When asked, CEOs typically say about
their business:
"Since restructuring we are thin on the
ground and our top people are stretched. Each has a good grip
on their own area but few can easily grasp the overall picture
and ensure that what they do is really going in the right
direction.
In times of continuous change this inability to keep both
detail and big picture in mind - and communicate direction
consistently up and down the organisation - is becoming 'mission
critical'. We seem to have more 'challenges' and complexity
than we can reasonably deal with; we are swamped with information
and the goal posts keep moving. It's tough out there."
In short, many organisations suffer
from:
 Resource limitations (quantity
and quality)
Lack of shared vision / direction
among the top team
Potential mismatch between strategy
and operations
Ineffectiveness of communications
Culture not aligned with strategic
direction
Bewildering rate of change and information
overload
So, what can be done to help a top team
get a shared understanding of all that is going on - and the
interdependencies - so that it can give priority to the things
that really matter and allocate its scarce resources for greatest
impact?
ARA consulting's unique methodology, Insight, enables a top
team to create just such a shared understanding of their business
and, equally important, a consensus for action. It also provides
an outstandingly simple means of making this understanding
visual and communicable to other members of staff. Part of
the uniqueness of the approach is its ability to achieve tangible
results within a very short period of time.
There a number of situations where the
speed of response is a critical benefit:
New CEOs -
have a very limited window of opportunity within which to
get the measure of their business and create strategies
that are sound and capable of producing rapid results. Insight
can provide key data and an aligned management team in less
than a month.
In M&As
- the ability to assess critical issues such
as culture, morale and quality of leadership within the
target organisation is usually lacking because time is so
short. Consequently the legal and corporate finance issues
totally dominate although, paradoxically, it is seldom for
these reasons that M&As are deemed afterwards to have
failed or produced unsatisfactory results. It is the so-called
'softer' organisational issues that are identified as the
root causes. Insight enables management teams to assess
these variables, amend their approach and plan the strategies
for successful integration.
Insight can provide crucial
strategic and practical information
that changes the way top management views its business and
focusses
on the most productive ways forward.
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