Catalyst Strategic Consultants

Catalyst is just completing another transformative project.  To the great satisfaction of the sponsors who ended up with ‘way more impact than they thought they’d get at the outset.  The afterglow is wonderful, making all the effort worthwhile.

You see, the presenting issue is seldom where the real value is.  It is, well, the tip of the iceberg.

That doesn’t mean we don’t solve that problem, we do!  But there is often a larger opportunity lurking in the greater context.  And we want to get that, if possible.  And it may be necessary, to gain leverage on the “presenting issue”.

That doesn’t mean we are free range outlaws with carte blanche.  Far from it, we use an engagement phase to open up the context to look for more fulsome outcomes and agree those with the sponsors, if they want to go there.

In the latest, the presenting issue was the oncoming retirement of a President and the urgent need to appoint one of two business units leads to that office.  Could we effect that please?

I don’t think so!  It was pretty clear the appointment of one would mean the departure of the other after recrimination and damage.  Like the removal of a significant part of the business.  It was a set-up for dramatic failure.

What we discovered in the engagement phase was that the business had been in a long dream of drift.  The President had experienced a dramatic health crisis and it had marked him.  He had needed to get out for some time and the business had been more or less rudderless.  It needed a plan.  And he needed to leave with full honor.

So that’s where the greater, more impactful agenda came from.

We centered on building a plan with the two active leaders of the business.  They willingly engaged and built a new vision, mission and guiding principles that excited them and snagged the sponsors – big time.  The business was acquiring a heartbeat – and a soul – fast!

The sponsors and the leaders set to another daunting task:  surfacing and healing all the breaches of trust from the past that had diminished commitment.  They courageously went to the dark heart of how those had developed and dismantled them.  The result of that session was a flood of relief and a surge in drive to get back to the core business.

And the sponsors worked up the guts to make the needed deal with the retiring President.  Now he has been fully exited and with him goes the residue of the past period but with full acknowledgement of his contributions.  Now the company is free to fully proceed with its new life.

Well, if this isn’t value-creating, big time fun, I don’t know what it is.  This is the core of our passion for our consulting work.  Transformative work that sets enterprise on a whole new – and more valuable trajectory – than the one they find themselves stuck in.

Because all enterprises get stuck to a greater or lesser degree.  And strong presidents recognize the need to get it freed up.  And the need for potent third party help with that task.  After all, they are part of set up the constraining factors in the first place.  Those factors –  important people, central concepts and relationships that may have outlived their value, core ideas that once had power and need stronger ones to go forward from here – generally come from forces that had created the first wave of success for the company to this point!

So, they’re tough to confront but can be resolved.  All of them.

By a powerful team of very seasoned consultants.  What do I mean by a team?  Well, ordinarily most very experienced intervenors like myself tackle these assignments on their own.  And most often I do.  But here, I needed something, someone else. At the closing of the engagement sessions, I knew who in a flash.

So I called in Allen Cameron.  He was over right away.

The combination is this.  As Allen puts it, I can put my finger of the map, starting from the sore spot we need to depart from.  I can navigate the company into the take off and into the cruise.  I can spot and help flesh out the destination and create the vectors for the journey.  I can engender the greater involvement of the sponsors.

But Allen can land the plane.  Not that Allen isn’t skilled and can’t contribute to the foregoing, he is.  But he is fully into the pragmatics, the operational realities of the biz, creating the financial and organizational structures to enable the new direction to fully take hold.  I can help with those, but he brings the value of his long experience to bear.

Al has recently ended his successful term as operational President of a public oil services company.  He’s on a number of boards.  He has provided galvanic leadership to the transformation of a number of professional partnerships.  We have worked together for a long time and understand each other’s value pretty deeply and can allow that to flow when we work together.

So, what’s the message?  You may find you’re stuck.  You can see the potential in the freed up, more powerfully directed company.  And the constraints in the way of that irritate and annoy you.  You want to get past them.

Just do it.  Call me about the mutually rewarding opportunity coupling our experience and potency to the limitations you experience.  Bring the full value of your enterprise into the light.  Let’s go!

Sincerely,
Doug Bouey
Catalyst Strategic Consultants Ltd.