CONSULTING SERVICES
Business Incubation
One of my most significant sources of pleasure is providing thought leadership dealing with the Business Incubation support process that accelerates the successful development of a growth mindset with start-ups, fledgling companies, and business units of major corporations.
I have an entire spectrum of experience steering Start-up companies that may be early in the development process. I do not operate on a set schedule, with middle-market companies looking for growth explosion and corporate business units trying to figure out how to innovate inside a large organization.
If an accelerator is a conservatory for young seeds to get the optimal conditions to grow, an incubator matches quality seeds with the best soil for sprouting and growth.
Business Acceleration
As a child in middle school, I loved running track and making my only track team, running the 100, 200, and the 4×100. While I was never a standout, this passion led me years later to coach one of my sons in track in the 100, 200, 400, 4×100, and 4×400. What I learned from these two pivotal moments in my life was the concept of acceleration.
Acceleration is an increase in the rate or speed of an object or person. However, concerning business growth, acceleration is the velocity of change in a business organization related to people, products, services, revenue, and the processes that support this growth.
Achieving Goals
Assisting an organization or individual accelerate their movement to achieve their goals and objectives has always been a source of accomplishment in my years of service.
Set Timeframe
I usually establish a set timeframe in which I spend time with individual companies, from a few weeks to a few months working with their leadership teams to build out their business and avoid problems.
Seed Investment
I am also willing to assist companies in acquiring a small seed investment and access to an extensive mentor network in exchange for a small amount of equity. Typically, a mentor network of start-up executives and outside investors is often the most significant value for prospective companies.
Vetting
At the end of an accelerator program, my objective is that you have been strategically placed in a position to pitch at some demonstration day attended by investors and media. At this point, the business has confidently been further developed and vetted to receive growth funding.
Accelerated Business Development
My aim of the acceleration is to help a business entity achieve roughly two years of business development in just a few months. When you go through a quality process, you’ll know where your team and business stand.
Business Transformation
The need for speed, agility, dependability, and precision demands further improvements in our business planning, execution, and sustainment. As our business processes continue to migrate from the “mass model” of operations, our business systems must continue to migrate to a lean, agile delivery system focused on meeting new and emerging customer and stakeholder needs—but at even lower costs. This migration is a business transformation.
Collectively, we can declare victory over the transformation challenges we faced during the past decade by looking forward to ensuring that we adequately focus on business transformation to provide complete support. That support must include new supply chain management concepts, new technologies, and further supporting information systems—including embedded information technology.
Fundamental Themes
As we transform businesses, the challenges and focus of business leaders will be very different.
Justification for increased attention to business transformation varies, depending on an entity’s perspective, but universally includes three fundamental themes: changing missions, aging systems support requirements and economics of maintaining enthusiasm while retooling our capabilities.
Thriving Under Change
First, our business missions, objectives, and frequencies continue to change dramatically.
As we have seen from the impact of COVID-19 globally, businesses have taken a hard look at their missions, objectives, and frequency of change management programs to maintain survivability and position themselves for growth. One example is Remote Work, which has become Now Normal. At the start of the pandemic, many in the banking and finance industry were forced into a remote work situation that could have stalled productivity or otherwise negatively affected how businesses were run. Instead, evidence shows many workers thrived under the changes, thus leading to a demand by workers for permanent remote work or hybrid work solutions.
Prioritize Well-being
Businesses Prioritize Well-being as most employees are looking for flexibility in where they work and when they work. The work now becomes how companies can accommodate these needs while still serving their customer base. At the same time, most now realize that COVID and its variants will likely never leave the business landscape, which could entail more lockdowns and other safety measures.
Balance
Businesses Must Find Balance and give each employee their preference within the overall construct of the organizational performance and development structure, based on what the right balance is for their specific institution.
Aging IT Systems
Second, aging, complex IT systems, an aging workforce, and supporting business processes present challenges. The business logistics framework required to support multimission coupled with rapid systems deployment conditions must be adapted to the current environment, including aging IT systems and complex, unintegrated business processes built on increasingly obsolete information technology support. The workforce also is senior and will need to be replaced. Aging IT systems, which will be used well into the foreseeable future, will become increasingly challenging to maintain and support in an ever-increasing and complex global business environment.
Economic Trade-offs
Third, national priorities require difficult economic trade-offs. These trade-offs include modernizing existing IT systems and acquiring expensive new systems while simultaneously investing in “quality of life” improvements, which will support tough decisions about retention and recruiting a multilayered labor force. Achieving transformation requires regeneration of passion on all business stakeholders to work together to make the needed.
Key Initiatives
Finally, highly committed, knowledgeable leadership, effective teamwork, and motivated personnel will transform businesses. These initial steps need to be taken as the Transformation process has four stages. In each location, I assist in identifying and highlighting a few specific initiatives to move and grow your organization.
Stage 1: Define the Ambition
Stage 2: Energize the Organization
Stage 3: Prepare and Launch the Transformation
Stage 4: Drive the Transformation
Business Strategy
As a child, I would view my backyard as a battlefield, and I would align rocks and bricks into formations and strategize how to divert water flows when it rained or surrounded a city while edging a flower bed. The passion I have for strategic thinking has always been with me. So what is strategy? The word strategy is derived from the Greek word strategos, which can mean a general in command of an army.
For me, strategy is an action plan that leaders take to lead in pursuit of attainment of one or more of an organization’s goals. Strategy could also be defined as a general direction set for the company and its various components to achieve the desired state in the future, and strategy is arrived at from the detailed strategic planning process.
My joy in strategy comes about integrating organizational activities and utilizing and allocating the scarce resources within the business environment to meet the present objectives while positioning for future growth. While planning a strategy, it is essential to consider that decisions are not taken in a vacuum. Any action taken by a firm is likely to be met by a reaction from those affected, competitors, customers, employees, or suppliers. Strategy, in short, bridges the gap between where we are today and where we should be in the future.