Specialties

With 20+ years of executive-level experience managing strategic initiatives, we've developed deep expertise in the following areas:

Strategic Project Management & Execution

There is a difference between strategic projects and everyday operations; however, both are critical for your business.

When it comes to growing your business, you need to execute your strategic projects successfully while also continuing to run your operations efficiently and effectively.

It is a juggling act.

The daily operations can sometimes distract us from the strategic initiatives because operations can be - or seem to be - urgent.

That urgency can suck up all of your focus and the strategic work can easily get procrastinated.

Our R.O.C.K It™ Framework will give you a cadence to allow you to stay focused on your important strategic initiatives while also giving you the flexibility to deal with the urgent operational issues that come up.

Example of R.O.C.K. It™ framework at work in this practice specialty:

R - objectives & statuses

O - dashboard development

C - cadence development

K - visibility considerations

Scaling Operations for Growth

As companies grow, they need to scale their operations.

During the start-up phase, founders and employees do everything - juggling strategy and daily operations without much concern about who does what.

As they move into the growth phase, the work starts to become more specialized. Departments are created and specialists hired. At this point, the employee count is small enough that everyone knows everyone. People are experts at what they do and know who to reach out to if they need something.

As the company scales, bottlenecks form. Processes are dependent on specific people. When those people are operating efficiently, things hum along. But, when those people are not able to keep up, the rest of the business suffers. Any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck are an illusion.

We work with growing companies to scale their operations in a manner that balances vision, strategy, and tactical execution.

Scaling your operations is a strategic activity, necessary if you want to continue to grow. It is a cultural shift for your employees who have had freedom to perform tasks however they could. Scaling is a tactical exercise that is complex due to the cross-functional nature of operations. That means you've got to have someone who keeps track of it all, thinks in terms of systems, and understands the key pillars of change management.

Example of R.O.C.K. It™ framework at work in this practice specialty:

R - bottleneck identification

O - process design

C - plan execution

K - leadership update cadence

System & Process Creation/Improvement

As companies grow, the progression of system and process thinking follows a familiar path:

During the start-up phase, there are no defined processes or systems. As a new requirement arises, someone deals with it in whatever manner helps them get it done. You need to hire your first accounting employee, so you call someone you know who knows someone, and viola, you've got your first accountant.

As they move into the growth phase, processes begin to get more formally defined out of necessity. It becomes harder and harder to coordinate across the growing team, and the only way to do it is to define some rudimentary processes. As the company begins to hire department leads, they focus on putting efficient processes in place for the department to ensure that each specialized area of the company is operating efficiently. Your accounting department has quickly grown to 5 people. The head of the accounting department put a process into place to ensure that there is an appropriate job description for each role and that each person has a defined set of responsibilities.

And, as the company scales, these departmental processes start to feel inefficient because they don't work well with the processes upstream and downstream from them.

It is time for systems thinking.

Each of your department heads has been hiring as needed, but you don't have an overall budgeting cycle to ensure that, across all departments, you are hiring within a budget that will allow you to stay profitable. You put a budgeting cycle and job posting approval process in place to make sure that all new hiring is in alignment with the company's overall objectives.

The R.O.C.K. It™ Framework is geared toward a system-based approach. We look at processes across the company from the systems perspective to scale the processes so that they are efficient across the company, not just within each department.

What makes systems thinking challenging is that it is cross-functional, so it is hard to pin down a single owner.

Example of R.O.C.K. It™ framework at work in this practice specialty:

R - understand key stakeholders & objectives

O - identify optimal system solution

C - operational measurement establishment

K - training rollout

Operational Measurement

Whether you call them KPIs, OKRs, or just plain metrics, the ability to quickly understand the current state of your business is what allows you to move your business forward toward your vision.

We believe the most important thing that any company can do to help manage their business is to implement the right set of measurements for each area of business.

A front-line manager should have operational metrics that allow her to manage the day-to-day business.

A department leader should have management metrics that allow him to ensure he is making progress toward the most important departmental objectives.

A leadership team should have a set of executive and strategic metrics that allow them to ensure that the business is being managed effectively and that department leaders are moving their organizations toward the company's most important objectives.

The R.O.C.K. It ™ Framework is based on these 3 types of metrics. We believe that no company can be successful unless they have an effective manner of reporting on metrics at all three of these levels.

Example of R.O.C.K. It™ framework at work in this practice specialty:

R - understand core metrics of business/industry

O - robust reporting packages across all levels of business structure established

C - reporting cadence implementation

K - knowledge dissemination structure development

Change Management

As companies scale, change management becomes more difficult. It isn't as easy to get everyone in the same room to talk through the impacts of a change. Personalities have changed - the team used to be of like mind when you were a start-up. Now, you've had to hire specialists who don't think the same way.

And, that is ok.

But, it means that what used to work doesn't work anymore.

Our years of change management experience can help you get through the next change with less of an impact to your team's productivity. We apply the R.O.C.K. It™ Framework in a way that makes change management work for your team.

Example of R.O.C.K. It™ framework at work in this practice specialty:

R - understand change impact to company stakeholder roles

O - development of plans & templates

C - feedback loop(s) monitoring

K - broad-based distribution of What's in it for me? communications that foster buy-in

Resource Management

As professional services organizations grow, it is critical that they can track resource availability, billable utilization levels, skill sets, and forecasting future needs.

We can help put the core processes and reporting in place in an operating cadence that allows you to quickly have an efficient and effective resource management process.

Example of R.O.C.K. It™ framework at work in this practice specialty:

R - understand current state of resources

O - creation of templates & matrixes for on-going management

C - communication cadence development

K - alignment measurement across Services organization management teams

Post-Acquisition Integration

Companies that grow through acquisition face a unique challenge. It is the ultimate cross-functional activity because it impacts every. single. department.

An integration is really nothing more than a large, complex, multi-workstream project.

The challenge for most companies is that they don't have a program manager with the level of experience to manage such a project.

Most companies assign a person from each department to run the integration for that department. Your most knowledgeable sales guy is tapped to integrate the sales team. But, we all know that sales people are not good at project management.

Post Acquisition Integrations involve program management, change management, and a good dose of system and process overhaul. If you are looking for a fast, efficient, effective integration of your acquired company, you need a program manager with all of these skills.

Our R.O.C.K. It™ Framework ensures that your post acquisition integration focuses on the most important items so that you move from integration to operating as one company as quickly as possible.

Example of R.O.C.K. It™ framework at work in this practice specialty:

R - acquisition objectives understanding

O - development of integration template(s)

C - progress reporting cadence for management established

K - broad-based communication plan for entire company