today’s more enlightened climate, we encourage our clients to engage staff at all levels to assess what is working well and where change might be needed. This engagement supports ownership of the rationale and desired outcome underscoring plans for changing the status quo. The engagement also reduces the ‘fight or flight’ reaction when people feel they are being told what to do.

We help our clients understand the importance of appreciating the different brains we all have and how the neocortex brain can be tapped to create possibilities and commitment to creating something new. We believe times change, markets change, economic conditions change – and so can people and organizational culture. We support our clients build that faith, too, by way of:

• individual and team coaching
• counseling
• advising
• motivating
• conflict management
• group facilitation
• peer group learning and, yes,
• we can be cheerleaders to your growth, change and success.

Learn more about Blue Apricot Solutions

• Learn about the services we offer and how we may help you
• See who we have helped and learn about their successes
• Contact Caroline to see how we can help you