For leaders
Individual Coaching
For managers, directors and senior executives. Preparing high performers for bigger roles, and helping leaders whose performance has stalled get back on track.
Change management · Executive coaching · Team facilitation
The new system works. Your people aren’t using it.
Targeted Performance Solutions helps leaders turn new systems, strategies and structures into the way people actually work. Our founder, Stuart M. Smith, Ph.D., brings more than forty years of experience, including Ernst & Young and IBM, and a practice grounded in psychology and close collaboration with the people a change affects.
Based in Narberth, near PhiladelphiaWorking along the Northeast Corridor
Swipe sideways to see the whole model.
What we see
Why investments in people, time and money fail
The pattern repeats across industries. The plan is sound and the budget is spent, but the organization doesn’t change the way it works.
Misaligned strategy
Leaders agree on a direction, then each department carries out its own version of it.
Underutilized systems
The technology is installed and paid for. People work around it because no one helped them understand it or want it.
Disengaged people
Capable employees stop offering ideas when they can’t see how their work connects to results.
Inappropriate solutions
A training program gets bought for what is really a structure, process or leadership problem.
Planning a technology rollout? Eight questions to answer first
Client story · Energy and utilities
PPL’s new system was built. TPS helped people use it.
Accenture designed and installed a major new IT system at Pennsylvania Power & Light. As Accenture scaled back, it was clear the system would likely be underused: employees didn’t fully understand it, and many resisted it. The project’s managing director brought in TPS to lead the change management effort.
- Our role
- The people side of the rollout, not the technology
- Length
- More than a year
- What followed
- A second year-long project in another department, redesigning process flows for PPL’s LIHEAP energy assistance program with its field teams
Dr. Smith was a key player in an organizational change transformation at PPL related to process redesign and several technology implementations. I valued and relied on his change management-organizational leadership.
Services
Help at the level where the problem lives
Some problems sit with one leader, some with a team, some across the whole organization. We work at all three, and on the change that crosses them.
For teams
Team Facilitation
For a department or leadership team that needs to work better together, or an off-site and strategy session that needs a skilled, neutral facilitator.
For the whole organization
Enterprise Performance Enhancement
Strategic planning, process improvement and organizational alignment, including merger integration.
Across every level
Change Management
The people side of a new system, merger or reorganization, so the investment actually gets used.
Not sure where to start?
The Health Check
Our signature Strategic Capabilities Audit applies the BEAM model to your organization and shows where alignment is breaking down. It’s a defined project with a clear end point.
How we work
Collaborative, clear and the right size
Clients most often tell us two things: we’re easy to work with, and we explain things clearly.
We bring people in early
We work closely with you, your team, your executive sponsor and the employees the change will affect. Including them early lowers anxiety and makes them part of the solution.
We look past the presenting problem
A culture complaint is often a structure or process problem underneath. The BEAM model helps us find the real cause before recommending anything.
You work directly with Stu
Stuart M. Smith, Ph.D., MPH, is your consultant from the first call to the last, with no handoff to junior staff. Trusted advisors join when a project calls for specialist expertise.
A light footprint
Typically a day or two on-site to start, then remote. You get senior attention without a large team in your building.
In their words
What clients say
Stu brought valuable change management leadership to this initiative. He focused our team 100% on the outcomes of the project rather than getting distracted by the overwhelming amount of information.
We wanted to ensure alignment between product functions and geographies, and be confident that needed changes would be implemented smoothly. BEAM helped achieve both objectives.
Stu is an active listener, able to re-frame challenges into opportunities, and provides tools for success.
Clients
Forty years, across sectors
A selection of the organizations Stu and TPS have worked with.
- Energy and utilities
- PPL, Philadelphia Gas Works, Long Island Lighting Co.
- Healthcare and life sciences
- AstraZeneca, Sanofi Pasteur, Christiana Care Health System, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Holy Cross Health System
- Financial services and insurance
- JPMorgan Chase, American Express, State Farm, Prudential, Life Re
- Technology and media
- IBM, Motorola, The Associated Press
- Government
- The White House, City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Department of Health, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- Education
- Villanova University, La Salle University, Law School Admission Council, Neshaminy School District
- Nonprofit and social services
- UJA-Federation of New York, APM
- Consumer products and manufacturing
- Campbell Soup Company, Clemens Food Group (Hatfield), Scott Paper
Start a conversation
Facing something like this?
Tell us what’s going on. If TPS is a good fit, we’ll suggest a sensible first step.