Our Approach

Each Project Is Unique
Every organization has a unique personality, history, Mission, structure, issues, challenges, resources and opportunities.  The stakeholders in every organization have a unique set of talents, background, preferences and attitudes.  The specific objectives driving the need for a strategic or for any major change plan are always different.  Major change planning is a very personal and individually focused process.  In order for it to be successful, the process must be tailored to all these factors.  Many Strategic Planning and Change Management firms use a standard template to accomplish the process.  In our experience, these may produce a product in an acceptable format but will not achieve a successfully implemented result.

Our Objective
In Strategic as well as Change Planning, organizations desire clear and actionable goals and strategies that are linked to critical issues and a plan for implementing the selected strategies across the entire organization and for sustaining them in the future.  This objective is the core of The Suran Group’s approach to Strategic and major Change Planning which relies heavily on strategic planning guru Peter Senge’s timeless and proven concepts of the team based, systems thinking, learning organization.

Core Approach
1.  Because of Sandra Suran’s background and experience as an auditor, process thinking is core to The Suran Group’s approach.  The focus is on gaining total awareness of the current situation, with steps, actions and tools designed as necessary to accomplish the desired result – implemented changes which respond to the organization’s critical issues and planned Vision for the future.

2.  Part of The Suran Group’s approach which differentiates us from other firms, according to our clients, is the focus on people – awareness of their needs and linking of the entire organization (including key external stakeholders) through targeted interviews and use of teams in determining and analyzing issues and developing solutions.  Implementing change requirescollaboration and involvement of teams.  Change doesn’t happen without buy-in from everyone affected.  Buy-in takes awareness, understanding and belief that the change will improve the situation – for the organization, for the department and for the individual.

3.  Change doesn’t work without integration of the change throughout the organization’s operations at every level, in every department.  That’s also why focus on process and structure is critical to success.  The questions are:  Which processes will be affected?  How will each department be affected? How will individuals, departments and external stakeholders be involved in development, implementation and in sustaining the change initiatives?

4. Good process cannot occur and collaboration and involvement of teams is not effective without good communication and information.   This is another basic, and differentiating, concept of The Suran Group.  We believe that shared, current information is key to understanding and motivation of stakeholders.  It is key to assuring unity, consistency, efficiency and effective use of resources.  Nothing works, progress cannot occur without good, universally shared information.  Good information is simple, direct, complete.  Decisions and rationale must be transparent.  Then everyone works with consistent knowledge and can make their own decisions in concert with everyone else, knowing and understanding both the common goal and steps that are being taken to achieve it.

5.  The first, and most important, factor is strong and committed leadership.  No matter how good the other factors are, an organization’s success in implementing their plan, and the success of The Suran Group’s efforts in helping, cannot be achieved without strong, committed leadership.

The Suran Group’s Mission is to help organizations to make changes happen.  We can help through our work on three of the components.  We cannot, obviously, assure the strong, committed leadership which is the sine qua non of effective change.  But, we can help the leaders to be stronger by helping to assure the other four factors.

In summary, there are several critical and interlocking factors to create a successful and effectively implemented Strategic or Change Plan:

1. Strong, committed leadership of the organization
2. Comprehensive understanding of the issues, environment and culture by the facilitators and all involved in development of the plan –communication and information
3. Involvement and linking of stakeholders who will be affected by and participants in implementation – collaboration and integration
4. Effective process including research, communication, integration, information collection, documentation and dissemination in all phases from assessment to implementation.
5. Effective structure to assure buy-in and sustainability of the change initiatives.

Our People

Sandra Suran, CPA serves as Project Leader on all major projects. Her background, skills and experience have uniquely prepared her with in-depth skills in certain areas and with broad knowledge and experience to identify and assess needs and link with targeted specialists in diverse areas. Click here for Sandra Suran’s Short Bio or here for her two full resumes (1) Professional and (2) Forensic Consultant/Expert Witness.

Using a network of experienced specialists (virtually all have worked with The Suran Group on projects in the past) enables The Suran Group to bring in precise expertise needed at the highest level required to accomplish the desired change.
(Click here for list of TSG’s Resource Team/ Alliances)