Engagement
Delivery of consulting support to your business should not be a ‘one size fits all’ approach. It should be designed to best fit your needs and may require a combination of delivery formats
The specific type of activity you require will be dependent on your current business situation, existing team expertise, resource availability, project complexity and affordability. AS Compete will work with you to agree the best way to meet your business needs and deliver success.
The phrase ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ is obvious but often forgotten. Many organisations struggle to move forward as there isn’t a common understanding of the current position or a consensus on the imperative to improve. Conducting assessments, gap analysis and mapping activities against best practice, standards and performance requirements develops an understanding of the current state and the gap closure required. The activities typically develop knowledge of good practice as part of the process enabling team members to understand how different activities will impact the business and to set targets.
Critical to the success of these activities is for all involved to be honest and open, seeking opportunity for improvement rather than looking to provide compliance evidence as often seen in an audit approach.
Training activities are designed to provide underpinning knowledge to enable delegates to undertake activity. All training activities must have a purpose linked to business strategy and improvement needs, ideally with a pre-identified project identified that the training can be applied to. Training on it’s own does not add value, training combined with application experience and feedback develops capability.
Consulting activities focus on the combined transfer of capability to your team and the delivery of improvement results. Traditional consulting activities required a substantial team to be present for all of the activity, often causing disruption to the daily business operations. Our consulting approach aims to ensure the most effective use of your team, using them when they are needed and recognising the need to manage resource constraints. Some activities may still involve a larger team, for example conducting simultaneous activities on a flowline or where several themes need to be worked on. Many will involve small teams with other resources requested to join for specific elements where they can add most value. Some activity elements may be conducted on a ‘one to one’ basis and from time to time we may recommend that we conduct preparation ‘leg work’ activity before reviewing and progressing with your team.
Coaching activities focus either on the development of individuals or on working with teams after initial consulting activities as they roll out and extend improvements. At individual level these activities may be focussed around development within a job role; providing guidance, a sounding board for ideas, a safe space to discuss concerns and ensuring a focus on continuous improvement over time. With teams, typically individuals start to take on their own project areas so coaching blends group and individual reviews to understand progress, manage barriers and drive sustainable improvement.
Sometimes a client just needs independent, objective guidance for a specific issue or to provide facilitation support so that leaders can focus on contributing to an activity. Customers may recognise that an independent assessment of a supplier with associated recommendations will enable them to progress together, recognising their mutual strengths and challenges rather than battling relationship issues. AS Compete can work with you to agree the best format.
If you know you will require support, but are not certain when you will need it or need to have a small level of flexible resource each month, a retainer relationship will enable costs to be spread whilst having access to support when required.
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of technology and demonstrated that not all consulting needs to be on-site to add value. Whilst AS Compete will always be looking to visit to ensure we correctly understand your business and to meet in person, there will be times where it is not time or cost effective for activity to be on site and where we may agree to deliver virtually. This often applies to coaching activities in particular, enabling a number of short, intensive sessions to be held between on-site activities, making best use of scarce resource, providing additional contact points and ensuring that site visits are used to best impact.