The SPADER™ framework

Blue & Gray specializes in managing the Sales, Partner and Marketing ecosystems holistically through our practical, yet powerful SPADER™ model. SPADER™ is an interlock model encompassing Sales, Partner, Assessment, Development, Execution and Research/Recruitment.

S

Strategy Engagement, Sales Strategy Mapping, Sales Training, Sales Process, Sales Assessment/Certification.

P

Partner Strategy Mapping, Partner Development, Retention, Recruitment, Assessment, People Engagement (Culture), People Drive (Motivation), People Alignment (Trust), People Recognition.

A

Assessment Centre development, Alignment of Values to Strategy, Talent Assessment

D

Skills Development, Competencies Development, Training & Certification.

E

Enablement of People, Partners, Sales; Employer Branding.

R

Recruitment Tool-kit development, Employee Retention, Competencies development, Culture Research/Surveys.

Culture Methodology

Creating YOUR All In Culture

Engage, enable and energize your workforce

“If you don’t create a culture at your company, a culture will create itself, and it won’t be good. If it hasn’t been nurtured you can assume it’s the wrong culture.” - Bill Emerson, CEO, Quicken Loans

Assess & Consult

The Culture Works can assist you in designing and delivering a unique system-wide, culture engaging, enabling and energizing experience to encourage effort across the entire organization by following our proven methodology.

Using Interviews, Focus Groups and Online and Written Surveys our performance consultants assess current levels of employee engagement, enablement and energy—and our proprietary seven steps to identify where your culture has opportunities for growth. We also review key performance metrics and other existing baselines to help us gain the complete picture for our reporting.

With our actionable Formal Findings Assessment Report™ and Visual Scorecard™ in hand, we work with your leaders to define your strategic cultural vision, core personality and performance objectives for your desired culture and create a Culture Design Document™ and Road Map™ that will lead your organization through the steps of the cultural transformation process. In this phase we identify milestones for developing your communication, education, sustainment and accountability tools for leaders to mark your progress according to strategy.

Educate & Communicate

Next, backed by our team of performance consultants, project managers, instructional designers, writers and graphic artists, we work with your team to customize and personalize your educational and communication experiences. This can include a custom keynote by the authors for your leadership team; a customized in-person or online culture training experience for employees and managers; a communication campaign including print, verbal, and video messages, leader aides, recognition, social media, and so on. The sky’s the limit.

The process of cultural learning can begin with in-person workshops for leaders and employees, with a thought-provoking mix of exercises, intelligent debate and lecture, best practices from our research, as well as experiences culled from within your organization. The resulting All In Action Plan™ and Take It To Your Team™ exercises, will help leaders weave cultural improvement efforts into daily performance, their daily communications, recognition, and accountability measures with their teams upon returning to their workplace.

The Goal – Whether an employee is a front-line worker, a midlevel leader, or a senior executive, they should have clear and actionable definitions of your “Why” and of the performance that supports your mission, core values, goals, and individual expectations. It’s one thing to hang up a poster of your mission and strategies; but true culture change doesn’t happen until you translate your principles into real behaviors expected of leaders and employees who interact with your clients every day.

A system-wide cultural initiative must gather a real head of steam to reach into all corners of the organization. This important aligning step of education and communication will teach leaders the “Why” and the “How” to begin finding hidden reservoirs of ingenuity and drive in their teams and fuel lasting change.

Measure & Sustain

The questions at the root of any cultural-improvement effort are:

What do my customers want in our brand?
Why would my employees care about this culture and live that brand?

Answers will come as you help each person understand how their performance affects not only themselves but their teammates and the overall company, customers, community, and shareholders. This includes weaving cultural-improvement efforts into executive communication, company communications at all levels, in all departments, daily/weekly staff meetings, performance evaluations, and accountability measures.

Unit-by-unit analysis can also be conducted through discussion and associate pulse or formal surveys. Areas of improvement are identified and proactively addressed.

Our Partnership with The Culture Works

The Motivators Assessment

Wide Scope

Most people know their personality and their strengths. But what about their motivators? The Motivators Assessment was created based on the results of workplace surveys with more than 850,000 people and comprises 23 workplace motivators and 5 clusters of motivators, known as identities.

Motivating Individuals

It’s the world’s most extensive and scientific assessment to help individuals identify their unique blend of core motivators, enabling them to align their passions with more of what they love at work and less of what frustrates them.

Increases Work Efficiency

It also helps managers and leaders better understand this blend of diverse identities within their teams and helps them to “sculpt” the nature of their team’s work towards what drives them.

Our Capabilities