We work with companies at the intersection of strategy, organization, and leadership.
Our services include:
- Strategy Development – Corporate or Business Unit strategy that’s built to execute
- Top Leadership Alignment – Creating a high-performing executive team
- Strategy Implementation – Accelerating performance toward your goals
- Organization Design and Transformation – Making change stick
- New Leader Acceleration – Helping new hires hit the ground running
Our consulting services are varied, and tailored to the business needs and culture of our clients. Our clients often engage us at ‘tipping points’ – moments of discontinuous change such as implementing a new strategy, bringing in a new CEO, or building a new executive team. At these moments, organizations can be more ripe for change.
Strategy Development – Corporate or Business Unit strategy that’s built to execute
Many businesses have a data-driven, annual strategy process. But too often, months of good, detailed work goes into developing strategy slides that then sit in a drawer. We believe that the purpose of a strategy is to deliver long-term business results. Results require a strategy that that the leadership aligns around, feels ownership for, and can execute against.
We craft a strategy, together with your team, that puts your company in a position to win, takes advantage of your strengths, and is reflected in real choices that drive behavior.
Top Leadership Alignment – Creating a high-performing executive team
Top team offsites can be an important experience. They get people away from their day-to-day distractions, in a more creative environment, and allow them to develop trust, which is the foundation of effective teamwork. Business performance, then, requires translating that offsite experience back to the day-to-day rhythms of the business. Back at work, the top team needs to address the right issues together, in the right way, to lead to well-coordinated action. They also need to engage in productive discussions, with constructive disagreement, rather than talking without any resolution.
We work directly with leadership teams through an integrated offsite-onsite program. The offsites are an accelerator to build trust and alignment, and clarify business goals. On site, we work with top teams to focus regular meetings on those goals, and to facilitate productive discussion and constructive conflict.
Strategy Implementation – Accelerating performance toward your goals
Great strategies still need to get executed by the organization to produce results. Many organizations struggle to communicate the strategy down to where the real work happens, which leads to a disconnect between the stated strategy and the implementation in the field. We work with organizations to roll out and engage the organization in the strategy, getting BU and functional leaders to wrestle with what it means for their teams, and how their own unit’s strategy and priorities tie in.
But many strategies require deep collaboration across different units to make them happen. This is often the toughest part of implementation, because responsibility doesn’t fall to any single leader, and it requires new ways of working together across the enterprise. For this, we design and implement “Breakthrough Projects”. These help cross-functional teams to build momentum on these cross-cutting strategic initiatives, and develop your organization’s ability to work across silos.
Organization Design and Transformation – Making change stick
Implementing a new strategy sometimes requires big changes in how work gets done, or even which work gets done. This is “transformation”. We work with leaders to create a transformation with two goals simultaneously. One is to achieve meaningful business results, right from the beginning. This builds momentum, while also actually capturing the business benefits from the ‘quick wins’. The second goal is to take root in the organization, to continuously reinforce the changes once initial enthusiasm fades and other priorities begin encroach.
This can often involve classic ‘organization design’, but usually goes beyond organization structure to the full organization system. We take into account the ‘operating model’ of structure, processes, and systems, as well as the softer factors of culture and talent. When these pieces fit together well, the organization can run smoothly, like a well-built machine, to achieve your strategy.
New Leader Acceleration – Helping new hires hit the ground running
Companies often bring in a CEO or new executive when they need a fresh injection of talent or expertise, or they are looking to expand in new markets or geographies. These talented executives come in full of ideas and energy, and all too often get rejected by an organization because they don’t fit with ‘the way we do things around here’.
New CEO’s and senior executives have a critical window as they kick off their tenure. Their teams, peers, and managers/boards are assessing whether they can set a clear direction, generate traction, and build the right relationships to be successful. We lay out and facilitate a structured approach to “onboarding” senior executives in new roles. We help them to accelerate the cycle of listening, aligning, organizing, and acting to generate traction in their first 100 days.