Leadership development should be a concern for every organization. Ineffective management and poor leadership contribute to high employee turnover and act as an impediment to growth. While executive coaching can help, one-on-one leadership training isn’t a sustainable option, and it may not address deeper issues, such as employee engagement, performance, and corporate culture.

Dr. Phlatt Mclean, founder of PhlattLine, has developed a more sustainable approach to leadership development, Organizational-Development-as-a-Service (ODaaS). While coaching can be valuable, overcoming operational challenges requires a deeper understanding of the factors affecting employee performance and team dynamics. With ODaaS, Mclean has created a methodology to assess the current state of an organization, understand the desired future state, and bridge that gap.

Common Organizational Risk Factors

Today’s organizations face various staffing and managerial challenges that can impede success.

Staff turnover is an ongoing concern. According to Gallup, turnover in the United States costs businesses $30.5 billion annually. Research also shows that 75% of employees leave a company because of bad bosses, and 72% leave because of a toxic work environment. BuiltIn estimates that replacing employees can cost one-half to two times their salary and an average of $1,500 for hourly workers. Reducing turnover cuts overhead, saves training time, and helps retain tribal knowledge critical to operations.

Lack of employee engagement contributes to staff turnover and costs global businesses $8.8 trillion. Employee engagement describes workers’ attitudes and ability to give full attention to their jobs. According to Gallup, only 23% of the world’s employees were engaged in their jobs in 2022. Creating a culture that nurtures employee engagement has yielded substantial benefits, including an average of 23% higher profitability, an 18% sales increase, 10% higher customer loyalty, and significant reductions in employee turnover.

Poor management costs global businesses $7 trillion annually says Gallup, which is 9% to 10% of the world’s GDP. At the same time, spending on leadership development has dropped to less than $500 per executive according to the Josh Bersin Company. Fewer than 20% of companies actively invest in leadership development, although it’s been shown that companies that prioritize leadership training are five times more likely to exceed financial targets.

Today’s organizations face common challenges, including:

• Employee retention – 75% of employees leave due to poor management, lack of career advancement, and organizational misalignments.
• Time – Workers are tasked with impossible tasks because of inflexible schedules and increased workloads.
• Poor management – Inexperienced and undertrained managers promote employee disengagement and staff turnover.
• Company alignment – 51% of HR professionals say there is no strategic alignment between hiring and organizational leadership.

To address these issues, organizations must be able to identify weaknesses and develop a sustainable leadership development strategy. That’s the purpose of ODaaS.

Creating Sustainable Leadership Strategies with ODaaS

Dr. Phlatt Mclean developed the ODaaS concept during his time as a project manager at a software company. Mclean has a background in computer engineering with advanced degrees in leadership development and recognized the consistent gaps in organizational leadership. Applying more than a decade in leadership development, Mclean realized that organizations in all industries encounter the same leadership challenges.

“Just as in the software business, companies tend to hire professionals with specific skills such as coding or sales, but they have no idea how to lead a team,” Mclean said. “The lack of leadership causes friction among teammates and erodes the company culture. As I learned more about leadership strategies and their impact on an organization, I realized that organizational development was a universal need that could be delivered as a self-service product. That’s how I came up with the concept of ODaaS.”

ODaaS is a “people investment program” that helps organizations align organizational strategies with company goals and provide ongoing support through a customized leadership academy.  Rather than risking employee burnout, providing a leadership academy enables workers to uplevel their skills and re-engage with their jobs. Offering self-service training serves as another organizational benefit, like a 401K or paid time off.

The PhlattLine Process

When PhlattLine engages with a new client, the team diagnoses the problem by determining the organization’s goals and perceived weak points. The resulting strategy bridges the gap from the current operation to a future state that corrects the issues.

The next step is data collection and analysis. The team interviews stakeholders, assesses the organizational structure, and identifies areas that need attention. The analytical stage often reveals areas of misalignment, such as company culture, employee retention, team structures, and job satisfaction. Once the weak points have been identified, the organization can start making changes.

 “Change isn’t easy, especially when it comes to organizational structure or culture,” Mclean explains. “We lead the change with workshops, trainings, facilitations, seminars, and other initiatives. The final piece is project evaluation to ensure the program works.  We then make those changes sustainable by creating a Leadership Academy so the organization can continue to train its employees.”

Mclean notes that while all organizations face common challenges, the ODaaS model allows PhlattLine to tailor solutions to address specific problems. Technology enables organizations to continue to adapt leadership training through the Leadership Academy to meet the organization’s evolving needs.

“In the past, seminars and training have been done in an eight-hour session or on successive days, but there’s no retention of information,” said Mclean. “COVID promoted remote training, but it’s still the same program using a different medium. My goal is to change leadership training and provide a tool that fosters continuous training in increments. The ODaaS platform enables organizations to create their own programs for continuous leadership training and improvement.”