Jonathon Eisler, Perspectives Organizational Consulting Group
By Amy Wishnick
Our “Five Questions” series highlights the expertise and individuality of our member consultants. Members are interviewed by an ACN peer. We hope this series will reveal the breadth, depth, and overall expertise of our membership!

Jonathan Eisler is interested in learning your story. An open and engaging conversationalist, he builds relationships with clients by underscoring his concern for their improvement. Inherently curious about people and organizations, Jonathan frankly comments that meeting a client’s needs sometimes means passing a project off to another consultant – or even another firm.

As Director of Organizational Services for Perspectives, a national firm specializing in organizational and workforce resources, Jonathan’s department can offer a lot – the group focuses on services that provide “solutions for systemic challenges that impact organizational performance and overall productivity”. Consultants deliver coaching, standardized assessments, and customized organizational/workforce development services.

These broad aims, alongside his experiences as a consultant, led Jonathan to pursue educational degrees that aligned with his passion to build teams and help people and organizations grow and improve. He has earned both a Master’s degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology as well as an MBA, with the intent of acquiring in-depth understanding of both the human dynamics and the structural components at play within his client organizations.

Reflecting on the organizational challenges his clients face, he first notes the precarious financial positions that clients are facing, particularly those who rely on state funding. Consequently, his work frequently begins with creatively designing a scope of work that meets the client’s needs within a limited budget. Second, he has seen a shift away from client engagements that focus only on training, toward an emphasis on addressing the systemic cause of organizational challenges and fit of resources. Jonathan notes that he and his team are facilitating more organizational assessments, needs analyses, and consulting engagements, rather than simply providing coaching.

When asked to consider organization-level challenges, he identifies two phenomena. The first is that some organizations attempt assessment or team building work on their own; however, Jonathan knows that this kind of work is better suited to a consultant – an unbiased outsider. As someone who deepens his understanding of organizational cultures and challenges with every new engagement, Jonathan exposes clients to new ideas and new (dare we say) perspectives! The second organizational challenge he sees is that clients often have difficulty moving beyond an entrenched view of their organization. As a consultant whose work focuses on change, moving a client from a subjective understanding of their organization’s history to an objective view of project outcomes can prove exceptionally difficult.

Jonathan describes an up-coming project – a partnership evaluation that has bearing on important decisions about the client organization’s program, partnerships, staffing, and community impact. He will be managing a team of consultants with different skillsets who will work together to evaluate strategies, outcomes, perceptions, and statistics. By bringing together an array of consultant resources, Jonathan is able to lead a team to gather qualitative and quantitative data and use it to answer some big questions facing the organization.

It is obvious why Jonathan Eisler’s clients want to work with him. Affable and smart, he skillfully gets to the heart of a matter. He communicates well and clearly articulates their need based on what they tell him thus laying a solid foundation for a successful engagement.