For a strategy to be implemented, objectives and targets have to be established, accountabilities have to be aligned with the objectives, and performance against the objectives has to be managed. We provide a range of services that support the management of performance against strategic objectives.
These services include Managing for Shareholder Value (MSV), Value Based Remuneration (VBR), governance, balanced scorecard, benchmarking, capability development and management development.
Managing for Shareholder Value (MSV): Some organisations delegate full accountability for long-term profit growth to their business unit managers. For these organisations, we run strategy formulation programmes that not only link investment decisions to long term shareholder value but also help clients establish performance management objectives, targets and measurements that are linked directly to economic profit performance.
Value Based Remuneration: Our MSV research highlights the direct link that pay has on performance. For one of our clients, we needed to understand and link the ways in which managers’ decisions, supervision and communication impact economic profitability. For a decentralised automotive, transportation and construction supplies organisation we established a value based bonus scheme for top management across the company’s 22business units.
Governance: We help our clients make decisions, not just by providing decision support, but also by helping management develop structures and processes for complex, long-term decision making. For the IT function of a large integrated oil company, we wrote the ‘green book’ that defined management line and process accountabilities.
Balanced scorecards: Where a high level of interdependency exists across an organisation in terms of individual roles, accountability and the effect of their planning, decision making, supervision and communication, we help our clients establish tailor-made ‘balanced scorecards’. We combine quantifiable but lagging indicators of performance (ie financial measures) with more qualitative but leading indicators of success (ie customer feedback, process efficiency, human resource measures).
To ensure the scorecard proves valuable we concentrate a good part of our efforts on effective planning and management processes, and on establishing specialised systems support. For a large government agency we devised metrics and processes for both operational and planning performance.
Benchmarking: To ensure performance management processes and systems are calibrated in a meaningful and actionable way, we introduce third party data and best practice measures, and work with the client to ensure that historic and cross-business comparisons can be made. For a new entrant into the utilities field force outsourcing business, we provided detailed metrics for field force activities, processes and costs.
Capability development: Where new business initiatives or performance management programmes reveal significant capability gaps in client activities, we set about addressing the issue by identifying options for closing the gaps and taking the best option forward. Options can include recruitment, specialised training, new performance criteria, outsourcing, re-organisation or restructuring. For the systems integration division of a large UK defence contractor, we helped establish a new business consultancy organisation capable of developing hitherto unavailable capabilities in business development, organisational development and general management consultancy.
Management development: Capability gaps often lead to the need for skills, knowledge and expertise that standard training programmes do not address. We have developed a wide variety of theme-based development programmes, which draw on our core expertise in strategy formulation, transactions, problem solving, marketing, finance, planning and project management. For a large integrated oil company we run a programme that introduces real entrepreneurial challenges to fast track managers by teaming them up with small entrepreneurial organisations and facilitating the problem solving process.
Our track record
