Friends and Colleagues:

Happy New Year! I wanted to share with you what we are planning for the year and also, in the interest of transparency, to give you our Corporate Annual Report for 1999. I wish you the very best for an exciting new millennium!

--Darcy Hitchcock and Marsha Willard, AXIS Performance Advisors, Inc.

AXIS PLANS FOR 2000

At AXIS we are advocates for "Natural Work." Over the centuries, our workplaces have become increasingly unnatural and this necessarily impacts our productivity. For example, we have standardized job descriptions when every person brings a unique blend of skills and interests. When we try to cram employees into a rigid job description, we often force them to perform tasks for which they are ill suited and miss taking advantage of talents which fall outside their job description.

We view Natural Work as aligning work with  three components, three concentric circles:

• Nature: Aligning organizations with the laws of nature (e.g., eliminating the concept of waste, using organic rather than mechanical models for introducing change, etc.)
• Human nature: Accommodating the needs and limitations all humans have (e.g., circadian rhythms, relationships based on family/tribe/nation by working in teams, etc.)
• Individual Nature: Leveraging the talents, skills and interests of each individual (e.g., using flexible work roles, helping people to discover their "right path," etc.)

 So think of us when you need one of these services...
 

MAKING WORK NATURAL FOR YOU -- We have served as a coach to a number of managers. Through private conversations and observing the workplace, we have helped managers resolve sticky employee problems, develop their leadership skills, improve the performance of their work teams and also modify their job to better fit their personality, values and talents. We have also facilitated important meetings, modeling their new coaching role; and we have mediated long-standing disputes between individuals and between groups to resolve deep-seated problems.

This year we are implementing a new service to help managers get the most out of their work teams. "Team Boosters" is a subscription service where every other month, managers get an easy-to-use packet containing an activity to implement with their work team...to develop a skill such as giving feedback, to build stronger relationships as in developing trust, or to improve performance by conducting an assessment. They are designed to "spruce up" regular staff meetings. Team Boosters solves the problem most managers have: they don't have the time to develop a well-tested group process to generate healthy conversation.

So call us when...

• You need to improve the performance of your work teams
• You have an employee with a chronic performance problem and you're not sure what to do
• You want to launch a new team or task force and want to be clear about their purpose, boundaries, etc.
• Your meetings are lackluster and you want your employees to participate moreYou need a confidant to get clear about your own issues, challenges, goals, and career direction
   

MAKING WORK NATURAL FOR ALL -- Most of the work we do revolves around aligning organizational practices to the needs and limitations of human nature. Teams are hardly a new phenomenon, for example. Assemble any small group of people with a purpose and they will tend to self-organize, accommodating individual strengths and weaknesses, trading off tasks, sharing leadership, etc. This is what we now call self-directed work teams, as if we just invented collaborative work structures! As work speeds up and decision-making becomes increasingly complex, we need these collaborative practices even more.

This will be our tenth year for doing our work team conference. The Symposium on Self-Direction will be a two day event, preconference workshops on September 28 and the conference on September 29. I'll have the line-up on our web site in about a month.

So think of us when you need someone to ...

• Improve collaborative skills between and across teams (e.g., meetings that people look forward to going to because the get things done, developing trust, tools for consensus building, honest communication and feedback, etc.)
• Solve performance problems (e.g., resolve conflicts, overcome complacency, think "outside the box" to develop radically better work processes, etc.)
• Develop collaborative systems to support teamwork (e.g., systems for feedback, performance review, accountability, influence, planning and measuring work, etc.)
   

MAKING WORK NATURAL FOR THE EARTH--In our high-tech world it is easy to forget how reliant we are on natural systems....to clean our air and water, to provide food and raw materials, to power our processes. There is a lot of very exciting work being done around making organizations live within the limits of nature. Seeing your organization through this lens reveals a hoard of unexpected opportunities and hidden inefficiencies.

For the last two years, we have spoken to many organizations about The Natural Step, which provides a useful, science-based framework for making better long-term decisions which take into account the environmental impacts. As speakers for the Oregon Natural Step Network, we offer free executive briefings. We also have several follow-up classes to show you how to bring the concepts into your organization and find the best opportunities. We will be publishing the results of our environmental strategies research this year and are also considering planning a sustainability tour to Europe.

One step toward improving your competitiveness and environmental impacts is supply chain management.  Whether you just want to make sure you're buying the most environmentally responsible materials or whether you want to partner with your suppliers to uncover competitive advantages and process improvements, we can help facilitate the process.

So think of us when you ...

• Want someone to facilitate your strategic planning process
• Are launching "green teams" to investigate eco-efficiencies
• Want information about how your organization can contribute to a sustainable economy
• Are considering implementing The Natural Step or related environmental systems
   

Axis Corporate Annual Report -- 1999

Axis Performance Advisors uses Ralph Estes concept of a Corporate Annual Report as a way to track how socially responsible we are. A corporate annual report, unlike the typical annual report, serves to describe our contributions to all our stakeholders--not just owners/shareholders, but also employees, customers, the community and the environment. The real bottom line is about more than just money. The following report summarizes our contributions to our various stakeholder groups. Since the employees are also owners, we combined those two stakeholder groups.
 

Clients

For AXIS adding value to our clients' organizations is our primary mission.  Here are some highlights of our work in the last year.
 We developed two new workshops: Getting to Consensus and Building Trust.

We facilitated a manager's support group for an IT client

We conducted an employee satisfaction assessment, including feedback to their managers, using group interviews.

For several of our clients, we have become coaches to managers, acting as a backboard for their issues, giving them feedback, offering them alternatives, observing them interacting with others, etc.

For a non-profit health care organization, we facilitated a task force to redesign their work process, tripling the number of patients they could see, reducing staff stress, improving patient satisfaction, and reducing per patient costs.

For a high tech. client, we facilitated the resolution of long-standing conflicts between two work groups.

For a quasi-governmental agency, we facilitated their strategic planning process for their executives.

For one client, we developed a set of activities that managers can use in their team/staff meetings and are investigating whether there is a larger market for such a subscription service.

Marsha is working with Oregon State University to build a web based class on Facilitation Skills.

For our clients, we distributed 6 newsletters, including the results from our research on measures and rewards as well as a special Millennium issue.

We started a popular new service called Newflashes where we summarize interesting articles, etc

Community

In addition to our work with clients, we make a point of adding value in our communities.

We each "adopt" at least one client, offering free services to non-profits, up to a half-day per month of services from each of us. Darcy worked with Planned Parenthood and Marsha worked with El Programa Hispano. Both projects involved improving their business processes.

Darcy spent the year volunteering as co-chair for the local chapter of Business for Social Responsibility.

We hosted a think tank on "real world project management" where we explored how to improve the flexibility of project management and our ability to manage the human/team/political aspects of projects.

Marsha spoke at the University of Oregon Sustainability conference on "Humanity in the workplace."

Darcy contributed the first chapter to Ed Rose's new book, Self-Directed Work Teams: A Trainer's Role in the Transition.

Marsha conducted a session on trust building for the principals for the Portland Public School System.

At the request of the Oregon Natural Step Network, Darcy is facilitating a peer learning group for the "social side of sustainability" where we are investigating how businesses are measuring and working toward "a fair and efficient use of resources."
 

Environment

Though as a consulting service we have low environmental impact, we still feel a responsibility to being good earth stewards.
 Darcy moved her office to Portland, reducing miles driven, resulting in a savings of approximately 190 gallons of gas and 4160 lbs. of CO2 emissions per year in business driving, plus a comparable amount for personal use.

We have become actively involved in  educating people about The Natural Step (TNS), a science-based framework for creating a sustainable society. Darcy is part of the speakers bureau for the Oregon Natural Step Network. She gave 9 free presentations to organizations (including Multnomah County, City of Portland, Bonneville Power Administration and Rowe Middle School). She also team-taught a train-the-trainer session for those interested in speaking on The Natural Step. Both Marsha and Darcy contributed a case study to the Tool Kit.

We are conducting a research study on environmental strategies and their associated benefits.

Darcy is participating in a City Club subcommittee which is writing a report on sustainability.

Through the Environmental Management Systems Users Group, Marsha and Darcy evaluated corporate environmental reports to give input to CERES' Global Reporting Initiative which should help standardize the information in these reports.

Employees/Owners

As owner/operators we naturally set business goals for our own development.

Marsha attended The Natural Step conference.

Darcy attended a workshop on diversity and managing conflict.

Darcy became trained in ISO 14000, the international standard for environmental management systems.

We purchased tickets for the Oregon Environmental Council speakers series.

We have had the pleasure of deepening our relationships with the Hearts and Minds consulting cohort which meets monthly.

We have gotten involved in a peer group focusing on managing the supply chain to develop our skills in facilitating innovations across organizations. Supply chain management can build competitive advantage and reduce organization's impact on the environment.

We held three Da Vinci Days where we block time out just to think creatively.

Financially, this year roughly matched last year for profitability.
 

Clients we served in 1999

American Management Association
Chemeketa Community College
City of Springfield
Clackamas Co. District Attorney
Clatsop Community College
CNF Inc.
DAT Services
DaVinci  Middle School
Dept. of Environmental Quality
El Programa Hispano
Irvington Club
Lan Communtiy College
Mt Hood Community College
Oregon Natural Step Network
Oregon State University
Pacific Foods
Planned Parenthood
Portland Public Schools
Straight Ahead Shelter
The Performance Center
United Employers
University of Oregon
VA Medical Center-Central Plains
Vancouver Housing Administration
Volunteers of America
Wafertech
Wildlife Habitat Stewards