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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’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 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 acted as a strategic partner and was instrumental in helping us raise the bar on candid dialogue and team performance.” — Robert Courteau
“The Beacon Group approaches very serious and difficult topics in an accessible and insightful way.” — Eric Siegel
“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
“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
“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. Lighting Fires
Your company may have all the right initiatives in mind. As a CEO or high-level manager – a lot of these initiatives may very well be your very own ideas. That doesn't mean they're actually being executed fast enough on the frontlines.
Everything looks just fine and dandy from where you're sitting. Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find something else. "Go check and you will find people are running and they are stressed out. But this man, and almost everyone else around him, is mistaking the enormous amount of activity as a sign of a real sense of urgency. It's not. It's just frenectic activity, with people trying to cope with fifteen issues" - John P. Kotter from his book "The New Age of Innovation". The Fact is managers are often fighting an uphill battle to push change through in an organization and companies are failing to adapt fast enough to new circumstances. The Problem is many of your co-workers likely don't have a clue how to prioritize their most important activities. In fact most of them can't even recognize what complacency looks like even if it was right in front of them in their department. The Outcome is an organization that throws around catch phrases and empty strategies of innovation and adaptability for example... but nothing comes of these strategies. Most people within these organizations don't believe for a minute that their company is innovative or adaptable for that matter. The Solution is to develop a sense of urgency, where you select the right people with a gut instinct to go after ideas and relentlessly get them done… and it wouldn't hurt to drop the administrative facade if that's what it takes to free up a bit of time. Not-so-urgent It's not easy to be working hard, and have someone tell you it's not really making a difference in your company. You're jumping from meeting to meeting, drowned in a flood of paperwork and overwhelmed with the number of decisions you need to make on a daily basis. Your work environment feels like a frenzied circus show - but does anything really get done? What if someone told you that you're wasting your time and energy? It's called a false sense of urgency and it's far more dangerous than the opposite of the title of Kotter's book - which would be complacency. There's a good chance your organization may not be completely complacent. If it is - then you have some serious problems in an age of tumultuous change. There's also a good chance that your organization feels like it has a sense of urgency, but in reality your co-workers are simply engaging in a frantic spectacle of nothing. You'll burn out if you keep it up. Keeping it up - Continuous change Back in the old days it was OK to sit down, plan out your execution, go ahead and sprint to the finish line. Change occurred in episodes. It was easy to manage transitions. There was always a bit of calm to regroup before the next storm. When your co-workers got out of alignment it was easy to realign them during the down time. Not anymore. Today we're seeing continuous change in the business world around us. There's no time to regroup or rest. No time to recharge your batteries for the next push of urgency. This is the problem many organizations are facing today. If you don't think it's affecting you, please don't be fooled. Dan Cohen and John Kotter published a study in a book called Leading Change some years ago that analyzed the implementation of major IT projects, growth strategies and cost-cutting efforts. In more than 70%... Yes that's right 70%... of cases the projects were not fully implemented. They stopped halfway. They failed to materialize effectively. Only 10% of these projects achieved more than what was planned. Most managers in these circumstances probably wish they had created a sense of urgency to get things going and done before co-workers lost interest. There's no way that complacency isn't affecting at least a small portion of your ongoing projects. The question is: Are those projects central to your organization's success? If not, then why are you doing them in the first place? In Our Opinion The Beacon Group's Advice for creating a sense of urgency in your organization Our three tips to understanding what's urgent and what's not. Purge - At the end of everyday take some time to purge activities that aren't useful to your company. Terminate these items and use the time you free up to deal with more immediate issues. This has to be done regularly and you can't be afraid to purge relentlessly! Don't load up your calendar - Don't flood yourself with meetings all day - especially when they are about different topics. Your mind goes from one thing to another and then to another without really knowing what to do at the end. It's a dizzying exercise that gets you nowhere in the end. Focus on a few small activities, get them done and move to the next thing. Set the example - Everyone watches the leaders to see how quickly they move on key activities. Set the example and be urgent yourself. Make sure co-workers not only see your urgency, but also understand why it is you act in the way you do. Make constant reference to the changing business environment and the competition's innovation. Colleagues have to realize this is business in the real world and not in an isolated vacuum of bureaucracy. |
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