I recently retired from one of the World’s largest corporations as their head of Strategy for Asia Pacific after over 34 years of working in various capacities – ranging from humble beginnings as a Product Manager in India to being Regional Vice President for the business in South Asia and finally Head of Strategy for the Asia Pacific Region.
In all these years developing strategy and execution plans for various businesses there is one need I always felt:
“How do I develop my talent to be able to do internally what we end up hiring expensive consultants for?
In most cases I observed external consultants come in with virtually no knowledge of the company, customer or context and at a significant high cost interviewed the client’s executives, extracted their insights on strategic direction , packaged it neatly into nice looking Powerpoint presentations and “sold” it to the management as the solution for all their ills.
In most cases the recommendations were never implemented. Worse still, it left the middle level executives feeling dejected & somewhat unfairly used when they saw their own ideas being presented without any credit being given to their contribution in terms of sharing insights and experience.
I personally feel that there is a better way. A way which generates strategy while providing a forum for “Facilitated Action Learning” for the organization’s promising and experienced talent.
Where an outside resource is used to help frame and facilitate the creation of strategy and execution plan and which leaves the organization feeling capable of doing it themselves the next time round.
A process called Value Addition.
Value Addition 