Management Consulting and Organizational Improvement.
Consulting for organizational improvement is a process that focuses on understanding key issues. Then the skill is in moving everyone to a more successful structure, process and expectation. One sign of success is when internal stakeholders adopt new ways of talking and acting.
Finally, let’s add in how to bring new consultants up to speed effectively so that they can deliver quality targeted consulting engagements.
Management Consulting.
Each client has a different understanding of their problem.
Client Engagement.
You are selected because clients trust you. They are presented with a series of logical steps which lead to a resolution of their issues. I enjoy the process of gaining the customers confidence and then starting the engagement off on the right foot.
That’s my goal. Make sure that the engagement is the right one for the customer and will deliver real results.
Interviews are a critical component of any change process.
Stakeholder understanding.
Each stakeholder has a point of view. They are on your side, or maybe more skeptical. Creating a process which acknowledges phases in the change process and takes time to bring people on board is a key component to success.
And stakeholders have to be heard - deeply. My mind flashes over the many places and times I have spent listening to each person’s point of view - and then mapping their perspective into the whole.
And then there is the most satisfying moment when someone ‘gets it.’ The internal advocate for the change is the most powerful milestone in organizational change.
Starting with the raw input from a workshop.
Building a new model.
I do not have all the answers. However I know that given the right facilitation, the right solution emerges. Getting people into a real or virtual room and leading them through a process delivers a new model of working that merges my awareness and the internal constrains and points of view.
The end result is a solution that the stakeholder’s own, believe in and want to move forward with.
Building Management Consultancy.
Aspirational Goal for the Team
Dream it.
For the last couple of years an intrepid group of dreamers based, primarily, in the UK has worked to collect open-source buy-in for a model to get a company from strategy to execution and back again.
I have been working to inject product thinking as both an aspect of strategy delivery - and as part of the go-to-market thinking.
Trello keeping us on track… sort of
Build it.
As a purely volunteer activity, delivering the product layer as a workable part of the P3M (now becoming P4M) [project, programme, portfolio - and product] activity is only part of the work.
Tracking the various components that need to be delivered and made public requires close collaboration between products and marketing.
Fitting different components together
Grow it.
Inch by inch, we are making progress prioritizing/prioritising components along the way.
And it’s all taking place early in the day. Coffee anyone??
One challenge was how to bring other folks up to speed. I use step by step practice guides and action plans so that consultants can use their expertise, the detailed process and associated artifacts to deliver excellent results for every client.
At key moments, I participated in interviews or review key deliverables to ensure quality results for the client. And finally, I created a space for consultants to share their learning and best practices in a confidential manner with other consultants. The entire organization grows their skill set with confidence.