how we work

We work with business leaders as if they are whole people, with enormous challenges, deep commitments, and the inherent capacity to grow as a natural, even necessary, aspect of their business.  For us, as well as our clients, business is personal.

Like many consulting firms, we believe that business strategy can be more effective with the support of better analysis, better advice, and better process—in short, the many technical benefits of a good management consultant.  But strategy is much more than a technical challenge. It is also a developmental challenge that requires the emergence of new capacities within and between strategic decision makers.  This sort of work is typically reserved for management development programs conducted outside the context of the strategy process, with only vague linkages to the company’s strategic priorities.

We address both challenges through an approach we call Developmental Consulting™, which integrates the best features of Management Development—creating enhanced capacities and generating new insights—with the best features of Management Consulting—addressing critical issues and achieving real results.  Developmental Consulting™ helps you focus on the pressing challenges before you, while simultaneously developing enhanced capacities to see, think, feel, act, and learn in the midst of increasingly complex and uncertain strategic conditions.  These capacities include:

• Attention – the capacity to bring greater awareness to the content, context, and multi-faceted process of strategic decision making, including the unique perspectives and capacities of the individuals involved.

• Cognition – the capacity to see through multiple perspectives, think through alternative scenarios, and embrace paradoxical ideas without succumbing to the natural desires to defend a fixed position, predict a certain future, or confuse both/and opportunities with either/or necessities. 

• Emotion – the capacity to discern emotional states, engage in honest conversations, and constructively manage conflict, while cultivating genuine compassion for those who are impacted by one's actions in the world.

• Volition – the capacity to make conscious, morally justifiable commitments in the midst of uncertain circumstances and certain criticism, with an equal capacity to seek feedback and learn from experience on the way to greater intentionality.

The synergistic development of these many facets of executive intelligence results in dramatically enhanced communication and decision making that raises strategy to a whole new level of sophistication and performance.  While facilitating the development of these new capacities through appreciative dialogue, we also engage whatever confusion and conflict arises and use it as an opportunity to surface competing commitments, challenge hidden assumptions, and foster collaborative learning.  Furthermore, because you develop these new capacities while dealing directly with the technical realities of the business—with the unrelenting need to satisfy customers, employees, and investors—they are always aligned with your strategic priorities.

Bottom Line:  In order to effectively deal with the increasing complexity and uncertainty of today’s business challenges, business leaders like you must balance and integrate the technical and developmental dimensions of your strategy work.  Just as important, you deserve consultants who move seamlessly between these complementary realms with a constant focus on mutual value creation.

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