We work with business leaders as whole people who possess 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 process, better analysis, and better advice—in short, the many technical benefits of a good management consultant. But strategy in the emerging era of Integral Business 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—generating new insights and creating enhanced capacities—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 workplace, the marketplace, and 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 authenticity.
The synergistic development of these many facets of Integral Business leadership 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: By moving seamlessly between the technical and developmental dimensions of the strategy process, our Developmental Consultants will help you generate clear strategy and cultivate genuine commitment, while simultaneously developing enhanced capacity for strategic management within your executive team and board of directors.
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