Services
The Gordian Knot of Transformational Change
The majority of strategic initiatives fail. Timelines slip, financial returns fall short, budgets are overrun. Significant time and resources are spent on planning efforts that fail to account for eventualities that in retrospect were entirely predictable. Despite attempts to employ the best AI has to offer, executives pursue strategic clairvoyance yet miss what might be staring them in the proverbial face.
The senior executive wishlist:
- A “perfect” strategy built on a thorough and comprehensive SWOT analysis which accounts for all relevant facts and peers around every conceivable corner.
- Having a team of smartest people who can accurately forecast marketplace and economic conditions, customer preferences and behaviors, competitor strengths and weaknesses, and assess the regulatory landscape all while providing clear, concise plans for addressing all reasonable eventualities.
- A grateful, dedicated, loyal workforce eagerly awaiting the arrival of this “perfect” strategy so they can flawlessly execute an inspired mission.
Unfortunately, the real world does not often grant us our wishes.
Our Unique and Distinct Response: Strategic Commitment®
Developed over 35-plus years of helping hundreds of executive teams define, navigate and execute large-scale change, we have developed a systematic approach that marries the crafting of strategy (and all its components of Vision, Mission, OKR’s and the like) with the generation of commitment to the fulfillment of that strategy.
This approach is based on a few simple, powerful principles.
- Significant change begins with a clear-eyed view of current skills, structure, resources as well as culture, mood and mindset.
- Where you are headed is more important than where you have been; “Working back from a desired future” wins over fixing—or merely extrapolating—the past.
- Vision, Strategy, Goals and Objectives are only as meaningful as people are committed to achieving them.
Too often, executives get consumed with the pursuit of highly detailed plans and well-honed scripts for conveying these plans. In contrast, our approach ensures leadership teams have sufficient clarity on a bold, compelling future around which they are totally aligned and committed. As a result, the inevitable bumps, adjustments and setbacks—which every meaningful strategic change encounters—are met with “how do we make this work?” rather than “I told you so” or “If only they had listened to me.”
Executives settle for mere compliance—rather than total, aligned commitment—because they either do not know the difference, underestimate the negative consequences or believe that compliance is as good as it gets.