The following perspectives guide our consulting practice and represent "lessons learned" during our 35 years of practice. Please contact us if one or more of these perspectives resonate with you. We would like to help you translate these perspectives into practical solutions that will help your organization pursue its strategic vision.

1. Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it currently achieves.
2. There is a powerful business case for managing people effectively as the leading source of competitive advantage.
3. Implementation success depends on forming and planning for a positive vision of the future that you intend to create.
4. Strategy implementation is a series of action learning projects.
5. Organizational changes can be scheduled - psychological transitions cannot.

1. Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it currently achieves

The current configuration of your organization may help or hinder strategy implementation. We advise your senior leadership team in making evidence-based decisions about your organization's readiness to implement a new or refreshed strategy, and we provide actionable recommendations on what, if anything, needs to change in your organization's design to ensure implementation success.

Design Point: Design elements act interdependently to either support or detract from strategy and its execution. A brilliant strategy does not overcome dull design.

^back to top

2. There is a powerful business case that points to managing people effectively as a the leading source of competitive advantage

A firm's market value is comprised largely of its intellectual capital or intangible assets. Carefully controlled research across a wide range of industries shows that the choice of HR practices is directly linked to the firm's financial success, more so than choice of strategy or industry characteristics. We can help you analyze and design your people practices so that your workforce is engaged and involved in creating competitive advantage.

Workforce Capital = employee energy + commitment + "know how" applied to the work of the firm. Organizational Capital: The results of workforce effort e.g., process and product technology, customer relationships.

^back to top

3. Implementation success depends on forming and planning for a positive vision of the future you intend to create

Your leaders have deep knowledge and operating experience with the organization, they live and breathe it every day. The greatest implementation challenge is to consolidate that knowledge and experience into action plans with milestones that move the entire organization toward your vision of the future.

We are skilled at using interview and other qualitative research tools to produce a positive conversation about your organization's past and its future. We will collect and analyze the data and provide you with targeted recommendations and then collaborate with you to create strategy implementation plans your leaders will embrace because they helped to create them.

We will help you create your implementation plans; however, your organization's leaders will be the authors and guides.

^back to top

4. Strategy implementation is a series of action learning projects

Creating milestones and detailed action plans are both crucial to implementation success; so is modifying those plans based on what is learned along the way. To paraphrase a famous military leader:

"No business plan withstands contact with the marketplace."

There will be inevitable and unforeseen adjustments as you progress from your current to your future state. We will keep listening and advising you along the way, sharing with you our 35 years of experience and helping to ensure that lessons learned are incorporated at each phase of your journey.

^back to top

5. Organizational changes can be scheduled - psychological transitions cannot

We will collaborate with your senior leaders to devise change and transition initiatives that fit your culture. We can educate your leadership group in the art and science of involving employees in the productive pursuit of your strategic goals.

Note to Change Sponsors: Critical mass, not necessarily consensus, is needed to start transition. In its early days, the American Revolution had support from only one-third of the colonists, one-third were loyal to King George and the rest were neutral.

^back to top