Policy Research Company

In his 10th year as CEO of Mathematica, Paul Decker felt the company had successfully fulfilled its original vision. He sought executive coaching to help him think through the next phase of the organization more broadly. He needed a more robust leadership team with cohesiveness and trust to level-up the organization as a whole.

At the time, the company was divided into two main divisions: Research—responsible for collecting data. And Survey—responsible for analyzing the data. The research division was further composed of three units: human services, health, and international research.

Interaction between the two divisions and three units was sluggish, and communication took longer than it should have, which slowed responsiveness to clients.

ETG guided Paul through a discovery process to learn about the organization and how Paul and his senior leaders functioned as a team. It identified areas where Paul needed to adjust his personal leadership style, and he and his leaders needed to improve functioning as a team.

They guided Paul through a reorganization and shared specific ideas about the process—how to manage the transition and roll it out to the organization which eventually led to streamlining five operating units into three. And shared specific ideas about the process—how to manage the transition and roll it out to the organization. The initiative fed directly into Mathematica’s central challenge as an organization—how to become more client focused.

Using its balanced leadership framework, ETG stimulated Paul’s thinking through broad conceptual business ideas that were then formed into action-based, individualized coaching plans specific to Mathematica’s goals and needs.

“What really sets ETG apart from other consultants is they are very action-oriented,” says Paul. “Other consultants give you broad concepts and principles. ETG made those concepts specific to my business problems and then created steps we could take to address them.”

Paul and his leadership team discovered and addressed their core, business problem: How to move from a functional-based organization to a client-based organization. Through ETG’s executive coaching, the team successfully reorganized the management structure to accomplish that change.

“Probably the biggest impact is how ETG helped me individually improve as a leader,” says Paul. “They challenged me to think through and make personal changes to create an effective leadership team. What behaviors and actions I needed to undertake and then guiding me on matching them to strategies that improved how we operated as a team. Now, we have a plan that converts an overly consensus-driven work culture into one that holds vigorous discussions for more impactful results. We are a stronger and more effective organization because of it.”