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Change and Transformation
“The Beacon Group’s program proved to be a transformational experience for our staff, and has created a new, more open culture of creativity and collaboration that has given The Globe and Mail a marked and measurable competitive advantage.” — Phillip Crawley
“The Beacon Group was able to handle our 360 reviews across 9 offices in a manner that brought significant value to our partners, the firm and ultimately our clients.” — Judson Whiteside
“The human capital programs provided by The Beacon Group are best in class.” — Tye Burt
“The Beacon Group approaches very serious and difficult topics in an accessible and insightful way.” — Eric Siegel
“The Beacon Group’s thought provoking curriculum utilizes best practice tools and interactive media for evaluation, assessment and overall learning. It has helped us raise the bar on our calibre of talent.” — Ernst Lieb
“The Beacon Group delivered cutting edge perspectives on many human capital topics that were tailored and customized to our company in a way that we could not have obtained at more generic, cookie-cutter advising shops.” — Doug Lord
“The Beacon Group acted as a strategic partner and was instrumental in helping us raise the bar on candid dialogue and team performance.” — Robert Courteau
“We engaged The Beacon Group when we needed to bring two cultures together after our first major international acquisition: the evidence of their success lies in both the subsequent growth in our business and our presence in more than twelve countries on five continents.” — Rupert Duchesne
“The Beacon Group excels in facilitating open & candid dialogue that has fostered superior team performance.” — Mary Ellen Carlyle
“Top-level thought leadership, combined with practical, cost-effective solutions—that’s the real value the Beacon Group team brings to bear on Foresters talent challenges.” — Suanne Nielsen
“Doug Williamson and his team were of invaluable assistance in helping our organization navigate through a completely new strategic planning process and emerge with a three year plan resoundingly endorsed by our Board. Doug’s global perspectives and ability to drive consensus was an integral part of our success.” — Don Forgeron
“The Global HR & Communications senior team engaged the Beacon Group in shepherding us through a unique strategic planning process that involved an outside-in view of our current and future workforce and how this aligns to our business strategy. Thanks to Doug and his team it was a thought provoking process that sharpened our strategic thinking and, in the end, made our strategy stronger.” — Sylvia Chrominska
“The Beacon Group’s customized and personalized approach fit our needs perfectly. From the initial self-discovery phase all the way to recommending solutions, the work they have done has been consistently world-class. They combine strong analytics with a wealth of real world experience. They are focused, targeted and are experts at taking theoretic concepts and making them real. We look forward to working with Doug and his team as we continue to elevate our business and improve our internal performance.” — Don Romano
“I have had the pleasure of working with the Beacon Group and Doug Williamson for several years across several organizations and have always been impressed with their professionalism, work ethic and customer orientation. Doug's own highly energetic and highly customized approach to the specific needs of our business and our leadership team sets him apart from other strategic facilitators and objective "thought provokers" I have experienced. I am always grateful and impressed by the tangible results his interventions tend to produce.” — Lloyd A. Perlmutter
“The big contribution was The Beacon Group challenged our culture and our comfort level. We then arrived at a clear plan of concise deliverables that we needed to execute to move forward on our vision.” — Tony Ambler
“SKF approached The Beacon Group to develop our Talent Management program. The process implemented by Doug Williamson and his team was extremely important for us in determining how to execute the program on a clear, organized and systematic way. This was one of our most important projects that will enable us to ensure our sustainable growth.” — João Ricciarelli
“Through its sound and strategically practical business knowledge and experience The Beacon Group has and continues to assist SCI in better understanding and enabling our organization to build engaged teams and leadership capability to help make our supply chain clients more competitive.” —John Ferguson |
Provocative PropositionsIn the hyperactive and challenging world in which we all live, it is becoming harder and harder for business leaders to find time to read, reflect and gain insight from the many valuable sources at our disposal. In "Provocative Propositions", The Beacon Group attempts to fill that void by offering our opinion, often rather pointed, on a wide array of issues we believe are relevant to leading a modern organization. The articles are catalogued into 12 categories so you can quickly and easily find a topic of particular interest. We then offer three easy steps under the heading "In Our Opinion" to help business leaders take action on the key themes. Simply click on the category and read away. Growing Your Leaders
There are only a few talented people out there who are able to run a major organization.
Your company’s standard, run-of-the-mill talent management program likely isn’t finding them... It’s great that your company offers wonderful pay and above-average benefits. Congratulations! You’re likely ATTRACTING the best of the best. Perhaps your company has an exceptional corporate culture. In that case you are likely RETAINING the best of the best. But what are you doing to LOCATE and ELEVATE your finest? The fact is most organizations haveleaders scattered throughout their ranks. These people know who they are. They are quietly seeking a path to the top. These leaders are looking for opportunities, mentors and challenges. The problem is these leaders are embroiled in a rat race with everyone else in the organization. You’re not putting them on the right track. The outcome is that your leaders rise to prominent roles more slowly than they should be. Your organization may end up losing them altogether. The solution is to identify leaders at all levels. Commit a disproportionate quantity of resources to this group and take their career destinies into your hands. Yes, we mean YOUR hands, Mr. VP HR or CEO... Not the HR coordinator or manager... YOUR hands. Blanket assumption The first assumption we make is that everyone has executive leadership in their genes. Perhaps people have some elements of leadership, but running a large organization requires a unique ability to analyze, understand, plan and act on a global scale. This is what Ram Charan means when he says “CEO nucleus” in his book "Leaders at all Levels". GE’s Leadership Criteria:
How it’s done What’s the next mistake that companies make? Leaders and managers have financial goals, efficiency targets and cost-cutting plans. But no one talks about leadership creation goals... A central part of leadership is creating a backbench of future leaders. Companies need to give responsibility for organizational development to these managers, and hold them accountable for building leaders. And don’t forget to reward the managers for finding and creating leaders, just like it’s done for other aspects of the business. So just relegate leadership development to your managers, right? Maybe you – VP HR or CEO – can deal with loftier things. Ram Charan disagrees. Early identification and leadership development still needs to be your responsibility. Once you know who the “big picture” leaders are in your company, give them ACCESS to your time. It sends a message. Leadership isn’t mass production It’s wonderful that your company is setting up a performance management tool to handle performance reviews. We wouldn’t suggest otherwise, since it’s one of the products we sell. But please don’t use it as a career planning device and coaching tool all-in-one for your best leaders. They need customized challenges and unique career paths. This goes back to placing the responsibility of developing leadership into YOUR hands. Make sure you take the time to personally address the growth of your leaders. Leadership isn’t mass production. That’s why Ram Charan suggests you pick and choose your leaders from the beginning. You can’t give career customization and personal attention to all high performers in a company. Spreading your training and development resources across thousands of people in the hopes that someone will emerge, Messiah-style, is ineffective. Pick and choose. In Our Opinion The Beacon Group’s Keys to creating leaders at all levels in your company A few methods to get the ball rolling on developing your leaders at all levels within your company... Don’t confuse training and development with real world experience - Leadership training is indispensable for your organization. However, it needs to be combined with real-world apprenticeships and challenging assignments for your leaders. Failure is OK - Give your leaders room to fail. You want them to be out there taking risks and adapting to new challenges. If they’re not tripping up, they’re likely not being sufficiently challenged. If this sounds scary, remember it will only be a select number of leaders you will be pushing to the limit at select moments. Everyone else can operate normally. Leadership is about leadership - Make it a requirement for managers and directors to actively dig in and identify leaders in their group. Create leadership quotas, whatever you want to do, but make it known that leadership development is just as important to business as cost-cutting and everything else. |
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