The need to move away from the poor processes that slow organizational agility to a crawl is readily apparent to most forward thinking business leaders. In fact, it is relatively easy to identify the companies with leaders who have adopted a bias for action. In today’s competitive market place, there is no status quo. An organization is either moving forward or falling behind. That said, where does the well meaning thought leader begin a journey to tighten process?
Think about the purchase of a new car. There are many makes to choose from, and perhaps it’s easy to narrow them to a “short list”, the usual suspects dominating the marketplace of luxury automobiles, consisting of, for the sake of conversation, Mercedes, BMW, Acura, and Lexus. You have unique needs, and have a clear vision of a new automobile to serve your specific requirements. With that in mind, where does the educated automobile consumer begin their journey to acquire the perfect new car? Suffice it to say that a stop at the Mercedes dealership will reveal passionately and exclusively the sizzle and charm of all models of Mercedes. The trip to the BMW dealership will produce results in kind, and so on.
The purpose of the analogy is to demonstrate what can be a process that is not only frustrating, but also begins to cloud your specific original requirements. Your acquisition will be delightful and certainly adequate, but when the sizzle fades, are the requirements you set out originally going to be met?
Strafford’s unique approach and vendor independent philosophy is more like avoiding the dealership sizzle in favor of a thoughtful and educated perspective. Engaging Strafford is more like meeting with a team of highly experienced automobile racing professionals, backed by expert teams of mechanics and specialists. The insight you will gain as you move forward with your acquisition is not based on a “vehicle sale” type of transaction, where once the deal is closed your guide is an owner’s manual in the glove compartment. Rather, Strafford is positioned as a partner in your endeavors, an expert guide helping you avoid the latent pitfalls that can spell the difference between success and disaster.
The perspective Strafford’s business leaders provide will be far more valuable as you move into the important process of business improvements than the biased opinions of a short list of vendors eager to simply complete a transaction.
To finish the analogy, while no one ever engages a consulting firm to acquire an automobile, this analogy is quite a bit different than your Performance Management journey, is it not? Not only do you never get to “test drive” this car, the best you often get is a demonstration or short “proof of concept”. Is that not akin to watching your new car on television being driven around your neighborhood? If you are not going to test drive the car, why not talk to someone that has driven the finely-tuned racing machine on the back stretch at Daytona?