Aligned Workplace℠

Ilene Marcus is not only a quirky, charismatic, dynamic speaker – she is a MOTIVATOR. She speaks to CEOs and corporate teams because she can relate to them; she has 32 years of executive experience managing high-stakes teams and multi-million-dollar organizations. Ilene has been featured in Glamour, Fast Company, Readers Digest, Huffpost, Yahoo, Entrepreneur, and is a contributing author for Sixty and Me. She is also the boss lady behind Aligned Workplace and works with groups of CEOs at Vistage and helps early-stage entrepreneurs scale their efforts at Techstars.

Team leaders: ever wonder why you’re so busy and yet still nothing is getting done? Something is going on under the surface. Something is not aligned.

The author of Managing Annoying People: 7 Proven Tactics to Maximize Team Performance, Ilene works with CEOs and other leaders to show them why their teams are not being productive or efficient. Sometimes, it’s the team leaders who need a shift in perspective, a good look in the mirror, to understand that they need to contribute more or communicate differently. The leaders aren’t working in sync with their teams because they aren’t bringing in their best selves.

Ilene coaches the higher-ups to get them motivated, moving, and out of their own way by facilitating conversations for action. She inspires audiences through keynotes and workshops, showing them how to use pragmatic strategies and emotional intelligence to overcome obstacles in the workplace (and in life). She also enables all-hands-on-deck team collaboration from product launches to scaling and growth to attracting and keeping talent and beyond.

Ilene’s mission is to transform negative environments with laughter and grace. No toxic positivity here – she shows audiences how they can face pain, hardship, and obstacles and come out on the other side smiling.

Alignment Analysis

Diagnosis is a powerful tool. We get quick and objective assessments based on your actual inventory of data, process and facts. This gets you ready to be a truly aligned workplace. We'll work side-by-side with you to identify systems and potential roadblocks to meeting the desired agenda. Key issues and elements needed to change this dynamic are identified and ultimately serve as a roadmap for actions. Suggested changes directly relate back to leadership’s desired agenda. Special attention is paid to systems and policies needed to position the organization to be proactive in excellence, track benchmarked outcomes and operate within set budget parameters.

We document inter-departmental and role specific information on major processes, goals and work flow.

You will get a roadmap to problem sources and how they present within your organization and process.

Leadership requires assistance. Expert at quickly changing the team dynamic, we work in partnership on your site to unleash team potential. Our Speedy Alignment Package is specifically designed to quickly ramp-up team performance.  Working directly on your site with Leaders and their team on culture, performance and relationship dynamics to:

• Jumpstart your Project
• Breakthrough Chaos
• Align (or Realign) your Strategy, Resources, Messaging

Over one, two or three days, our 360-degree process fuels clarity to drive your agenda and outlines the actionable steps for each level of the organization. New skills are acquired and fresh ideas generated to propel organizational success.   Speedy Alignment concludes with a written actionable plan. 

This includes facilitation of leadership, team and stakeholder meetings to maximize outcomes, negotiate relationships and build a cohesive team. In advance of each work session we hold interviews based on a list of questions that are developed with the Leader who engaged the project.

Key data points, key performance indicators (KPI), experiences and case examples are collected to build the agenda. The interviews reveal the alignment of the players, namely, if they are in sync and, if so, to what degree, on what issues and most importantly, how it lines up with the leadership agenda. Our process uncovers major areas of both consensus and divergence among the staff. This information is used to fuel your plan. At the end of the session, you receive a written document with objectives, opportunities, challenges including a summary of main points and “Ahas”. You also receive a plan of action for moving forward. Most importantly, this plan of action was agreed to with the responsible staff and next steps were set in the work session.

Strategic Alignment Work sessions can be provided in 4, 6 or 8 hour blocks, dependent on the issues and number of stakeholders. For best results, we recommend, scheduling a package of three sessions, at weekly, bi-weekly or monthly intervals, to keep the work on track and moving the agenda forward.

The Aligned Workplace℠ 4-Step Alignment Project and 10 Proprietary tools, start where you are and gets you to achieve your agenda. Clients who engage in this type of project usually find that despite best efforts, bureaucratic, administrative, political and operational issues cause barriers for growth and change. These operational concerns are often difficult to pinpoint because they permeate many departments and may include: data consistency and reliability, systems agility and integration, staff competencies and training, communication and messaging throughout the organization and allocation of resources and compensation structure.  We agree on a time-limited approach for the project that is discussed in detail with leadership and designed around the core agenda. Optimally our method takes three-months and ends with implementation of key agenda factors throughout the organization.

Aligned Workplace℠ tools are used to guide discussions and focus actions. Each session builds off the prior and a chart of progress is used to measure the work. There will be homework from these sessions, so be prepared.