Here’s what people are saying about Stratus Consulting
“I have worked with Gabrielle over the last 3 years and consider her to be a very skilled organisation development professional.
“We have used her in a wide variety of projects including the design and implementation of our competency frameworks, recruitment and selection systems, Leadership Development programmes, senior level facilitation and structural reviews.
“We have also used her as a Key Executive coach for our organisation, an area in which she is particularly skilled.
“She has that rare gift of being able to get people to explore for themselves what is getting in the way of their effectiveness as an Executive and is able to effectively assist them to make positive behavioural change. She is also very comfortable working with Senior Executives and the issues faced at that level.”
– GM People, The Warehouse Group
“I heartily recommend the work of Stratus Consulting and Gabrielle Young. I have had a long association with Gabrielle, and value her as one of my major consulting suppliers.
“Stratus is able to deliver a wide range of human resources, organisation and leadership initiatives. Gabrielle operates in a very business focused way. All her initiatives and solutions are practical, implementable and totally strategic and business linked.
“She is a very skilled executive in her own right and can command the respect of executives, managers and staff easily. I would like to particularly note her facilitation skills. It is often difficult to find someone capable of working with senior people, and Gabrielle has had extensive experience facilitating leadership and senior teams and is well able to handle the complexity of issues at this level.
“Stratus Consulting is a value for money operation. Gabrielle’s work pace and output is second to none, and her solutions are effective without being over-engineered. She is excellent at transferring skills and leaves the client with material and approaches that they can manage and leave themselves.”
– Tracy Bell
“Gabrielle Young’s impressive range of skills and experience in organisational development and learning and development were used to clarify the direction of learning and development at Merck Sharp and Dohme (New Zealand). Her ability to crystallise strategy, build high-impact processes and programmes and work effectively as a seasoned facilitator and coach enables her to provide solutions that really work.”
– Robin White, Senior VP HR Asia Pacific, Merck and Co.
“The brief for our planning session was threefold and included the development of a cohesive and strategically aligned work programme that supported the business requirements AND a high level of clarity, engagement and ownership of the plan by the team and stakeholders alike AND the building of the teams understanding of each other’s personal styles/differences and roles within the team to support the development of a high performing team.
“Gabrielle created and facilitated a clear and well structured session with a strong focus on achieving the objectives set and ensuring the end outcome delivered to expectations. Gabrielle’s facilitation is business credible, professional, exudes positive energy and is the mark of a skilled facilitation style.
“As a result, we had a cohesive plan that aligned to business needs and assisted in the securing of ongoing budget to fund our growth objectives, as well as improved team dynamics and an increased understanding of us as individuals within the work environment.”
– Pip Ball, Fonterra Milk Supply
“Gabrielle designed, with the leadership group, and then facilitated two very successful 2-day vision workshops for the NZ Merchandise team.
“We asked Gabrielle to help us as we had had previous workshops that were not successful, and so the potential for cynicism and failure was high. She listened to what we wanted to achieve out of the workshop, and designed an appropriate agenda that we were sure would achieve the results we wanted. Gabrielle picked up what we were driving at even when we were sometimes unsure, she is very astute and has a knack for wordsmithing which makes us all sound good.
“Gabrielle was most helpful on the day in terms of keeping the workshop on track to achieve our objectives, by reading the audience extremely well in terms of letting things of value go over time, but keeping the whole workshop within the time frames.
“As a leadership team, we have all learned something from the way that Gabrielle put together the workshop, coached us through our presentations, and managed the follow-through action planning. One of the keys of the workshop was for the participants to have fun, and as an unexpected side benefit, the leadership group also had fun over the two days, due mainly to the coaching and support we received from Gabrielle. I would certainly recommend Gabrielle to facilitate any large conferences or large scale meetings which aim to engage people in a fun way.”
– David Primus, National Merchandising Planning Manager
The Warehouse NZ
“Engaging Gabrielle to facilitate groups is a good decision because you can rely on the process being effective, and the desired outcomes being achieved. She is ideally suited to professional groups, which have complex needs and issues, and who are not highly self aware about their skill gaps, or where the individuals in the group are cynical about development and their need for learning.
“She uses a sound process for understanding the specific issues of the group and individuals and uses this to define clear objectives, outcomes and the right process to achieve the desired outcomes. Her facilitation style is interactive and addresses the real issues for the groups she works with. She is highly effective at positively challenging individuals around their behaviour and consistently provides positive frameworks for new, more constructive behaviours that allow groups and individuals to achieve better results.”
– Helen Emmerson, Principal, Emmerson Group
“We were a newly formed team with a new manager and as a team we were required to a substantial strategic change in the marketing of our products. At the time we were operating less than efficiently and were often frustrated with the difficulty in achieving what presented as simple goals and objectives. We needed clarity about our individual roles and how they needed to interact effectively with each other to achieve greater productivity and alignment.
“Gabrielle worked with us to create shared understanding and alignment and a clear vision of how we needed to operate to deliver results. We agreed to clear ‘rules of engagement’, and afterwards we were able to challenge each other when these weren’t being honoured. As a result of the work we did afterwards we had the tools and a common language to address any issues which arose.
“Gabrielle is a skilled facilitator whose approach is structured but relaxed. She was able to positively tackle the difficult issues with the team which meant we were able to move beyond the storming phase of our development to performance.”
– Audrey Smith, Rinnai
“While seen in the organisation as a highly technically competent manager, I needed to improve my ability to communicate my ideas to the MD and key stakeholders in the company to gain their buy in and improve my overall impact and executive effectiveness.
“The coaching helped me identify my blind spots and the need for increased emotional intelligence to achieve better results. I learnt how I interacted with and impacted on others and then Gabrielle taught me some specific techniques to improve my skills in this area. As the coaching progressed, she has helped me keep on track and keep moving towards my vision.
“I am now better at managing change, communicating new initiatives, gaining key stake-holder buy-in, and leading the team. I am also more disciplined in my work, including prioritising better than before, setting specific times to focus purely on strategy, team development, my own career development, and planning.
“As a result, I am now in a new role within the company and looking forward to successfully navigating the challenges of my new role.”
– GM New Business Development, Pumpkin Patch
“Stratus Consulting worked with us to implement a talent review and management framework for our organisation. We had not previously had any framework for managing talent and were concerned that we did not have an effective, cross organisational understanding of our talent pool and the mechanism to manage it effectively.
“Stratus Consulting designed and implemented a framework that was easy to use and which engaged all our managers in reviewing their talent pools. As a result of the work we did, we created Executive team ownership for cross organisational talent management where it hadn’t existed before. The Executive team also had a powerful whole-of-organisation view of our talent and a clear process we could use on an on-going basis for identifying potential successors for key roles, developing talent, and growing the capability in our organisation. Stratus Consulting facilitated the whole process and has now successfully conducted three annual talent review rounds with us. Stratus Consulting has been an invaluable partner for us in this area in assisting us to move forward.”
– Service Delivery Manager, Govt. Department
“Engaging Gabrielle for executive coaching around the development of an improved performance culture and new performance management processes meant that the senior managers have been personally supported in their practices to better manage their direct reports. The situation required a sophisticated combination of training, motivation and problem solving to support the change. Gabrielle was able to achieve commitment to the new people and performance management processes and required behaviours from all the managers she worked with. Notably, even the most cynical made some change.”
– Manager, Civil Aviation Authority
“The business required a significant shift in the capability of our people to ensure we were able to deliver on both a customer intimacy and operational efficiency strategy. In addition, the difficulties in attracting appropriately skilled people in the increasingly challenging employment market indicated we would need to pursue a ‘grow your own’ approach. We needed a targeted technical competency framework and career maps that aligned to the business’s future capability requirements and a development approach that encouraged business ownership.
Stratus Consulting applied a development approach that ensured we achieve comprehensive business engagement via focus groups and workshops. As a result we achieved a comprehensive strategic competency framework and career pathways that supported the massive capability shift required to deliver on the next phase of our business strategy.”
– Pip Ball, HR Manager, Fonterra Milk Supply
“We were facing some significant strategic challenges which meant our work was significantly increasing in complexity and we needed to identify the capability we needed to meet those challenges. Stratus Consulting worked with us to identify the capability required across our organisation through a facilitated process of workshops with employees and managers. As a result we had a clear blueprint of the capability required for all of our key roles.
“Stratus Consulting then worked with us to review our current state against our desired capability and helped us to put in place plans to create the increased capability required. As a result we made changes to our recruiting, performance management, training and talent management practices. The process was holistic, thorough and engaging of our people and enabled all of us to think through what we needed and how to get there. The process was enormously useful to our organisation and really assisted us to deliver on our strategic agenda.”
– HR Manager, Government Department
“A comprehensive review of the organisation was undertaken at a critical time in its evolution by people who were able to create the trust required to identify the real issues and recommend a sensible process to take the organisation forward. Stratus Consulting were the perfect people for such a sensitive undertaking and the organisation benefited immensely.”
– Chair, FITEC