Praise for the Collaborative Operating System™ Teleseminar
COS is a phenomenal system for those organizations who want the best from all of their people. We have been using the system for years and have made it a permanent part of our organization. We continue to grow and thrive in this challenging economy and we count the COS system as one of the key contributors to our success.
- Jim Blue, CEO
The Bostonian Group
Boston, MA
The COS was a powerful career and life experience that changed the way I look at ownership, engagement, and commitment. I highly recommend COS to any person who wants to change their paradigm for engaging with and leading others.
- Shannon Rush-Call, Talent and Resource Management Lead - Microsoft Account
Accenture
Boise, ID
Learning COS catapulted me to the next level, both in my thinking about how to solve difficult problems and in moving me forward in my career. As a young person and a female, I found myself working in the predominately male-dominated field of utility energy policy, and I was trying to engage stakeholders to take on some of the world's most pressing problems. COS gave me the tools and confidence to earn the respect of my colleagues, engage in a difficult settlement process, and resolve 30 years of litigation between multiple parties. By engaging in a collaborative process, I was able to address not only the technical issues needing resolution, but also the very real human factors involved in letting go of an old way of thinking and adapting to our changing times.
Now, in my current role as an administrative law judge, I am leading a 50+ party stakeholder process to determine how to appropriately spend over $15 billion dollars to mitigate the impacts of climate change on electricity ratepayers while reducing the state's greenhouse gas emissions. I employ the tools of COS regularly to engage all parties as well as to manage our internal process in addressing this issue. Perhaps most importantly, I use the tools on myself to keep clear on the problem we're solving and our trajectory forward. Whenever things go awry, I bring myself and my team back to the fundamental problem we are trying to solve and why we are trying to solve it. It helps keep us motivated, aligned and energized.
Melissa Semcer, Administrative Law Judge
California Public Utilities Commission
San Francisco, CA
The core principles of COS, and clear articulation of what it means to build ownership and alignment, and how to do so effectively, have proven invaluable to me in leading and working across teams and defining and tackling wicked problems in an increasingly complex organization.
- Beth Anderson Senior Vice President, National Development
Teach for America
New York, NY
“As a Human Resources executive, my experiences with Rachel and the COS are an invaluable part of the toolkit I use every day. I have known Rachel for over ten years, and during that time, her insightful leadership, constant encouragement and profound coaching have been instrumental in my personal and professional growth. Additionally, the fundamentals I learned in the COS provide the strategic and tactical backbone that has allowed me to create sustainable and measurable cultural change in the organizations I’ve served. Done well, it is truly a differentiator for any organization or leader. I would highly recommend both the content and the process to anyone desiring a truly better, and more effective, way of leading and living.”
- Jeff Knapp, Vice President, Human Resources
Harvest Power, Inc.
Boston, MA
If you are looking for an effective antidote to issues like employee disengagement and leadership fatigue, the Collaborative Operating System offers sensible, leading-edge, and easy to implement strategies. As a corporate coach for ten years, I find COS to be the most relevant professional development tool in my toolbox. The training is comprehensive and the trainers, masterful.
- Sheila M. Kelly, Leadership Coach
The Big Yes
Nova Scotia, Canada
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The Collaborative Operating System is the most powerful tool I use to get people on the same page (literally) and moving forward together. It transformed my consulting work, from Silicon Valley startups to the Fortune 50. It works well across cultures - I've used it successfully throughout Europe, where a client said, "I just love how our team works together". If you need to lead people, or work with people to get things done - at companies, departments, projects, customers, alliance partnerships, teenagers, families, and communities - I highly recommend the COS. (And I'm not even joking about teenagers.)
- Steve Tennant, Consultant
Tennant Consulting
COS is a ideal framework for engaging multiple stakeholders in complex problem solving. COS has irrevocably changed how I view and approach collaboration and teamwork. It is a language and way for all to engage in our work as empowered adults. I believe COS is a critical skill for anyone engaged in the facilitation and implementation of institutional change, especially in the areas of environmental and sustainability initiatives.
- Joanne Chu, PhD, Director of Sustainable Living and Environmental Studies
Georgia Perimeter College
COS has been instrumental for me, not only in solving my organization's difficult problems, but in working with our local government members to solve climate and sustainability issues - for sure one of humanity's most complex and vexing problems!
- K.C. Boyce, Deputy Executive Director, Membership & Regional Impact
ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability
Atlanta, GA
I have used COS with great success and much positive feedback in facilitating a multi-session strategic planning program for our local senior center. I cannot rave too much about the value of this program. It is extremely well organized. The process is very clear and easily adapted to any organization. The material is simply OUTSTANDING, and it is delivered in the most effective and efficient manner.
- Hardy Hasenfuss, Coach and President
Thriving Business Partners
Boston, MA
As an executive coach and consultant, I was skeptical about anything claiming to replace hierarchy in organizations, however I was pleasantly surprised with the depth, simplicity and elegance embedded in the Collaborative Operating System. I use the "Problem Solving Template" in every session with my coaching clients and every time I meet with a consulting client. I run my organization with COS and always conduct collaborative meetings with my clients and their customers. I've helped several clients deploy COS in their organizations and they are always struck by how simple and effective it is.
- Michael O. "Coop" Cooper, President
LEVER/edge, Inc.
San Francisco, CA
The Collaborative Operating System™ provides a foundational framework in which organizations effectively work on the right problems in a manner that engages stakeholder creativity to develop real solutions that make a difference. The COS ensures that all team members become part of the solution. The process is practical and enables implementation that drives meaningful results. I attended a COS seminar in '07 and use the leadership concepts and processes in my business almost daily. I recommended the COS and Seminar if you are seeking a way to make meaningful and positive change.
- Buzz Sztukowski, Vice President & General Manager
Specialty Diagnostics Americas at PerkinElmer, Inc
Having done strategic facilitation for 15+ years, taking the COS course was a bracing engagement with the best parts of our profession. It sets a very high standard for the potential of collaboration, and for me this was extremely valuable.
- Paul Downs, Strategic Planning Facilitator
Paul Downs Consulting
Berkeley, CA
Organizational changes driven by the new economy can be very complex in nature. COS was helpful in teaching me how to get at the real problem quickly and gaining ownership and alignment from all stakeholders helped assure work force reductions without compromising our mission and commitment to our members.
-Dan Pile, Sr. VP of Operations
Metro Atlanta YMCA, Inc.
Having first been exposed to the Collaborative Operating System™ through a community workgroup that included participants from many agencies, I asked Rachel Conerly if she would facilitate our management team retreat. Our agency was experiencing difficulties in making decisions efficiently. By the end of the day long retreat we had full agreement about a re-alignment and a new decision-making process. Now a small management group uses the problem-solving template to make important agency decisions, inviting key stakeholders as needed. The Collaborative Operating System works. It helps remove a lot of unnecessary clutter from the conversations that really matter.
- Tim Brooks, Director
Carolina Outreach
Personal empowerment
COS has empowered me to be successful at at very young age. The program equipped me with the skills and the confidence to engage in work with people of any age and any level. COS creates a framework and path that works in any meeting or project big or small. People are innately drawn to the clean, efficient process the COS establishes.
COS helps me because it builds trust and confidence in me, my abilities, and my work with all people I work with. As a 20-something in world of 50 year olds, establishing trust and confidence quickly so we can get into real work is critical.
Community engagement
COS is a critical tool in working with the public/community. The public comes to me with anger and frustration over an environmental issue that they don't like in their community. I have to unpack the emotions so that we can get to the actual problem that they'd like solved. COS allows me to cut right through the emotion and get to the heart of the problem. I have watched many people turn quickly from a feelings of anger and angst into feelings of excitement and empowerment. COS is the tool by which they learn I am here to work with them and be their partner.
Team work
My staff and I have studied under the COS system for the past several years. It is the model we use for all of our work. It has been amazing to watch everyone of my staff grow and blossom through use of the COS tools. We have tremendous transparency and openness within our team that has created strength, trust, and incredible team work. People we work with often comment about how impressed they are at the level of honest communication and dynamic nature of our team. It's because of COS.
- Mandy Schmitt, Director of Sustainability
City of Atlanta - Mayor's Office
Atlanta, GA
I've always been a change agent. I was the VP of HR for a 600-person organization when I learned and used the Collaborative Operating System (COS). We started by training our associates in Collaborative Meetings; next we trained the administrative assistants as facilitators. These two steps began the transformation. I later commissioned what has become COS, and it is indeed, a paradigm shift and the most effective approach to work that I know of. My company was making the shift from a command and control organization to a more collaborative one. Rachel and her staff introduced the COS and the culture shift began. As our meetings became more collaborative, there was ownership for actions. The process was a strategic one as well as a tactical one. Ownership, Alignment and Trust became the new mantra of the organization.
I highly recommend the COS to any organization, no matter the size.
Bill Goad
Former VPHR of Style Crest, Inc.
Taking this course was one of the best career decisions I've ever made. It took my facilitation skills to the next level and gave me an elegant and powerful methodology for achieving the results my clients and I are looking for. The clarity of the instruction and the organization of the materials were excellent. The instructors are excellent teachers and the classes are structured in a way that exemplified the course content, so that I learned as much from how we were being taught as what was taught. Overall, a rich and profound learning experience that delivered far more than promised. Thank you!
- Michael Ryan, Consultant
Ryan & Associates, Inc.
Boise, ID
COS empowered me to become more confident in my role as an engaged employee in addition to helping me become more organized and efficient in my personal work every day.
- Sydnee Grushack, Management Analyst
City of Atlanta - Mayor's Office - Division of Sustainability
Atlanta, GA
Rachel Conerly was introduced to me as I was assuming 'turnaround' responsibility for an organization in crisis. She had previously trained one of the organization's managers in the COS approach. I noticed how effective he was, by using some of the techniques, in helping his colleagues navigate the crisis. We invited Rachel to join us as a resource in an early transition conference call to offer process reflection. The COS framework develops a group's mentality and facility for tackling tough challenges: if people can be aided to clearly define and agree on the problems with and over which they wrestle, then they can establish a framework for working together with greater equanimity on developing the solutions. Some of the COS techniques were introduced into our manager's weekly group work activities. Rachel also worked with us to design and co-facilitate a culminating retreat with Board and managers to finalize the re-organization plan. The retreat was a great success, and with Rachel's engagement we also identified new issues for future work. Throughout her engagement, Rachel was intensive, responsive, generous, and an accessible fellow-traveler. We concluded our engagement with her with a sense of great progress and an awareness that she still had more to teach.
- Jeb Brugmann, Managing Partner
The Next Practice
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