Collaborating with top teams to leverage and translate their knowledge into high impact action and results
Strategy only generates results when it’s put into action across your organization. With this simple idea in mind, every strategic idea you develop working with us will be immediately actionable.
It’s central to what we do. We’re passionate about action.
It’s the common language to your business, and it’s built collaboratively. This means getting to a common understanding and commitment to what success looks like and the longer-term ambition. You and your leaders knowing how to measure and learn from success. Teams prioritising where to put their valuable attention.
The difference to our approach is how it revolves around an essential component – you and your team
- How we engage and work collaboratively with you. A strong emphasis on facilitation and coaching. You’ll not only be defining your strategy but also implementing it. So the role of the senior team simply must be highly involved, throughout. We know how to use your time wisely, amidst your many priorities. You are involved in a high value and high impact way, where it matters most.
- How you start in this work – your launch point – tailored to your business. Shaped to reflect your prior strategic work and culture, and the uniqueness that has brought you to this point. Your leaders combined skills and talents – completely unique, no other team like it. And your business’ journey so far – never been done before. With this in mind, we make the process work for you, where you are. As we like to say, there are cookies, but no cookie cutter.
- Compelling vision – Great strategy begins with a crystal clear view of the destination. A vivid picture from multiple perspectives – customers, stakeholders and employees. We’ll ensure it’s a composite view that integrates the the good thinking and experience of the full team (and often beyond). For many of our clients, this simple but powerful process is often enough on its own to boost progress and focus the team on what needs to be done.
- Articulate objectives and map your strategy – Knowing where you are headed is good, being able to articulate that clearly for everyone else is great – the what, the why, the how. We help you “unpack” the thinking of your leaders. Teams agree a powerful combination of growth, efficiency, customer value, operational and people objectives. This comes together with a concise single page map of your strategy….a picture tells a thousand words.
- Measure success – So, how will you know if you’ve achieved the outcomes and strategies you’ve invested so much in developing? Make your measures matter, to make it real. From our work with the Balanced Scorecard for 20 years, we turn a sometimes dry discussion into a creative leadership exercise. We’ll guide you beyond financial metrics to discover useful lead measures of customer and operational success. Your discussions will generate business improvement and innovative thinking. In fact, many of our clients use it as a language to create total clarity of their strategic direction.
- Prioritise resources – People’s time and your business budget – scarce resources to be allocated for the greatest impact and return. We’ll help you develop the framework, process and analysis to make these critical decisions with objectivity and transparency.
- Sharpen strategic skills and leverage your experience – You’re not alone…few leaders formally learn strategic skills. Yet all leaders already have a rich arsenal of practical business expertise that strategy cannot replace. Our facilitation process curates the practical must-know strategic tools. An action-oriented approach enriches personal leadership capability. Leadership teams then work better together with new perspective and recognition of issues and opportunities. Our clients say it’s rewarding and empowering.
- Governance – “Strategy should be living and breathing and not set in stone,” you say. We agree! So we’ll guide you in developing your on-going strategic process, cadence and calendar. Our most successful clients dedicate effort to this step to reinforce execution and action of their strategy.
Trending – popular and frequently requested by our clients
- Go-to-Market Roadmap – Focus in on revenue generation strategies for your entire business or specific products or services. We’ve helped clients rescue and turnaround difficult situations, or just as successfully, push the envelope and move to the next level when business is going well. We take you through an accelerated strategic process with robust action planning. Leaders complete the process highly engaged, inspired and ready to hit the ground running.
- The Balanced Scorecard – as it was intended, as a strategic tool. So much more than a list of measures. We guide our clients through the process learned from our work directly with the Harvard creators of this method. Robust and highly developmental for those involved. Your business will not be the same afterwards – for the better. Smaller business or unique structure? We are adept at scaling and adapting to suit different needs.
Curious to learn more? Enjoy these Case Studies:
- Cedar Software – Building a high performing team & business
- BT Funds Management New Zealand – Using the balanced scorecard
