Think Bigger, Plan Smarter, Act Faster... Get Results!
Consulting
One Dozen Projects We Excel At
While aren’t experts at everything, our clients consider us best-of-breed in several areas. Our track record of successful projects usually involves one or several more of the following themes.
1. Facilitate Executive Retreats
These intensive sessions resolve the troublesome issues that keep good leaders awake at night. Past topics have included making mergers work, shifting the culture, tuning up strategy, starting new business ventures, and making pivotal decisions.
Starting with your desired outcomes, we construct an agenda that will generate productive results. Our seasoned facilitators keep discussions focused to drive progress and decisions, with occasional pauses for fun and side conversations to work out agreements.
2. Develop or Upgrade Strategic Plans
Even the best plans have a half-life and must be periodically updated to stay fresh. Sometime just a tweak is needed, and at other times, a major overhaul.
Our approach to strategic planning tackles the issues that matter most to you. Our advanced planning methods can be applied at all levels of your organization, department, business unit, or team.
Want to know more? See our special report on “Reinventing Strategic Planning.”
3. Build Strategic Management Systems
You expect far more than a written strategic plan. You expect a practical strategic management system that produces meaningful plans and drives your business day-to-day.
We help clients build strategic management systems and cycles, complete with annual planning calendars and key events linked into a self-improving sequence. We’ll dovetail new elements into your existing system and add missing pieces that complete your high-performance puzzle.
These elegantly simple systems scale up and down to work for teams, departments, business units, and organization-wide.
For a greater appreciation, see the special report “The ABC’s of Strategic Management.”
4. Launch Task Forces, Special Initiatives and Project Teams
Good plans are one thing, making them work is quite another. We are the foremost authority on putting plans into action by activating and energizing new project teams and task forces charged with implementing executive mandates.
Our “Plan Smarter” process jump starts new initiative teams so they get moving fast with clear plans and make-it-happen commitment. Your teams will benefit greatly from a common vocabulary and no-nonsense tools that help them rapidly define key objectives and work smoothly across organizational boundaries.
5. Guide Organization Change
Planned change must be skillfully managed because it won’t happen automatically. Change efforts fail without sufficient attention paid to the underlying processes and structures that drive change. Benefit from our wisdom and experience in successfully introducing, managing and implementing change. We’ll show you how to apply various models, including the Iceberg Theory, the Rollercoaster of Change, and Logical Framework models to guide strategic change throughout the organization.
6. Reinvent Your Department
Forward-thinking leaders periodically conduct the organization equivalent of spring cleaning by taking a brand-new look at where they are and where they need to be. When performance lags or your mission changes, this clean-up becomes more vital than ever. We’ll offer you innovative lenses through which to review stalled projects, programs, and strategies; identify and evaluate alternatives; and redirect your effort in more promising (and profitable) directions.
7. Improve Business Processes
Are your internal processes in sync? Are you firing on all cylinders? For a deeper dive into your critical organization processes, we utilize the Haines Centre process models to pinpoint exactly what you need to do in seven critical areas to set you on the path to higher performance.
8. Transform Leadership Teams
Leaders cannot fundamentally transform their organizations unless they first transform themselves. Our transformation events unfold like a fast-paced novel, with adventure, surprise, and buckets of fun. You’ll experience challenging, interactive processes which generate a smorgasbord of provocative and practical insights. These unique events are ideal for supporting major organizational change or strategy shifts because they get people to see themselves and each other through fresh eyes and signal a “fresh start.”
A variety of participants including state governors, CEOs, entrepreneurs, engineers, research scientists, and psychiatric nurses have enjoyed these events. They provide a catalyst for increasing innovation, stimulating global thinking, and transforming your organization.
9. Get IT Projects Moving
The failure rate of IT projects is startling, approaching 80% according to the Gartner Group and other industry sources.
Our start-up methods resonate with progressive IT departments because they help technical professionals understand the business case and helps executive sponsors communicate user requirements. These methods drive home the shared realization that IT projects are really organization change efforts, requiring the inclusion of cultural elements to make it work.
Avoid the pitfalls which doom most IT projects with our inventive approach to starting smart.
10. Conduct Periodic Strategy Tune-Ups
Many clients bring us in several times a year to guide them in sorting through results and lessons learned, then adjusting the strategy for the future. During these periodic sessions, we review draft plans to ensure that they are in harmony with other departments’ and with the overall strategic plan. These eye-opening strategic tune-ups provide compelling value in solidifying your strategic roadmap because our perspective is objective, hard-hitting, and grounded in experience.
11. Provide Remote Project Management Support
Individuals, teams, and organizations seeking a low cost way to get professional consulting in shaping their projects rely on our remote project management support. Using the Log Frame structure, we interact by email and phone to help you shape an action plan that provides clear direction and uncovers preventable pitfalls. You can greatly benefit from our expert coaching to confirm or modify your project management plans and action initiatives.
12. ApplyLogical Framework Thinking
The Logical Framework is a robust systems thinking tool for organizing and managing all types of projects and strategic change. Its infinite adaptability has turned hundreds of our clients into raving fans.
We are leaders in best practice Logical Framework applications. Terry Schmidt worked with the original Logical Framework development team, and has adapted this innovative thinking system for use in business, government, research institutions, and non profit organizations.
Discover the simplicity of the Logical Framework and explore baker ’s dozen everyday applications.
Download the Logical Framework Project Designs and “Turn Strategy Into Action” special reports.
Contact Terry or call 206.433.0700 today for a confidential discussion of your issues and objectives.