Wednesday, September 26, 2007

PERFORMANCE GAPS AND CAUSES

Consulting process is not an easy job. A consultant should try to be in the Client shoes before approaching him with the solution. A consultant must systematically conduct performance and cause analysis prior to selecting, designing, implementing and evaluating an intervention. A friend of mine asked me the basic steps to a consulting process. So, I thought to pen down the process, which also takes care of identifying the performance gaps and causes.

Preparation. Preparation includes researching the organization and the industry as well as the client. While internal consultants have access to much more information, external consultants can use the internet to access organization and industry specific information. The external Consultants can always take the help of the Client’s organization and specifically look into the Business Units of the organization and gather information required to solve the Client’s problems.

Assessment. The next step is centered on building rapport with the client and asking open-ended questions to gain the client’s perception of the overall situation. This initial phase is necessary to build trust and begin the process of assessing the client’s situation and needs. This step should not be overlooked as the Consultants sometimes miss the basic fact as they are in a hurry to get into the problems.

Diagnosis. Once the overall situation is identified, we need to explore the client’s perception of the problem, its implications and the value of resolving that problem. This is done with direct questions that guide the discussion as we carefully diagnose the performance discrepancy. These first three steps are necessary to “earn the right” to make a recommendation as to how to improve performance.

Prescription. After identifying the overall situation, problems, implications and value of improving performance, the consultant is ready to make a recommendation as to alternative courses of action. We call this a prescription rather than a presentation to reinforce the idea from the medical community that “Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.”

Partnering. As the Consultant works with the client to decide the best course of action, he must define what roles each will play. In effect, Consultants form a partnership in which the client still owns the problem, but the consultant have a clearly defined role to play in seeking to resolve that problem. The partnership will be different for each client and problem.

Reinforcement. Before leaving, Consultant should reinforce the client’s decision to use his services. It is natural for the client to feel apprehensive about committing resources to a new course of action.

Follow-up. Consultants must make sure that they fulfill the promises made to the client and move the project ahead. All of good work would be for nothing if they didn’t meet the expectations we created.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

APPROACHES of a Business Consultant

How to deal with a Client? How to make sure that you are catering your client in an effective way?

1) Always check there is a match between your Client's problem and your Consultancy.The proposal should be made keeping customer's viewpoints in mind,enough details id given for a decision to be made and the relationship of the actions planned to the customer's problems and issues are explained.The Business need of the Customer should get reflected in the writing.

2)The Consultants should always make an intangible product tangible meaning the proposal should be clear and precise to the facts provided by the clients and the ones derived from the facts provided.The vague the proposal,the less tangible the service will appear to be.

3)As obvious, Intangibility brings uncertainity.While dealing with your clients,make sure to bring forward all the risks associated with the deal and proposal to your client.The customers generally do not understand the working of a consultancy and are lured by the image of the consultancy. The more the risk factor associated highlighted in the proposal,lesser will be the uncertainity and a trust factor develops.

4)Be clear and understandable not only to your Clients but everyone in the client's organization.Whether it be a written or a verbal agreement,complexities in words bring complexities in business.

5) I have always stressed in the fact that bring innovation and differentiation in the way you do your business. There cannot be change in the process everytime but yes,introducing something new and adopting a new approach always help....

Friday, September 14, 2007

FILMS in MANAGEMENT SYLLABUS… A Serious Study or Farce??

Before we heard, Kkrish making news in IIMs. Reason, its inclusion as a Case Study in IIMs. And, the recent inclusion is Chak De India. Now a days, it’s becoming common for the Management Students taking movies as a Case Study. It obvious to ponder why it’s happening?? I have few questions to ask:
1) Is it a Marketing gimmick for the movies to a new way to popularize the colleges? After IIMs, there have been few B and C Grade colleges adopting to include films as a Case Study.
2) Are these movies taken as a Case Study because of their Box Office success, technical advancement in the way movies are made, inspiration provided by the movies or Management Students are giving a serious thought to be recruited by Film Makers to make Big Budget Movies.
To me it seems to be a new way of Branding. If a movie is made a Case Study in the Colleges, it means the movie is more than entertainment. An new way to understand how some film- makers are best from the herd and their movie needs to be seen by the public. If I ask a normal person, what do he know about Kkrish, well, the answer would be a
1) Hrthik Roshan Starrer
2) Rakesh Roshan’s Movie
3) A huge Box-Office Success

Now, if it’s a Case Study, few things will come into picture, like
1) What kind of special effects used? How Bollywood is using some of the best technologies in their movies?
2) What kind of marketing a movie has done to cater to its audience?
IIM Indore thought Kkrish to be a “Successful promotion of Brand India” But is Kkrish the only product in the market, which has made India felt its International Presence, or is Lagaan the only movie, which made India proud of??

Truly, Indian movies lack the seriousness in content and the movies, which are sent to International Arena, lack the message it needs to be given. People do not hear about any movie, which spreads messages on AIDS, humility faced by Indian Women. Why are we getting narrow on our thoughts?

Well, I am here to talk about Business. If we are looking a good way of marketing a film, no doubt its one of the good ways to brand your movie but what about social responsibility as far as movies are concerned. Movies are here for entertainment but Management Colleges are not. A serious thought needs to be given which movie should reach the masses and efforts should be realized that goes behind making a movie on social issue…

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Lessons from the ELEPHANTS

1.Customers comes first.Include Customers in all strategic decisions.
2. Understand your Business.Management must maintain Objectivity.
3.Stretch GOALS and execution of Key Success Factors is a must.
4.Reorganization should implement a Strategy.
5.Always pay Attention to Employees.
6.The Organization should focus on understanding Customer Insight, drive initiatives to achieve success.
7.Money,Advancement,Recognition,Fear,Learning,Opportunity,Success,Threat of extinction and Complelling vision of the future are levers of motivation.
8.Operate as an Entrepreneurial Organization with a minimum of Bureaucracy and a never ending focus on Productivity.
9.Think and Act with a sense of Urgency.
10.Outstanding, dedicated people make it all happen particularly when they work as a team.

The Management Philospohy defined by this Market Leader focuses on:
.Manage by Priniciples-nor Procedure.
.Marketplace dictates.
.Quality.
.Competitive Strategies and Plans.
.Pay for performance.
.Reduce Meetings and Committees.
.Straightforward communication.
.Problem solvers with focus on Team Players and not Politicians.

An evolution from a failing organization to one one of the Market LEADERS.This Organization have never failed to achieve success."The Bigger, the Better" is what I would refer them, one of the Esteemed Organization, IBM-"No one does INNOVATION better than IBM".

Saturday, September 8, 2007

COMMUNICATIONS Strategy

Communications Strategy is preparing a list of things which will enable us to communicate to the people in the marketplace.We can use this strategy both in our personal and professional life to make things easier and put ourselves n our organization in control.If you are planning to start an organization,product or service based, then a sensible strategy would be to build a database of customers n prospects so that building relationship will be easy.If you are selling a fast moving product, then a list of wholesalers,retailers would help you.

Its useful in an organization too.You maintain calender and address book,diary to help manage your relationships.A simple Birthday Note to your colleague or senior can work wonder in employee relationship in the company.Even the organizations understand the importance of professional relationship.In Chat Messengers like Lotus Sametime,there are facilities of maintaning address book.

A good database whether professional or personal helps us to manage one-to-one relationship.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

VIEWS of a Business Consultant..Continued.

Function View: This looks at the core business functionality, in terms of:
.Process Inputs: Location of processes and actions
.Process Triggers:Initiation of process and the output
.Conceptual Data Models:The information required for by the functions.

Technical Architecture View: It forms the basis of an IT Solution if any and the consulting required for the solution.It covers hardware,database management systems,networks and protocols,middleware and messaging architecture.

Application Architecture View: It defines the core business functionality in order to derive an application architecture that will support the business in terms of function and data distribution.This area includes the capabilities, structure and user interfaces of application software,physical database design,package selection process and criteria and business data rules of an organization.

Infrastructure View: It includes training, production support strategies,security and back-up,configuration management strategies and tools.

For first part,refer my post on A Business Consultant View

Author:Philip Sadler