INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS
New England Chapter

News and Views

In this issue:

Member Spotlights

CMC Corner

Welcome New Members

Upcoming Events Calendar

Member Feature Article
Don't Blame the Plan... Blame the Boss!
by Lewis Green

Book and Article Reviews

News From Committees

Looking For Articles

The Newsletter Committee is looking for articles. Please contact Lews Green at if you have an article you'd like to submit.

From the Editor's Desk

Welcome to this month’s IMCNE newsletter!

All too soon, we’re halfway through the 2006 consulting year. I hope you are all having a successful consulting year as we fast approach the mid-point of 2006 and you have plenty of momentum to get through summer.

The newsletter is an opportunity for you to provide news on your achievements and learn about your fellow consultant’s activities. In this issue, we have an article on some guidelines to executing strategic planning by IMCME member Lewis Green. Setting the vision and goals for sustaining long-term performance and using metrics during execution is more critical for an enterprise than the short-term focus on leveraging increased shareholder value each quarter.

Well, I didn’t quite make two years but due to my relocation down South, this is my last issue as Editor. It’s been my honor and privilege to serve as your IMCNE News & Views Editor, a contribution I could make as a “virtual member” even with my typically heavy US and international travel schedule. My thanks go to the consultants who provided great articles and timely news.

Lewis Green will take over as Editor. Please send your news, articles, book reviews and commentary for the next issue to:

Good consulting!
Michael Kayat

Member Spotlights

Jeff Govendo (The Innovative Edge, Inc.) was the featured speaker at the Fenway Library Consortium's annual Professional Development Day, held at the Mass. College of Pharmacy in Boston. The interactive presentation was entitled "From Creativity to Innovation: Transforming a creative new idea to potential working concept."

Share Your Success Story
Did you get a speaking or writing engagement? New client or prospect? Or team up on a project or new business venture based on relationships formed through IMCNE? If so, then we want to hear your success story next month!

CMC Corner

Congratulations to Mary Adams (Trek Consulting LLC) who recently received her certification as a management consultant from our parent organization, the Institute of Management Consultants.

Are you interested in qualifying for the CMC? We’ll be running an introductory program in the fall of 2006—so stay tuned for more information. In the meantime, read more at http://www.imcusa.org/certification or contact our New England CMC coordinator, Brooks Fenno at (781) 431-7122 or .

Welcome New Members

Janice Shirley

Scott Simmonds

Upcoming Events Calendar

Friday, August 18, 2006
IMCNE/SPC Special Event
Business Development SIG
7:30-9:30 am
Join John Jaddou and Harvy Simkovits CMC at Rebecca's Café, Burlington, MA. There is no cost for this event but space is limited. Pre-registration is required by emailing .

Thursday, September 14, 2006
Dinner Meeting - 5:00-9:00 pm
Professional Certification -
Marketing Hype or Competitive Advantage?
Dinner meeting and panel discussion with leaders
from the consulting industry.
Hilton Garden Inn, Waltham, MA

Strategic Partner Events — Check out our Calendar of Strategic Partner and Other Events on our web site for more information on events of interest. Click www.imcne.org/spcalendar.html, then click on the appropriate link for detailed information that could save you money.

Member Feature Article

Don't Blame the Plan... Blame the Boss!
By Lewis Green

Is there anyone in business foolish enough to claim strategic planning is a waste of time? Well, yes, I suspect that at one point or another most of us decided that time spent on this endeavor was an exercise in futility.

Who, for example, has not experienced month after month cooped up in meeting rooms hammering out goals, strategies, tactics and metrics for the purpose of measuring our success, only to see the resulting plan filed on a shelf never to be seen again? Or, even worse, perhaps the result was utter frustration from trying to launch and manage a hard-won plan without true executive support at the start, though unending criticism at the end for failing to make the numbers.

Recently, management consulting firm Marakon Associates and the Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed senior executives at 197 companies. Respondents said their firms achieved only 63 percent of the expected results of their strategic plans.

And in a white paper entitled Three Reasons Why Good Strategies Fail: Execution, Execution, Execution, which carried the above research, Wharton management professor Lawrence G. Hrebiniak says MBA-trained managers know a lot about how to develop a plan but very little about how to carry it out.

“Most of our MBAs receive great training in planning but far less in execution,” explained Hrebiniak, author of Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change. “Even though they are good managers, over time they really have to learn through the school of hard knocks, through experience, which means they make a lot of mistakes.”

In my 35 years in the corporate world and as a consultant, the above research and Professor Hrebiniak’s insightful comments resonate. Although plans are carefully constructed with much initial enthusiasm by the managers assigned the duty, they often turn to dust in the wind because executives fail to execute the promise held within those pages filled with the innovation and reinvention that comprise a good strategic plan.

Some explanations for this suggest that executives themselves can not always be held entirely responsible. As long as shareholders and board members insist upon short-term results, for example, only the most powerful and fearless executives will reap the long-term rewards and margins that strategic planning can deliver. Meanwhile, such short-term thinking prevents American businesses, small and large alike, from becoming the best they can be, and in the long-term this short-changes everyone, including shareholders!

Fortunately, America is still blessed with brave and bold business leaders attempting to pilot American businesses toward greatness. As James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras put it in Built to Last, “Maximizing shareholder wealth or profit maximization has not been the dominant driving force or primary objective through the history of the visionary companies.” Ironically, they add, the result is that “visionary companies attain extraordinary long-term performance….” and that “visionary companies have done more than just generate long-term financial returns, they have woven themselves into the very fabric of society.”

Who are some visionary companies today? Think Starbucks, 3M, GE, Hewlett-Packard, Nordstrom and Procter & Gamble, to name a few. What motivated and inspired business person among us does not dream of the day when he/she might join that exclusive club?

If we plan accordingly, set big goals, hire the right people, build a culture of success, we all can. If we also encourage personal responsibility and calculated risk-taking, practice integrity in everything we do, and employ not only cross-functional best practices but encourage and experiment with creativity and innovation, that will move us in the right direction as well.

For those brave and bold enough to want to join the ranks of the visionaries consider these suggestions to help your strategic planning and its execution:

• Do annual strategic plans, tie them to your overall business plan and measure progress quarterly. This applies to all businesses—whether a sole proprietorship or a mega multi-national corporation.
• Think long-term, and be flexible and resilient so acting in the short-term is also a viability.
• Set high goals, short and long term. Don’t be intimidated by the Street or the Boardroom. Those who merely set goals they can easily make never get around to stretching the business to achieve higher margins and outstanding profits.
• Use metrics to measure every goal in every functional area. Don’t let anyone escape by saying, “Well, you really can’t measure what we do.” If you can’t measure what they do, get rid of them!
• Align every department and every employee so that every ounce of the business’s energy is directed at achieving the goals set within the business plan. In other words, there should be no individual or departmental goals that fail to support the overall business goals. Break down silos so that every hand is tightly holding every other hand. As Howard Schultz at Starbucks likes to say: “We will cross the finish line together or not at all.”
• Evaluate every department and every employee on how they contribute to achieving the goals; tie their pay and benefits directly to success or failure.
• Make the focus of the plan marketing and sales. Peter Drucker explains, “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results, all the rest are costs.” I believe that every person in every business should understand the goals of marketing and sales and be working daily to achieve them.
• Communicate, communicate, and communicate! If you want your plan to succeed, every member of your culture must be engaged and informed.

These recommendations make up only a few slices of the pie, yet they represent solid principals to drive business planning. But do remember this: A plan is only as good as the leader or boss driving it.

.

Book and Article Reviews

Please send book reviews to Lewis Green at
If you come across any interesting articles, please send those in.

Leadership and business

Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them.
- Stephen Covey

That business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important cause of business frustration and failure.
- Peter Drucker

Executives will have to invest more and more on issues such as culture, values, ethos and intangibles. Instead of managers, they need to be cultivators and storytellers to capture minds.
- Leif Edvinsson