Strategic Advisory Group: Karen Richardson
Karen Richardson, Founder, Richardson Talent Solutions, is an accomplished executive who partners with organizations and boards of directors to identify, cultivate and prepare talent to succeed. With an educational background focus on business and finance and more than 25 years of HR experience at GE, she possesses both strategic and execution expertise. Her breadth of expertise includes talent management, C-suite and board engagement, cultural transformation, organizational development, succession planning and performance management. Her client roster includes organizations worldwide and across various industries from aerospace to fintech, automotive to food service.
She believes that in today’s business climate, change is swift, brilliant, and often disruptive, and professionals achieve the best for themselves and their organizations by blending and building expertise together. For her, talent planning is a holistic endeavor that starts with the individual and grows to serve the entire enterprise. As each person improves, the collective strength of the organization elevates and the community thrives.
Her strategy includes focusing on the complete employee ecosystem, building and applying plans and processes for organizational health, vibrancy and sustainability. She believes a robust employee ecosystem extends to board interactions and she curates sessions to build board directors’ knowledge of key individuals and executive teams. Throughout all her engagements, she supports individuals and groups as they take necessary steps to enact positive change and enhance organizational performance.
Programming & Workshops
Strategic Advising: Services include advice, coaching and training on leadership and executive development, performance improvement, team productivity and efficiency, succession planning, change management, cultural transformation and helping boards of directors identify, develop and select future leaders.
Specialized Offerings: Custom solutions to meet all your talent challenges including assimilating new leaders quickly and effectively, improving team effectiveness, enhancing your employees' career experience, executive assessment and coaching. Each offering is designed to enhance the leader(s) and improve your organization's bottom line.
Customized Service: Each service will be custom designed to provide the information, guidance and training needed for the client to create greater value. Advising services will be provided by current employees of ALHI (internal advisors) and by independent contractors (external advisors) on a project basis.
New Leader Integration Toolkit: Studies show that replacing a team leader costs up to five times their salary, while an executive failure costs 10 times the executive's salary. When you hire a new leader, do you help them effectively integrate into your organization, or do you let them figure it out on their own? Do you have a toolkit to avoid sabotaging your investment in your new leader?
Designed to assimilate a new leader successfully, the New Leader Integration Toolkit is comprised of many resources including "entry" interviews, 30/60/90-day plans, stakeholder roadmaps, team tools and feedback cadences to help your new leader accelerate their transition and succeed.
One area that needs particular focus is connecting with their team. New leaders have limited time, and it takes time for a new leader to learn about their team members and possible issues, and for the team to learn about the leader.
The New Leader/Team Assimilation Workshop, one of the tools in the New Leader Integration Toolbox, is a half-day session that solves this.
Outcomes:
- Leader integration time reduced by one to three months
- Expectations, concerns, issues and styles "on the table" early
- A climate of willingness to confront and deal with issues
- Open, two-way communication between leader and team
- Coaching for the new leader
Team Effectiveness Assessment: What data do you use to determine your team's effectiveness level? How does your team's effectiveness compare to best-in-class? A Team Effectiveness Assessment is needed if you do not know those answers. Anything less than ideal collaboration among leaders can lead to low trust, misaligned priorities, ineffective meetings and struggles to make or adhere to decisions. This loss of peak productivity has a material cost to your business.
The Team Effectiveness Assessment uses a scientifically validated framework to help teams achieve high performance.
Outcomes:
- An evaluation of your current state; the good, the bad and the opportunity
- Best-in-class benchmarking
- A customized plan to improve your team's performance
- Tools and resources to achieve team success
- Team cohesion
Employee Experience Health Check: Employees are your No. 1 asset and they determine your bottom-line success. Studies show that an average of 40% of employees are thinking about leaving, and the cost to replace an employee is at least 2.5 times their salary. A world-class employee experience drives engagement, productivity and retention, all of which impact your business results.
An Employee Experience Health Check delivers actionable steps to help you navigate what you can (and should) do to fortify the engine that propels your business. The first step is understanding the "moments that matter" to your employees. Just as a hotel guest's experience checking in at the front desk is a "moment that matters," onboarding, performance conversations, promotions and organization changes are examples of "moments that matter" to employees.
Outcomes:
- A scorecard outlining your strengths and opportunities
- Identification of the "moments that matter" to your talent
- Assessment of how well you are taking advantage of those critical times
- Impact analysis of your employee retention, benefits and culture programs
- Evaluation of how your employee experience is (or is not) reinforcing your culture
Testimonials
"I had the great pleasure of working with Karen on several complex HR projects and I was always impressed by her calm and kindness, even in the most stressful situations. She is a skilled listener, a great team player and a brilliant HR strategist. I would recommend Karen as a trusted and skilled advisor on any HR topics including change management, talent development, performance management. "
—M. Bianca Tulumello, CHRO, Barilla
"As an executive coach, Karen was a breath of fresh air for me when I needed it most! Her insights, professionalism, and vast knowledge enabled me to engage differently with my stakeholders, made an indelible impression on my leaders, and catapulted by career higher than I had imagined! Thank you, Karen!"
—Amanda Goodson, Senior Executive, Raytheon
"Karen has been a tremendous partner to me over the years in the space of executive talent planning and succession management. She understands how Boards and CEOs think about these topics, can support at a very strategic level, rolls up her sleeves to do the work, and has a vast network from which to leverage for best practices and innovative thinking."
—Heidi Capozzi, CHRO, McDonald's
"Karen is the real deal. She brings an incredible mix of strategic insight, tactical abilities, interpersonal sensitivity, and executive maturity to her work. Karen has deep and broad talent development expertise, particularly with senior executives. She speaks truth to power while engendering trust and openess. Karen is consistently willing and able to engage at the level the work and stakeholders require...an incredibly valuable partner that I would recommend to anyone!"
—Lisa Brezonik, CEO, Salo, A Korn Ferry Company
