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• Services
• Strategy
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• Organizational Design

The Napa Group’s business and education clients benefit from our comprehensive and integrated expertise in strategic assessment, planning and execution aimed at innovation, impact and increased market share.

Businesses competing in a rapidly evolving marketplace must seek high yields on their investments in a relatively short time. The bottom line revolves around successful products and services that are both driven by market share and create shareholder value and profit. In this circle of dynamic forces, the highest performers have the right people and the right systems to sustain and grow optimal results

Education institutions face the same challenges as they strive to balance both mission and market. With extensive experience in public and private educational institutions and organizations, The Napa Group brings distinct and specialized expertise in rapidly changing higher education environments, beginning with the president’s office and extending across the advancement spectrum. Our core competencies are organizational strategy and design, leadership, relationship-building and change management.

Ultimately our consulting is focused on building the “case for investment” in your organization – whether from state, institutional or private fundraising resources or the consumer market.

Whatever your goals or challenges, our organizational assessment identifies priority areas for attention, including market assessment, executive team and board development, program focus and metrics, people and financial resource planning and strengthened communications and brand-building activities.

This may lead to comprehensive strategic planning or specialized counsel from our team for what we call “strategic planning lite,” which targets short-term outcomes in specific areas. Our comprehensive planning framework incorporates the following elements:

• A strategic assessment informed by your business goals, objectives and current and desired market position.
• A comprehensive process customized to your needs and culture, scalable for the entire enterprise or major divisions, adaptable to a full or “lite” project, engaging senior leaders and staff and building internal partnerships and community.
• Data-driven demographic and competitor research, industry best practices trends and other environmental data focused on market position and analytics to support your decision making.
• Budget forecasting and financial modeling that allow you to plan and fund the strategic plan over time, both programs and people.
• Strategic goals and tactical implementation steps staged sequentially to achieve long-term outcomes.
• Communication and marketing support that informs and engages key stakeholders and constituencies internally and externally.
• Most importantly, we go far beyond “planning” and actually help you execute. The Napa Group builds the critical implementation phase into our projects, a value-added roadmap that distinguishes us from many other firms. Our “solutions” roadmap ties plan outcomes to annual operating plans for individuals and units for multi-year cycles. This phase ensures that you have the structure, job descriptions, performance expectations, operating plans, budgets and metrics and other operating tools to accomplish your defined outcomes.
• And at every step of the way, we honor your institutional knowledge, traditions and vision so that your people – senior administrators and staff, and in the case of universities, also your alumni, donors, volunteers and external partners – are actively participating to create and carry out the solutions that are right for your organization.

Our experience has proven that carefully constructed and inclusive planning processes can lead to unifying opportunities and prudent transitions for any enterprise.