Corporate Consulting
The primary focus of my practice is to coach female executives. To further support their leadership expansion, I’m offering accompanying corporate consulting services that may be useful to them.
If you currently aren’t looking for executive coaching services but are interested in retaining my consulting help, please feel free to contact me to discuss. I’ll be happy to speak with you about your needs. Depending on the scope and timing, I may be able to help.
Need help with an initiative or your team?
Here are a few common corporate initiatives that can benefit from my consulting help. (Depending on the scope of your needs, I may bring in partners with necessary functional expertise):
Reassessing Corporate Strategy
Your company is facing historic market changes. Customer and competitive dynamics are not what they used to be. The way you have been winning for years is proving not to be so effective anymore.
This requires you to take a step back and reassess your strategy, starting with whether your corporate identity, vision, and mission still align with market demand.
You know this isn’t a superfluous project but a priority for which the most senior leadership must make time. The future of your company depends on taking this critical, timely step to retool your strategy.
Planning for Strategic Growth
You are a leader in a late-stage startup on the cusp of transformational growth. You haven’t built out your entire organizational and leadership structure yet, and want to make sure you do it properly.
Learning from the mistakes of many failed startup ventures – along with the successful cases – you know you can’t afford to make it up as you go along anymore. You need help to think through your plan for scalable and sustainable rapid growth.
Going along with strategy planning is necessary leadership alignment and team commitment. I can help with these critical success factors as well:
Gaining Executive Alignment
You’re responsible for a big corporate initiative that could fundamentally change how your company carries out some of your functions; e.g., go to market, service different tiers of customers, etc. Having alignment on purpose, vision, and plan of execution is key, and you know it.
Many an initiative fails because different stakeholders have different ideas of what should be done and how. Getting the key executives aligned on what needs to be done, why, and how will make a huge difference.
Gaining Team Buy-in and Commitment
Besides getting executive alignment, getting your teams bought into and committed to what needs to be done is also on the critical path. You’ve seen initiatives fail from poor execution because team members didn’t understand why they had to do what they were asked, nor was ownership and accountability properly established.
As you’ve been working on your influence as a leader beyond telling subordinates what to do, you want to engage your teams right from the start. You want them to feel they have a hand in developing the plan, defining milestones, and signing up for different responsibilities.
I’ve been there and done that…
I have over 20 years of consulting and corporate strategy leadership experience.
During that time, I have helped clients and a former employer with such initiatives as:
– Rethink their marketing strategy and spend based on market dynamics and customer feedback
– Reshape their customer experience strategy to maximize attraction and retention
– Assess how best to go to market with new products without cannibalizing existing business
In my former role running corporate strategy and market intelligence, I led annual planning and quarterly strategy offsites, as well as long-range organic and inorganic growth market assessments.
Besides the above core responsibilities, I led a notable multi-year business model transformation initiative. It was a massive undertaking aimed at completely changing the way customers acquire capital equipment from long, complex sales cycles to a recurring subscription model.
On the outset, we had no idea how to do this successfully without disrupting the existing business generating revenue or creating market confusion. We also didn’t know what we didn’t know and needed to understand the unknown risks. It was a company-wide change initiative that involved multiple phases, cross-functional collaboration, and outside consulting help initially.
It was a tremendous learning experience for me. I’d love to bring the relevant lessons I’ve acquired to help you succeed in your corporate initiatives.
… and can offer inspiration to go along with fulfilling these needs.
Besides running strategic initiatives, I was a frequent speaker/presenter at Board, executive leadership, sales, and marketing all-hands meetings. Besides my subject matter expertise, I was a popular speaker because of my delivery.
Common feedback was that I made otherwise dry material gripping and left the audience fired up to want to do their best job. I’d love to be able to help you inspire your teams!
You can benefit from all that experience. Let me help…
Keynote and meeting breakout speeches…
In certain meetings and offsites, you often need outside speakers to
- Help set the tone
- Reinforce ideas your company leadership wants to instill
- Introduce provoking thoughts regarding existing paradigms for leadership and strategy
Here are some of the topics we can address…
Beware of “the heroine complex”
You’ve probably heard of “the hero complex.” Someone exhibiting it believes they are the one to save the day. Often, that stems from arrogance… they know best, and everyone needs to follow their lead.
“The heroine complex” carries a similar idea, except with an unhealthy feminine trait; i.e., over-reaching in the name of caring. This could come across as overbearing and imposing, disempowering others as if they couldn’t conduct themselves within healthy tension.
While the corporate world can truly benefit from seeing wider expression and acceptance of feminine leadership qualities, there needs to be a good understanding of healthy vs. unhealthy tendencies.
The necessity of integrity: Staying in alignment with yourself
The prevailing corporate structure is built on longstanding patriarchal values and sensibilities. When women join the ranks, they don’t stop to question whether these align with their values and strengths. As such, unbeknownst to them, they abandon parts of themselves to fit in.
Over time, this self-abandonment takes its toll, including burnout and disenfranchisement. There needs to be an honest dialogue about leadership showing up differently for female leaders. And how women need to be honest with themselves. Otherwise, burnout and attribution will continue.
“Doing the right thing” may be a trap for your business
“Right” is value-based and often comes from ego. When we have many high-power executives with different values and healthy-size egos, “doing the right thing” is the panacea for crippling politics.
Many a company stifles their growth because of this unfortunate but perfectly solvable human dilemma. If an executive team is willing to take an honest look at what “right” means for them, there is great hope for getting out of this righteous-sounding trap.
The power of intentionality beyond good planning and execution
The corporate world can over-value execution as the measure of success. But, with some successful companies, we can see their heart and soul, mostly reflecting the beliefs of the leadership.
It’s true that results typically come from sound execution reflecting careful planning. How far a company can go and the impact it can make, though, ultimately reflects the intentions of the highest echelons.
For late-stage startups or companies early in the enterprise lifecycle, understanding the power of intentionality can be a game-changer for your growth trajectory. This presentation is about that.
The above talks are just some examples. We can discuss other topics of interest to you… and they can all vary in length and format, depending on your needs.
Customized consulting engagements…
All corporate consulting engagements will be custom-designed to make sure they meet your needs. Here are two examples of areas where I can help you…
Strategic vision and alignment engagement
This is ideal for the beginning stages of either strategic planning or a special initiative. The key objective is to invite out-of-the-box creative thinking transcending status-quo limitations.
We’ll design the format together, but the engagement will include a workshop, pre-workshop design consultations, and a post-workshop summary report and discussion.
Team alignment engagement
This is ideal when you want all team members to be aligned on all stages of planning an initiative. This work will foster true collaboration (from conceptualization to execution), maximize buy-in and ownership from all team members (from inception), and lay the foundation for true accountability (by defining metrics for progress and success).
Again, we’ll work out the details together, but the format will likely include at least one workshop, pre-work with select team members, and post-work debriefing.
Want me to help with your initiatives or team?
When you need outside expertise to help with your corporate initiatives and/or team alignment, having a consultant who can combine a keen eye on leadership dynamics with personal experience leading these efforts is invaluable.
Give me a call at (650) 597-3120 or fill out the contact form so that we can discuss how I may be able to help.