SERVICES

Organizational Development

Breakwater Associates helps clients build their capacity to change and achieve greater effectiveness by developing, improving, and reinforcing strategies, structures, and process to achieve short- and long-term success!

Breakwater Associates is highly skilled at helping clients focus on improving their organization’s capability through the alignment of strategy, structure, metrics, and management processes. Our subject matter experts use ongoing, systematic, long-range processes to help solve problems, and improve an organization’s performance. We use a five-step process to design and implement our organizational development services.

  1. Kick-Off – during the kick-off meeting, Breakwater Associates explores the problem, opportunities, or situation. Output is a detailed implementation plan with expectations and agreement on scope.
  2. Diagnosis – the fact-finding phase that involve data collection and analysis. During this step, information is gathered, analyzed, and reviewed.
  3. Feedback – this step involves exploring information for understanding, clarity, and accuracy. The process involves ongoing feedback loops with clients to ensure transparency and to define success indicators.
  4. Solution – this step involves correcting the problem, closing gaps, improving, or enhancing performance, or seizing opportunities.
  5. Evaluation – this final step involves collecting data after the implementation phase to determine if the solutions are meeting the goals and achieving the defined success indicators.
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Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

The Breakwater Associates team has developed a comprehensive Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) service offering that can be used by organizations across various industries. Our DEIB support includes assessing the current state of DEIB within the organization or department, ensuring adherence to best practices, developing strategic DEIB plans, and fostering understanding and acceptance of DEIB to improve communication within and between diverse teams. Our DEIB strategies ensures that organizations are able to include traditionally marginalized communities in a way that shares power, shrinks disparities, and leads to more equitable outcomes.

Workforce Analysis, Workforce Planning and Restructuring

Breakwater Associates’ are experts in understanding the importance of strategic workforce planning and services.  Our subject matter experts thoroughly review and analyze their organizational work processes and structure with the goal of identifying any gaps, redundancies, and overlaps. The aim is to create a more efficient and accountable system, establishing continuity and ensuring high-quality outcomes for our clients.  Strategic workforce planning is defined in business journals as getting the right number of people with the right skills, experiences, and competencies in the right jobs at the right time.  Organizations use workforce analysis and planning to prepare for future staffing needs and to determine whether these needs may be met by recruiting, training, or outsourcing work.

The steps in the workforce planning process include: supply analysis, the staffing assessment that looks at current staffing and labor supply; demand analysis, reviewing the organization’s future plans and objectives; gap analysis, the comparison between the supply and demand models; and solution analysis, the focus on how to address gaps in current staffing and future staffing needs.

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Change Management

Breakwater Associates’ change management process is designed to provide clients with processes, tools, and techniques needed to manage organizational change. Our subject matter experts are skilled at preparing, supporting, and helping individuals, teams, and organizations in making organizational change. Through these processes, Breakwater Associates helps effect change, control change, and help people adapt to change. Through our work with clients, we help our clients invite participation from team members across their organization; develop clear communication strategies to shape new behaviors; identify training needed to unite the organization, and measure results to find areas for further improvement. Our professional services assist clients in preparing and adapting for change caused by reorganization, new leadership, different policies, and procedures, or shifting political, financial, or social environments.

Grant Writing

Breakwater Associates is adept at helping clients identify grant funding for clients through federal and state government programs. Through this work, public and private organizations are able to advance new projects, expand services, research, and development, or further evolve projects already in progress using this funding. Our subject matter experts are skilled at understanding funding agency requirements and priorities to develop successful grant applications. Our grant writing success has led to organization’s successfully winning over $500 million in federal and state grants.

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Operational Effectiveness Services

Breakwater Associates helps organizations effectively achieve the outcomes it intends to produce. Through our work, we guide organizations to understand what really matters to carry out their mission.

The Breakwater Associates team help clients achieve operational effectiveness by understanding their core business activities to maximize productivity, minimize redundancies, and reducing overall costs while maintaining high-quality standards. Our subject matter experts help clients focus on process improvement, standardization, and continuous quality improvement. The work begins with a hands-on assessment of the leadership team, work processes, resources, and the constituents and populations served by our clients. Through this, we work alongside clients to set metrics for the project, establish a communication plan, and set accountability standards to measure success.

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Understanding and Optimizing State and Federal Regulations

For our clients that receive state and federal funding, Breakwater Associates masterfully provides insights on the impact of state and federal regulations.  Statues and regulations provide opportunities for optimization. The Breakwater Associates team has a keen process of reviewing existing and proposed regulations, understanding the nuances of these regulations, and helping clients understand the impact on their business. By understanding regulations, Breakwater Associates helps clients design service delivery models that exceed regulatory standards, as well as that stay one step ahead of regulatory expectations. Breakwater Associates empowers clients to shift from being reactive to proactive business partners to be more agile in mitigating evolving risks, while enhancing compliance from regulators. 

Compliance Assessment and Quality Assurance

Breakwater Associates works closely with clients to evaluate their adherence to industry regulations, laws, and internal policies. Through this process, the team at Breakwater Associates ensures that clients meet their regulatory obligations, maintain a strong compliance framework, and produce high-quality standards. It involves evaluating the effectiveness of compliance programs, policies, and processes to identify compliance gaps, mitigate risks, and drive continuous improvement. The benefits of assessing compliance are:

  • Ensuring that clients adhere to internal and external policies and standards.
  • Confirming that business-critical controls and programs are in place and effectively managed.
  • Being able to prove compliance and support grounded in data and evaluation.
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Evaluation of Business Processes

At Breakwater Associates, data-driven insights inform every recommendation. The team at Breakwater Associates takes quantitative and qualitative data to formulate recommendations, considering the current state of an organization. Evaluation of business processes allow the Breakwater Associates team to conduct an infrastructure analysis, workforce analysis, produce and service delivery, and operations efficiency evaluation. The questions our subject matter experts ask are:

  • How do the resources and tools that are in place achieve the current mission and future goals?
  • Do clients have the proper structure and people to carry out their vision, mission, and goals?
  • Do policies and procedures lend themselves to engaging staff, and doing the right things at the right time?
  • What systems and processes are in place to carry out the mission?
  • How are clients staying competitive and understanding the needs of their markets?

Consulting and Advisory Services

Breakwater Associates supports our clients’ internal operations and ensures there is proper alignment as they work toward achieving their goals and objectives. Our team of experts provides traditional management consulting services on operational needs as well as customized advisory services to suit every organization’s unique needs. The Breakwater Associates team of subject matter experts can support short-term or long-term consulting projects in the following areas:

  • Workforce Development including succession planning, talent management, employee engagement, and career development.
  • Customer satisfaction, which includes strategies to enhance the customer experience through process improvements, technology utilization, policy enhancement, and employee training
  • Program and service development, including supporting innovative projects to increase and improve current program and service effectiveness and profitability (if applicable)
  • Policy development, including but not limited to organizational policies written by Breakwater Associates subject matter experts in a variety of areas.
  • Governance. The Breakwater Associates team of experts are adept at developing a governance structure for projects or for organizations.
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Training Services

Breakwater Associates has exceptional training skills that are individualized to the audience at hand. As such, the team at Breakwater Associates has delivered hundreds of training sessions nationally to a diverse set of audiences.

An effective trainer is one that actively listens to her audience, that embeds creativity as part of teaching, are flexible in their approach to teaching, approachable, collaborative, patient, and loves learning. The team at Breakwater Associates are the epitome of all of these qualities, in addition to having the subject matter expertise to teach courses. Our training sessions are interactive and engaging that exceed key objectives by customizing training sessions to meet every client’s unique needs.

All of our training sessions are:

  • Customized to meet the unique needs of clients.
  • Based on case studies and experiences.
  • Hands-on to actively engage participants in the learning process.
  • Facilitated through groups exercises and group discussions.
  • Focused on team building.
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Catalogue of Training Sessions

Below is a small sample of topics used in training courses:

  • The Art of Creating and Establishing Positive Relationships
  • The Humble Art of Asking Questions
  • Head Start 101
  • Board Governance
  • Coaching Conversations
  • Practiced Based Coaching
  • Adult Learning Styles
  • Ensuring Equitable Classroom Practices
  • Classroom Assessment Scoring System
  • Safe and Sanitary Environments in Early Childhood Classrooms
  • Federal Regulations
  • Head Start Program Performance Standards