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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. Overcoming Inertia
Somewhere in the background you hear it... a faint beeping sound. It’s getting louder - where is it coming from? Suddenly your eyes open, you gasp - you must have blacked out, the beeping is the warning device of the plane you’re piloting. The engines have stalled, and you’re in a free fall…
Then, suddenly, your eyes flicker again, you look up, and you’re sitting at your desk, staring at your computer monitor. The sound is your phone ringing off the hook. It’s the media - they want to know why your organization’s revenue has tanked, and your share price is in a free fall. You are the CEO and your organization has hit a stall point - you never saw it coming, now how do you recover? At that moment you contemplate which would be easier to turn around, the company you’re in charge of, or the plane you were dreaming about. Stall points are a reality that most companies face at some point. The key is to understand how to pull out of one - in time. Sputter… Sputter… What are stall points? According to a study conducted by the Corporate Executive Board, a “stall point” is the moment in time that best represents a downturn in corporate revenue growth. With many organizations riding consecutive years of revenue growth over the past decade of “good times” today’s challenges have and will continue to point out critical flaws in many of their business plans. As it turns out, of the Fortune 100 companies who have failed since 1955, only 13% can point to uncontrollable factors as the cause of their stall. The remaining 87% should have seen their stall coming, and done something about it. What Happens When you Assume Matthew S. Olson & Derek Van Bever note in their book Stall Points “The early 1990s period of corporate restructuring and business process reengineering appears to have set up an income growth ramp that top-line growth has not been able to match” How do stall points happen? How did we not see them coming? The reality in most organizations is that mental models take hold. The longer these models go unchallenged, the more rigid they become. Organizations develop an unrealistic view of the world, and this “filtering” causes the organization to misread changes in their environment, and ultimately to stall. Therefore, to avoid stalling, organizations must keep a close watch on key strategic factors, including key customer dependency and strategic diffusion, as well as organizational factors including talent bench shortfalls, organizational design and incorrect performance metrics. Against All Odds There is no question, the odds are against you. In the study of companies on the Fortune 100, it turns out only 13% of companies will avoid stall points all together. The other 87% aren’t so lucky. Of that 87%, only 11% will actually pull out of a stall point, and return to significant growth. That means that an overwhelming 76% will stall, and never recover. The key to being at least somewhere in the top 24% is to constantly challenge your organization’s mental models, and develop a series of long-term projections that include a number of contingency plans to help you in the event that the gauges on the dashboard start to act up. In Our Opinion The Beacon Group’s Keys to Reversing a Stall Induced Free Fall Re-orient the plane - Getting control of your organization is key. This involves remarkable levels of communication. Everyone has to know exactly where they’re headed, and fast - even if it’s down. Alignment is critical. Power-up - It takes a tremendous amount of energy to turn an organization around. The leader can’t do it alone. Everyone has to know what their role in the turnaround is, and they had better get on it. Adjust the trim - Keep your eyes on the gauges. Once the organization is moving back in the right direction, be vigilant in your monitoring. Otherwise, history will repeat itself - and you might not be as lucky next time. Re-plot the course - With the stall point in the rear-view mirror, you must refresh the organization’s view of its true business environment, by removing the out dated mental models and inward focus that caused the stall in the first place. |
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