We are known for our commercial orientation, our challenging, no-nonsense style and our focus on outputs and results
Our Style
Key features of the way we do business are:
- Our senior people run the projects: we don't aim to parachute in junior consultants - we don't employ them;
- We are specialists not generalists: we focus solely on Assessment, Talent Management and Board Development;
- Commercial approach: when we are hired we know our clients expect a return on investment, so our solutions are designed to bring commercial results;
- Provide consulting help only when it’s needed: if we think you are better off doing it yourself, we will tell you so;
- We work in small, specialist teams and ideally with your people: because, simply put, you usually get better results that way and you're less dependant on us as a result;
- We don't start trying to sell more work as soon as we get in the door: we aim to have long term relationships with our clients.
Global Reach
Many of our clients are global. More than 50% of our work in the past 12 months has been international and working together with our strategic partners APT (US), Human-Scope (Asia-Pacific), Papillio (Europe) and IHS (Middle East and Africa) we offer seamless and ‘local’ services globally with a network of over 100 specialist consultants based in 15 cities across 5 continents.
Our Unique Approach to Assessment and Talent Management
We have over 35 years of experience in designing and running assessment and development processes and centres at all levels within organisations. We believe that the most effective way of assessing the suitability of senior people for roles, both their commercial skills and their potential, is through the use of integrated business simulations. This is because the simulation provides the opportunity to observe real commercial issues being tackled in real time by the candidate, rather than merely discussing examples of previous issues they have dealt with.
At senior levels we typically run full-day simulations to assess individuals for development or for selection into a specific role or as part of a selection process into a high potential programme. We have benchmark data on our simulations for senior managers and high potentials from a number of large multinational PLCs. In this approach the candidate spends five to six hours of an assessment day working in a ‘Day in the life of’ on their first day in a new organisation and role. Other elements of the assessment day include an in-depth interview with a psychologist and aptitude (numerical and verbal) testing which can take place before the assessment via online delivery.
Our benchmarked simulations are based out of sector, to place all candidates on a level playing field and to ensure that assessments are not biased by technical knowledge.
Our Approach to Board Development
We have worked with the executive committees and top teams of many of the world's largest companies, as well as many mid-sized businesses.
When we work with a team we focus on practical aspects of team effectiveness . We:
- Assess and benchmark the team compared to leading teams in other businesses
- Ensure the team's strategic/tactical balance is right
- Ensure clarity and alignment of priorities
- Ensure the team's meetings and processes are highly effective
We also attend to the 'softer' issues (although unlike our competitors we don't start with these). We:
- Ensure constructive team dynamics
- Act as a 'sounding board' for the team leader
- Help the team achieve commercial synergies from knowing each other - and each others' issues - well enough
We also build teams across a client's business with a core, common approach that is adapted to meet each team's specific needs. In addition, clients often ask us to help build the team development skills of their HR professionals.