Frontier Associates, Inc.

About Us

Frontier Associates is a management consulting and organizational coaching firm that works with clients to produce breakthroughs in performance.

By "breakthrough," we mean a dramatic result or improvement that is not predictable when looking at past performance or current circumstances. It is based on the discovery or invention of a new perspective that leads to new beliefs, different behavior, and unprecedented results.

Some clients turn to Frontier because they see that an objective opinion, a systemic approach, and guidance designing and implementing the change process will enable them to resolve an organizational issue. Another category of client is one which is poised for growth or wants to capitalize on an opportunity, and realizes doing so will require of them entirely new ways of thinking and working together as a company. Third, many organizations hire us because they have attempted to fix problems on their own or with the help of other consultants, with only limited success. Frontier's methods have proven to be successful in each of these cases, particularly so with organizational problems that persist despite people's best efforts to resolve them.

Through working with many different types of clients, we have found that breakthroughs are available to just about anyone in any organization. The exception seems to be when the survival of the organization is in jeopardy and its resources are necessarily focused on regaining stability. Once stability is accomplished, these organizations, too, become capable of producing and sustaining breakthroughs in performance.

We work hard, but we're not really working together.

Considering the amount of effort we put in, I know we could be a lot more productive.

Can you help?

Manufacturing Company Vice President

Our work is exciting and extremely fulfilling. We consider it a privilege to be invited by our clients to help them re-think what they know about their businesses in order to break new ground.

The Role of Vision and Mission

As an organization, Frontier Associates' operations are based on three sound and basic business principles, principles we also coach our clients to put in place and use to guide their day-do-day actions: Vision, Mission and Values. Experience has taught us that an organization so equipped is much more likely to realize sustained growth, to attract and retain loyal, motivated employees, and to handle adversity successfully when it occurs.

We believe that in order to provide both an inspirational guiding premise and a sure-footed operational foundation, an organization's vision, mission and values must be clearly defined and then used as standards to shape organizational policy, including the daily activity of its members. Frontier Associates endeavors to differentiate itself not only by the importance we place on our vision, mission and values, but also by the nature of these principles and how we have worked to make them the defining attributes of our culture.

Our Vision:

A world of relationship and abundance.

Vision is a future state of the world that results from the organization's contribution to it. The vision can often be articulated by completing the statement "A world in which..." or "A world of...".

We see a world of relationship as one in which people live with the understanding that as human beings, we are inextricably connected as part of a larger whole, and that how we regard and treat one another determines our quality of life on an individual, community and global scale.

We see a world of abundance as one in which people's orientation toward acquisition and ownership is one of partnership and generosity, given by the understanding that life is not a zero-sum game. A rising tide lifts all boats.

The Missing Possibility:

That the purpose of organizations is to give people the opportunity to experience making a bigger difference than they could as individuals.

The Missing Possibility is an idea that is currently not part of people's awareness that, if articulated and understood, would enable the fulfillment of the vision. It points to the existing perspective, or paradigm, that stands in the way of the vision being fulfilled.

The concept of "The Organization" was created when it became apparent that specific gains in productivity and economies of scale could be accomplished by bringing workers to one or more central locations and allocating tasks among them. But this focus on efficiencies masked a critical idea: That output, be it production of refrigerators or providing accounting services, is not the purpose of organizations. Output is something an organization does to necessitate its survival. Output is not its purpose.

Consider human beings. We eat, we sleep, we work, we mow the lawn. But eating, sleeping, working or mowing the lawn is not our purpose; these are things we do to ensure we will have the energy, the money, and the shelter to survive. Our purpose is something else entirely, isn't it?

We have experimented with this idea of purpose in many of our workshops. We ask people "Why do you do what you do? That is, why do you have the job you have versus other jobs that you could have?" Initially we get answers like: "It's fun", "I can make money", "My father did it", "I do it well", "It is satisfying". Then we ask "Why?", e.g., "Why is it satisfying?". To each answer they give, we keep asking "Why?" until we get to a final answer, final because they say there is no answer to "Why?". Interestingly, that final answer is essentially the same for the thousands with whom we have done this exercise.

That final answer is always some version of "To make a difference with my life." "To make a difference" usually means to make the world better in some way. We assert that this final answer, "To make a difference with my life," is the fundamental motivator for people, their purpose.

This is the true joy in life:

The being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature...

George Bernard Shaw

When people experience making a difference, they become acutely aware of being related to others, and of the richness and fulfillment that is abundantly available through such a deep connection.

So if the purpose of organizations isn't output, what is it? We suggest that the true purpose of organizations, the sole reason organizations exist, is to give people the opportunity to experience making a bigger difference than they could as individuals.

In our experience, this perspective is not widely shared. In fact, we've noticed that for the most part, it is completely missing as a possibility. That is, the idea that the purpose of organizations is to give people the opportunity to experience making a bigger difference than they could as individuals isn't available as an option because it isn't a part of people's consciousness. It's not among the choices people have when they consider what could be the purpose of organizations. It is a missing possibility.

Our Mission:

We empower the organizations of the world to realize their purpose.

Mission is an operational statement that describes what the organization does that provides the missing possibility, and results in the fulfillment of their vision.

The act of empowerment is to enable an individual to shift his or her perspective from the belief that he or she can't cause something to happen, to the belief that he or she can. The empowerment of an organization occurs through the empowerment of a critical mass of the organization's members.

Empowerment often brings with it a tremendous release of energy and feelings of excitement, resilience, and a positive outlook. Problems occur as obstacles to be negotiated and overcome, rather than immovable objects that make further progress impossible.

"Realize" has two meanings as it relates to Frontier Associates' mission.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

Nelson Mandela

First, we help leaders and their organizations to consider, test and adopt the perspective that the purpose of their organization is to give people the opportunity to experience making a bigger difference than they could as individuals. And second, we coach and work with them to put principles and practices into place that result in the fulfillment of that purpose.

On a practical level, many of the changes our clients implement impact their day-to-day activities: Meetings, customer service, communication, management and leadership styles. The primary difference comes from adopting new practices and revising existing ones inside of the organization's new commitment to its purpose, and the resulting ability of these policies to cause the fulfillment of its vision.

In theory, this may appear to be a subtle difference. In practice, however, we have found it to be the critical step in organizational transformation.