After managing projects for a dotcom during the boom, Megan refocused on creating emergency management programs for a healthcare trade association in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001. While her strong project management skills were an asset, she quickly learned that traditional project management is designed for management by hierarchy rather than collaboration. So she adjusted her strategies and tactics, but something still bothered her.

Her new job required participation with other organizations and various collaborative groups (e.g., boards, committees, and teams.) However, she noticed little time was spent planning and communicating how these groups should be organized. As a result, there were many unproductive meetings, poor communication with stakeholders, wasted resources, personality conflicts, and sometimes less-than-perfect effects.

One day, she realized that the two problems were connected – that traditional management doesn’t work as well in collaborative settings and that not taking the time to design how these groups should function ultimately made collaboration frustrating and unproductive. She figured out how to alter project management to a collaborative setting and started with her program and committees. She realized that difficult people mainly resulted from fuzzy boundaries and poor accountability, which meant the monsters were at the organizational level, not with individuals. Thus, the concept of Organizational Monsters was born and eventually evolved into Planosaurus.

Since 2009, Planosaurus has been obsessed with helping organizations get better results from collaborative work. Our unique approach helps eliminate the common threats to collaboration we affectionately call Organizational Monsters. We do this by assisting organizations in eliminating their organizational monsters, training professionals on managing collaboration more effectively, and providing contractual support for operations, collaborative groups, programs, and projects.

Planosaurus, based out of upstate New York, is a woman-owned consulting firm with an unconventional attitude about collaboration: you must plan for better cooperation. We operate off the belief that collaborating can be an effective strategy for getting results if you take the time to develop the structure, systems, and accountability measures to facilitate the interactions. Otherwise, you get headaches, empty pockets, and Organizational Monsters.