Opening Lines of Communication
An aggressive credit card bank was experiencing rapid growth. These changes had disrupted normal work flows and communications within a critical business segment. Singularity helped research, design and develop a series of education programs and personal coaching sessions which progressively addressed process and skill deficiencies in the segment. As a result, the segment has become more responsive and sensitive to change, most recently completing a complex corporate initiative that required efficient inter-segment working relationships and processes

Strategic Management Development
A fast-growing “super-community” bank was acquiring local competitors at a rapid pace. Without a culture of sophisticated management development, managers were frustrated by the ever-expanding and complex situations they had to manage every day. Singularity developed a management development program and a follow-up performance appraisal system that focused on implementing the bank’s people-first strategy. The result has been a new appreciation of the manager’s role in the organization as well as an infrastructure that regularly develops management talent.

Managing Change
An insurance company was acquired by a foreign financial services conglomerate. The company's managers, used to a high degree of autonomy and independence, had to adjust decision-making processes to the new leadership’s expectations. Because changes in systems, products and direction evolved over a long period, managers had to work in an environment of high uncertainty. Singularity developed a program designed to provide managers with an understanding of change and how to manage in the midst of an unsettled environment. Based on research that compiled the advice of leading change theorists, this program clarified expectations and provided skills for dealing with personal reactions to change, work process impacts and the effects on direct reports.

Maintaining Market Share
An office equipment manufacturer was composed of five different companies, each having a different business and approach to the market. In order to remain competitive and to cement market share, the chairperson needed managers throughout the organization to lead by applying universal Guiding Principles defined by competency research. These Guiding Principles described values for the customer, the employees, the community, and shareholders. Singularity Group was involved with designing a four-day leadership development program that taught senior managers what these values where and how they were to be used in guiding decision-making.

Leadership Skills
In the late-l980s, General Motors was suffering a crisis of confidence. Executives felt that managers needed to take more responsibility in changing the culture and running the day to day business. A Singularity Group principal designed and developed a five-day leadership program that became a legend in GM history. Called Leadership Now, the program was taught to the top levels of management in the organization and is seen as having laid the ground work for improvement in quality and performance.

Heading Off Competition
A large conglomerate of businesses from retail to financial services was faced with increasing competition from discounters in all their lines of business. The company needed to demonstrate that it could be profitable in the middle market with the right mix of products and services. A Singularity Group principal worked with the organization’s strategic planners and economists to design and develop a computer simulation called Marketplace. This sophisticated game taught the principles of balancing price and service variables. The simulation demonstrated the concept to 2,000 of the organization’s managers including the chairman and his direct reports.

Restoring Trust
An oil and gas company experienced a downsizing in an effort to get reduce costs and become more responsive to market needs. Management hired another consultant to streamline work procedures. Unfortunately, the resulting program was not implemented properly; the effect on employees was clearly negative and a wide trust gap appeared between the leadership and the rest of the organization. A Singularity Group principal was involved in determining what the issues were and bringing them to management, developing an executive action plan with short, intermediate and long range activities and conducting problem-solving sessions with mid-managers in which they recognized their role in addressing the issues.

Empowering Teams
Executive management of a Japanese-owned electronic services company had just imposed a period of “stability." This rigidity and discipline were a necessary step, but the time had come to allow teams to operate with more autonomy, using the controls created in the first phase. Through focus group research, a Singularity Group principal was involved in defining the new roles required of managers in that environment. This became the foundation of both management development and succession planning programs.

Becoming A Manager
A global travel business promoted young managers with limited experience in the business world to manage offices. Singularity provided a single educational experience that taught the basic principles of establishing work structures and managing people. Participants were able to start their careers with a clear agenda of what they had to do to gain control of their offices.

Facilitating Succession
A fast-changing and highly innovative major financial services company needed a way to prepare high potential employees for management. Singularity created an intensive succession program in which high potential employees were placed into a number of learning experiences linked to simulations that allowed them to experience the actions and thought processes of management. The resulting program built ready supply of junior managers for the organization as it continued its growth.

For information and comments: singularitygroup@yahoo.co
Since 1983