Corporate Responsibility Magazine (the new name of CRO Magazine) has announced its 11th annual 100 Best Corporate Citizens List.  Hewlett-Packard, once tainted by a 2006 boardroom espionage case that brought down its chairman, topped the list. The Palo Alto, Calif., tech giant beat out the other companies considered–those that make up the Russell 1000 large-cap index–because of its high rankings in categories like corporate governance, philanthropy and environmental impact.

Hewlett-Packard had ranked fifth in 2009 and bumped Bristol-Myers Squibb from the top spot. Gabi Zedlmayer, the vice president of HP’s office of global social innovation, credits the company’s philanthropic efforts for the ranking, particularly its $23 million in “innovation grants” to universities. Good marketing has helped too. “We’ve done a better job of communicating the progress we’re making,” Zedlmayer says.

The 100 Best Corporate Citizens list, now in its 11th year, ranks companies based on publicly available information in seven categories: environmental impact, climate change, human rights, philanthropy, employee relations, financial performance and governance. The list’s creators assign a 19.5% weighting to environmental impact and employee relations, because they think they are what consumers, shareholders and employees care most about. Technology and electric utility businesses dominate the 2010 list, which has 25 of them. “Electric utilities are already highly regulated and transparent, and tech companies are young and mostly venture capital-backed and accustomed to transparency and dealing with investors,” says Jay Whitehead, the publisher of CRO.

Among this year’s high-profile no-shows: Google, which Whitehead describes as “one of the least transparent companies ever.” “Google’s opacity is high for a tech company,” he says. “They made a conscious decision early on not to disclose a lot, because they thought it would make them less competitive. ’Don’t be evil’ is their motto, but ‘Don’t be transparent’ is part of their culture.” Google rival Microsoft ranked No. 14.

The list suggests that companies have ramped up their do-gooding ways, or are at least doing a better job of promoting them. Between 2009 and 2010 the top company’s score improved by 66%, and the average score of all companies improved by 19%. A low score denotes good corporate citizenship, and the aggregate score of the top 100 companies was 30% less than the aggregate score last year.

Forty companies that made the 2009 list disappeared from it this year, including Goldman Sachs, which had the same score as last year. Only three companies, Intel, Starbucks and Cisco, have made the list all 11 years.

The 100 Best Corporate Citizens are selected from among the large-cap Russell 1000 companies, based on data provided by leading ESG investor data firm IW Financial.  More information is at www.thecro.com.

For information on how to enhance your corporate citizenship strategies, contact M Squared Consulting at msquared@msquared.com or 1-888-818-2505.

by Beth Gorell, guest writer and M Squared consultant

How can something that sounds so simple be so complex?  The nature of globalization as a business phenomenon today goes beyond earlier attempts that simply paid lip service to the term.  Now, business drivers, customers and partners truly are operating globally, and organizations that want to compete need to change how they operate in order not only to keep up but to lead.  But what does “operating globally” really mean?

Key Elements of Globalization Now

In a way, globalization represents the ultimate “free market.”  Structures are now in place to allow wider trade in goods, services and investment internationally than ever before.  Technology makes the ability to trade internationally fast and accurate, and allows participants to react immediately to economic, social and political changes that affect their business decisions.  Large, corporate customers are recognizing their global buying power and using it to negotiate from an increased position of strength.  But perhaps the most noticeable change of the last decade has been the shift away from a “multi-national” approach to international trade, to one that is truly global.

Not What It Once Was

Not so long ago, it was accepted that multi-national US-based companies approached their international business as an opportunistic extension of their US interests.  Product and service introductions, events and partner programs were designed from the US perspective, then “localized” for other countries as a secondary step.  International legal and tax implications were left to local country experts, and – particularly if budgets were tight – English was often the only mandatory language for training and sales tools.  Events were scheduled at times convenient for the US and (possibly) Europe.  Managers with serious career aspirations had to reside in (or move to) the US.

Not so anymore. The rise of business opportunities in countries such as China, India and Korea (just to mention a few) has forced US-based powerhouses to re-think how they approach “emerging” markets.  Competition from companies based outside the US has risen, and both customers and partners have increasing expectations that vendors accommodate their needs.  Companies that continue to operate the old way do so at their own peril.

Getting Ahead of the Curve

Is there a magic formula for succeeding in this brave new world?  Of course not.  But there are some steps that are key for heading in the right direction:

Build Global Knowledge

It is no longer “good enough” for international knowledge to be silo’d with local country experts.  To lead in future, organizations must have greater global understanding at all levels and use this knowledge in their planning and execution.  This means building a knowledge base of how business is done in key geographies – key business practices at the direct and partner levels; economic and political drivers; the competitive landscape; legal, tax and language requirements; etc. – and keeping global requirements at the forefront of planning and decision-making.  How to build this knowledge?  Organizations historically comprised of US-based staff should get more creative than simply sending people to classes or asking them to read books.  Foreign service assignments and temporary job exchange programs, as well as internationally located positions in high-potential geographies at the staff, management and senior management levels, and the inclusion of staff and management with experience at local levels, will pay off for organizations with enough vision and conviction to use them.

Align Globally

While there will always be a need to consider local differences, a significant level of baseline consistency – from programs to organizational alignment – will be required to reap the real benefits of a global approach. This will likely also mean greater fortitude by senior management, both with regions that have traditionally had a large say in how programs and organizations are designed (notably the US and Europe), as well as with program owners who must now think globally right from the start.  Strong and consistent sponsorship from senior management will be required to ensure that business does not slip back into comfortable patterns from the past, and that significant mindset changes are successfully adopted.

Anticipate Customer Demands

As corporations begin to think and act more globally, they will do so not only as vendors, but as customers of other corporations.  Companies that anticipate what this could mean in terms of trade expectations and customer satisfaction will be positioned to take market share away from those that have not thought this through.  Account management, discounts, service agreements and channel support are just some of the areas that will be affected by rising global customer demands.

Embrace Global Scalability

Growth in a global economy requires global scalability.  By building an organizational infrastructure that is optimized to meet current global business requirements, yet able to respond to changing global and local needs, companies can increase alignment on business priorities, build internal efficiencies, develop consistent metrics, provide staff with improved career opportunities, and respond to changing industry dynamics more quickly and effectively.

But building a scalable global infrastructure is not without its pitfalls.  Demographic diversity presents challenges in terms of language, time zones and approach – all of which combine to test organizations in their ability to build expertise, teamwork and trust.  Fortunately, the tools for doing this have never been better, and will only continue to improve. 

A Final Thought

Globalization is an ongoing process that is affected by many geo-political factors outside the control of the businesses that want to participate.  A careful eye on the world economy and ever-changing elements that affect the business climate in specific geographic areas as well as across the globe is required to play successfully in this arena.  But for companies that choose to take a leadership stance, there is much to be won.  A strategic approach to globalization can make the difference between being one of the leaders or being left behind.

Beth Gorell is an independent consultant who has worked in Silicon Valley since the mid-1980’s.  She specializes in strategic planning and execution, change management and channel strategy, and can be reached at gorell@saje-consulting.com.

In this economy, many people are in transition and looking to reinvent themselves.  Many can take heed of the lessons from author and New York real estate legend Barbara Corcoran.  Corcoran offers 10 rules for a career reinvention she discovered the hard way and by knowing herself:

1. There’s no such thing as part time: “If I was going to succeed I knew I had to work 40-60 hours a week with that fire in the belly.”

2. You can’t change your wiring: When Corcoran’s copy machine broke down, she hired someone to fix it, instead of attempting to do it herself. She had to treat herself as a business leader and not get bogged down in tasks she hated. So she spent money hiring someone, and spending money is something she loves to do and is good at.

3. Good things come out of insecurities: Corcoran’s “D-student” past only fuels her to work harder.

4. Girlie traits that once worked for you when you were younger can’t be relied on anymore: The charm she counted on when she was younger, especially when working with men, changed. She couldn’t play naive anymore — she wasn’t. “The intuitive stuff got in the way,” she said. So she presented herself as a realist, someone who takes their passion seriously.

5. The greater the success in a previous career the bigger the insult when you’re not taken seriously: Producers only called her back to get real estate advice.

6. Reinvent yourself in stages: “You have to reinvent yourself in chunks, little chunks, even if you like a nice neat picture.”

7. Contacts in your old field are totally useless: “Once you leave your business you’re old news.” Yes you have to start all over in making contacts — don’t forget the “thank you” follow-up e-mails.

8. In building new contacts, focus on young people: They’re the ones who are moving up, becoming the bosses.

9. Have a sense of belonging in online social networking: She missed her community at work the most but found a source of encouragement online. “Tweeting gives you a quick sense of belonging — an opportunity to build a community with people…It’s not a substitute but it’s nice,” Corcoran says of watching her Twitter followers grow and respond positively to her attempts to “make it” again.

10. Talents in your old business are useless in the new one: It’s a whole new jungle.

If you are a seasoned professional looking to reinvent yourself, consider joining the industry’s premier network of consulting professionals by visiting https://consultants.msquared.com/cfdocs/msquared/consultantlogin.cfm

Business is all about customers and selling. That’s why every manager and executive should be a salesperson once in his career. The skills and lessons are indispensible and difficult to learn any other way. 

Whether you manage engineers, marketing, operations, or customer service; you’re still a salesperson. You sell every day. You don’t just sell products and services; you sell your projects, budget, ideas, and capabilities. And your customers aren’t just the paying kind; they include everybody you interface with.

What Every Manager Should Learn From Sales 

A brilliant essay in the Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com) this week entitled “How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo” by Richard Greenwald wisely points out that while anybody can become a consultant, not everyone does it well.  He continues to prescribe what’s needed to thrive as a consultant in today’s business environment.

Some key findings from his research:

Think Long Term

Too many freelancers see their condition as only temporary—one that will go away as soon as economic conditions improve. It’s just a stage between jobs, they figure.

Some of them may be right. But the odds are that most are wrong. They’re going to be on their own for a long time. So freelancers need to think in terms of the long haul, preparing for a marathon, not a sprint.

Understand: This isn’t easy. Many of these people have known only 9-to-5 jobs, and it can be scary to think of freelancing as all there will be.  Scary, but necessary. Because if a freelancer views the condition as temporary, it’s almost a guarantee that however long it lasts, it won’t go well. Unless you think about it as a job itself—requiring time, investment, thought—you won’t get much of a return. Waiting for business to find you is not something successful consultants do. Clients know a halfhearted attempt when they see one.

Join a Network

The image many of us have of the lonely consultant toiling on his or her own is touching. And dated.

Most successful consultants are in a network or community of consultants. These networks are important sources of new clients; most consultants, in fact, say they get as many clients from these networks as they do from client referrals. What’s more, an increasing number of consultants share work, taking on bigger projects that require more hands. In this way, teams of consultants can function like a small boutique firm.

Have Your Own Space

We have long been told that one of the joys of working on your own is being able to putter around in your pajamas and bunny slippers. And such flexibility is, no doubt, an attraction of consulting.

But there’s a limit, and successful consultants say that having a work space separate from your living space is crucial. Clients do not want to have an important phone conference interrupted by a nagging two-year-old, a TV in the background or the sounds of street traffic. Most freelancers I spoke to have a space in their home that is solely for work—a bunker, as it were.

Others have started using shared spaces that provide a quiet space and a cubicle or desk to call your own. These spaces, called co-offices, often have other incentives. They give freelancers a place to go, which helps them keep schedules. They usually also provide a receptionist service, so someone always answers calls. And they provide a sense of workplace that is something many consultants complain about missing.

Think Like an Entrepreneur

Here’s probably the most important ingredient that distinguishes the most successful consultants: They think like entrepreneurs.

Too often, freelancers drift from project to project. That’s a mistake. They need to have a business plan or mission statement. If all they do is take everything that passes over the transom, they will be viewed as a nonspecialist in a world of specialists.

Consultants are known for the work that they do, and this often means the work they don’t do. With a mission statement and business plan, they can decide if a certain job is worth it. Sometimes the short-term gain in income becomes a long-term loss in reputation.

This doesn’t mean you should starve: Sometimes, any work is good. But too many consultants say yes to anything that comes along, so when the perfect project arises, they might be too busy to take it. What’s more, in this competitive world, prospective clients want to know what projects you’re working on. If they aren’t impressed, they may not hire you. So being able to say no to certain work, referring it to someone else, is a sure measure of a certain level of success.

To learn more about joining M Squared’s elite network of consultants, visit http://www.msquared.com/consultants/introduction.html

In an article this week, Forbes reported that three decades ago as much as 95% of the average corporation’s value consisted of tangible assets.  Today 75% of that average corporation’s value is intangible.   In other words, a business’s most valuable asset is its good name, its brand and reputation. In a recent survey by World Economic Forum, three-fifths of chief executives said they believed corporate brand and reputation represented more than 40% of their company’s market capitalization.  That value is the organization’s brand reputational value. Strong brand reputational value equals greater profits. 

Many companies that seek to protect and grow their brand contact M Squared Consulting for assistance.  A company’s brand reputational value has four basic elements: expectations, perceptions, business relationships and unique intellectual property assets. Improved quality in each of those areas increases financial value for the organization. For instance, a company with a reputation for quality and safety can charge more for the same product than their competitors because customers put a price premium on quality products and services that give them positive experiences. Companies with strong brands can retain employees better, too. A recent study suggests that 80% of employees between the ages of 18 and 30 will leave a company if they believe it has a weak brand or no association with ethics.

In today’s business climate there are four main avenues by which you can quickly lose your company’s brand reputational value. They are:

1. The Internet and social media. Any ethical or compliance failure, even an isolated and apparently minor one, can be instantly broadcast all over the world. Only a few years ago experts were saying you needed a top-notch public-relations capability to keep up with the 24-hour news cycle. Today 24 hours is an eternity. You need to be on your toes more than ever.

2. Subcontracting and outsourcing. A customer, partner or contractor may be the guilty party in violating ethical standards, but they don’t always receive the worst of the brand reputational value damage.

3. Regulatory. Litigation over ethics and compliance violations has been on the increase, and it will continue to increase. The Obama administration and other governments around the world are ratcheting up investigations and enforcement actions.

4. Employees. According to The Network, Inc., which runs the ethics hotline tnwinc.com, employees commit fraud more often during tough economic times. The company reports that of all the complaint calls it gets, the portion that were fraud-related whistle-blower calls rose from 14% in the first quarter of 2007 to 21% two years later.

Companies must treat their brand reputational value like any other asset. They should manage it just the way they manage real property and equipment. Here are five steps to take:

1. Invest in the three to five areas that will be most profitable. There are at least nine major areas in which ethics problems can hurt a business: markets and customers; strategy; product and service; design, brand and quality control; intellectual property and knowledge management; leadership; workforce; sub-cost-of-goods-sold expenses; risk management; and procurement. Determine which three to five of those represent the greatest business potential and risk for your organization.

2. Invest for the long term. Improving ethics in business for profitable gain is not a quarterly or one-year undertaking. Management needs to have at least a five-year plan and must try to foresee demographic and economic trends that can affect that plan. Ethical investments, just like investments in manufacturing facilities, can easily take five years to materially pay off.

3. Maintain an open communications structure. To protect a company’s brand and reputation, information has to be able to flow immediately to a sufficiently high level of the organization. One way to guarantee this is by having a consistently open line of contact between an ethics officer and senior management. If you don’t have a communication structure that allows concerns to become known, then build one.

4. Insure against individual idiocy and the ill-educated. It only takes the improper actions of one employee, one remote office or one outside agent representing the company to significantly damage your brand. Smart companies recognize and focus on the individual, always asking who exactly they’re hiring as an employee and whether they’ve done enough checking and testing of the person. Also, they know whether they are making sure their requirements concerning expected behavior reach every individual.

5. Insure against outside institutional incompetence. Apply all the same expectations for your company’s compliance, ethics and control standards to your vendors and partners as well. Not only must you exercise due diligence on entering into a relationship, but you also need to continually verify, at least for the top 10% of your supply chain, that your compliance and ethics controls are implemented and working.

In summary, your brand is a bigger part of your business’s assets than ever before. You can’t afford to let it be endangered.  For more information on how to protect and build your brand, visit www.msquared.com.

Cloud computing is changing the business IT landscape through its ability to provide scalable computing resources without the traditional technology overhead. Now, the same characteristics powering this charge—virtualization, integration, and value-added management—are poised to alter the face of business consulting.  A new cloud consulting white paper highlights the parallels between cloud computing and cloud consulting, as pioneered by M Squared Consulting, and explains how the new model is an effective alternative to the expensive, cumbersome, and outdated traditional consulting model.

In a groundbreaking article released this week, M Squared Consulting launched the innovative concept of cloud consulting™, which could transform how organizations meet their consulting needs.  “Similar to how cloud computing has forever changed the face of IT, cloud consulting will soon become the norm for skills-based delivery,” said Marion McGovern, the white paper’s author and founder & CEO of M Squared Consulting.

So what defines the “cloud” in this new model? The definitions may be as varied as the clouds they describe but the key elements remain very consistent. A cloud is built on virtual resources that are integrated, managed, and available on demand. In general, a cloud provides:

• On-demand access to a full range of resources
• No overhead infrastructure costs
• Use-driven pricing
• Reliability
• Scalability
• Flexibility
• Geographic Independence

In addition to these elements, the cloud has a unique ability to accommodate shifting business demands. By its very nature, the cloud is changeable, adapting to meet the needs of the business. By staying in step with business changes, the cloud provides greater agility and a competitive edge.

The Cloud—Remaking the Face of Consulting

Cloud consulting, as pioneered by M Squared Consulting, applies these core cloud concepts to professional services by integrating and managing virtual human capital to deliver an on-demand, cost-effective, reliable, and scalable resource system. By reflecting how human capital and intelligence resources are really employed, the consulting cloud is able to support business processes and resource demands at a cost that more closely reflects their true utilization.

It is important to note that how resources are linked and delivered defines the cloud more so than the resources themselves. For instance, in cloud computing, the resources are more commodity-like. But in cloud consulting, the resources are more specialized. In each case, it is the virtualization, integration, and management of the resources that makes the cloud a “cloud.”

Clouds on the Horizon

Today’s economic climate has forced companies to find ways to operate more cost-effectively. With fiscal pressures showing no signs of retreat, these cost concerns will continue to grow in all areas of business. And, because of its cost efficiency, so will the cloud concept.

By applying the cloud principles of virtualization, integration, and managed oversight, cloud consulting can help companies make their human capital and consulting budgets work harder and more productively.

To view or download the new Cloud Consulting whitepaper, please visit http://www.msquared.com/home/m2/Whitepapers/cloudconsulting.pdf

This week’s guest post is contributed by Terry Healey, an M Squared consultant.  He can be reached at terry@ridgeviewconsulting.com

Building a complete and differentiated go-to-market plan is something all marketing professionals strive to achieve. We typically follow a methodology to ensure that the target customer is at the center of the plan and that we have a clear and compelling value to generate a positive response.

Many of us learned about Neil H. Borden’s “The Concept of the Marketing Mix”, circa 1964.  The ingredients of Borden’s Marketing Mix centered on the four P’s – product, pricing, placement (or distribution), and promotion. But those four P’s require that the marketing professional develop the optimal mix, including market insights, developing integrated marketing/sales programs, and ensuring the necessary measurement tools and metrics are in place. Unfortunately, those actions too often become afterthoughts of building that differentiated go-to-market plan.

Assuring Success with the 4 M’s
The key to a successful plan based on the 4 P’s means starting with a framework from the outset that includes what I like to call “the four M’s”; Market Intelligence, Modeling, Mix, and Measurement. The four M’s are the marketing activities which act as the glue that binds marketing and sales together. Ensuring that sales and marketing have skin in the game motivates both teams to achieve marketing objectives with focus ultimately on revenue.

1. Market Intelligence and Analysis

Just as anyone raising money to fund a start up needs a great idea, they also need a large and growing market that they believe they’ll be able to address. In the same way, regardless of the maturity of your company, you need to develop a business case for what part of the market you intend to address, why it makes sense, and how you are going to do it. The process of researching the total addressable market for your proposed product or service is only a small piece of the analysis necessary. Identifying the viable market segments that your solution can address, along with understanding the customer profile and primary business drivers are the baseline for any plan. Whether you have a solution that requires prospecting for new customers, or perhaps you have the benefit of an installed customer base that you can cross-sell and up-sell into - the same rules apply. Do your research - analyze the data to determine what slice of the market you intend to address, what challenge you will solve, and what benefits your solution offers that are differentiating from the competition. But, once again, before you assume you have all the answers, be sure to make part of your primary research talking to your sales teams about their knowledge of the market and their customer base.

2. Modeling

·     With a lot of great data that’s been sliced and diced, you can now justify moving the plan to the next stage. Nomenclature aside, your next step is to model a “program”, a holistic set of resources, tools, and activities that enable both your sales force to be effective, and your customers to engage with your organization. The key to this is to ensure you provide sales with prescriptive instructions on how to use the resources and when to use them. And don’t think of sales enablement separately from demand generation. The two should be tightly linked. Sales enablement tools and resources you provide your sales people should be integrated with customer engagement demand generating tactics (telemarketing scripts, emailers) so that sales is part of the marketing engine and marketing is helping to drive sales funnel.

·  So that sales understands how marketing intends to create an ongoing customer experience, providing details on how the entire program or campaign will work helps everyone take ownership in the outcome. Building the marketing funnel means that marketing must invest in awareness activities (email, advertising, tradeshows, and PR), consideration activities (web/seminars, whitepapers, case studies), and preference activities (demos, ROI Tools). When sales has a window into the logic behind the marketing program, they can effectively leverage each prospect interaction and the offers that have initiated a response.

·  Close the loop with review teams that provide continual feedback on the approach, validating or invalidating the tactics themselves. The job of Program Modeling is about accelerating sales cycles, and helping sales to move customers more quickly from the prospect stage to the  propose stage.

               3. Marketing Mix

Marketing mix is not just about ensuring that you are reaching customers, analysts, and the press in a myriad of ways, but utilizing step one (Market Intelligence and Analysis) to serve as the guide to how you should focus your efforts, and with how much emphasis. If your company or product is immature, awareness is critical. If you are marketing to your installed base, your emphasis may reside more in the consideration and preference stages. After all, you are marketing to existing customers who are familiar with your brand, but may not understand why they should upgrade or build upon the solution they already have. Targeted demand generation with case study offers, whitepapers, ROI tools, or financing may prove to generate high response rates.

               4. Measure

·  You might be thinking “I cannot get the funding for a robust system to measure my marketing activities.” That may indeed be the case, but today there are great hosted solutions that enable you to have an integrated marketing and measurement system up and running in just a few days. At the end of the day, you have to justify your marketing spend, and measure your return on marketing investment.

·  As importantly, you need to measure response rates, leads, and appointments set so that you can refine, improve, and optimize your campaigns based on what prospects are responding to, what they are registering for, and what content they are downloading. And without all those measurements, good luck getting budget for next years’ marketing campaign.

Adding the four M’s is not designed to make things more complicated. The four M’s methodology ensures that the fundamental aspects of your plan and strategy are sound and can be executed and measured. As we all know, a great marketing strategy does not always translate into an effectively executed plan. And if you cannot measure your execution, you better be a great sales person, because you will be selling a new marketing approach to your leadership team every year. But don’t worry - there won’t be all that many years that you will have to sell that plan if you don’t know how to measure it.

For more information on how to better plan and execute your marketing programs, contact M Squared Consulting at 415-391-1038.

The cover story in the current issue of BusinessWeek entitled “The Permanent Temporary Workforce” is a fascinating read about the state of the American workforce.  The article describes the hardships faced by those affected by layoffs, and how many companies are turning to temporary help to protect profits in the economic downturn.

But in contrast to similar articles in recent years, the authors here point out that the current recession has fueled a “leadership on demand” phenomenon, meaning that many of the temporary workers are white-collar professionals, not “sneaker-footed admins”.  Many are seasoned professionals who relish the flexibility of a free-agent lifestyle.  “People with sought-after skills can earn more by jumping from assignment to assignment than they can by sticking with one company,” the authors write.

Déjà vu?

In her groundbreaking book, “A New Brand of Expertise: How Independent Consultants, Free Agents, and Interim Managers are Transforming the World of Work,” published in 2001, M Squared Consulting founder and CEO Marion McGovern tackled this very subject in some depth.

In particular, in the chapter about why many professionals choose “free agency”, Ms. McGovern’s writings are more relevant today than ever:

“Whether it is control over where they work, their hours, or their vacations, overwhelmingly it is a desire to make work fit into their lives and not vice versa.  One of our consultants of Dutch descent explained that she became an independent practitioner because she thought that American vacation structures were untenable; being used to at least six weeks of vacation annually, she couldn’t continue in the American mode of two weeks per year.  In today’s 24×7 world, time has a currency all its own.”

She continues….

“Some consultants want control over what they do, a sphere of influence that as a mere mortal in a large enterprise was beyond their reach.  At M Squared Consulting, we see this often with the alumni from large consulting firms.  Exposed to many types of industries and products, they may have been able to indentify the type of work they most enjoyed, but they may not have had the opportunity to do it again.  For these individuals, the type of work – the “what” – is most critical.

So in addition to being prescient, McGovern’s book illustrates that there are some long-term trends in place affecting American business, and the savvy consultant can take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves and thrive in today’s work environment.  And challenge, pay, and control are not the sole discretion of either the employer or employee.

With its collaborative approach, long-term relationships, and commitment to the success of both its clients and consultants, it’s no wonder that M Squared Consulting attracts top-tier professionals to its network.  To join the M Squared consultant community, please register on our website at http://www.msquared.com/consultants/join.html

With the New Year upon us, many companies are finalizing their 2010 goals and objectives through a process called “Strategic Planning.”  Done well, strategic planning is not an easy process, but those companies that do it well will be rewarded, and those that don’t can face serious challenges.

At M Squared Consulting, we’re committed to helping clients achieve their business objectives, and offer these tips for sound Strategic Planning:

Plan and Process

An organization’s strategic plan should:

• Be ongoing and never-ending
• Represent a shared vision of where the business is headed and what is needed to get there
• Be integrated into a continuous business cycle

The Planning Team

The strategic planning team should represent a broad spectrum of segments within the organization.

• The ideal size is nine to 15 members with an outside facilitator.
• The CEO must serve as the strategic plan’s “spiritual leader.”
• Choose planning team members based on merit, not rank or entitlement.

The Planning Process

The strategic planning process consists of an orderly sequence of activities, each contributing to the success of the whole. The process should take place off-site, away from telephones, faxes, etc., so that team members can “disengage” from day-to-day operations.

Best Practices:

• Practice creative thinking. Generate as many ideas a possible during the early, “out-of-the-box” mode.
• Take a critical, unbiased look at what has worked before and what hasn’t.
• Identify the best of your past business practices and drop others that have led to costly mistakes.
• Create four to six long-term goals linked to the organization’s vision.
• Devise strategies to achieve these goals and objectives.
• For each objective, create specific action steps.

The Mission Statement

A mission statement describes what an organization does, what markets it serves and what it seeks to accomplish in the future.

• The mission statement describes how the business serves customers so they will underwrite its strategy.
• It serves as a guide for day-to-day operations and as the foundation for future decision-making.
• For employees, a strong mission statement builds commitment, loyalty and motivation.

Best Practices:

• Describe the essence of the business in words your employees and customers can understand and remember.
• Focus on specific traits and on target or niche markets.
• When the mission statement is created, post it on conference walls, on promotional materials, even on the packaging of products.

Goals and Objectives

Strategic planning identifies an organization’s goals and objectives. Goals set the agenda and are global in nature. Objectives are more specific and short-term.

• Goals identify areas where a major transition must occur (a transition is described as “from … to”).
• Objectives should be measurable, quantifiable and consistent.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analysis is a tool for looking critically at the organization.

Best Practices:

• Draw upon a variety of perspectives – from the CEO to employees, customers and others who rely upon the business.
• Identify only those tangible and intangible assets and obstacles that are tied to your company’s long-term goals.
• Gather “competitive intelligence” by purchasing a competitor’s product, hiring one of its ex-employees or visiting its booth at trade shows and conferences.
• Collect information on the Internet by viewing a competitor’s Web site and/or searching online publications.

Implementing the Plan

The results of the strategic planning process must be integrated with an organization’s daily, weekly and monthly routines.

Best Practices:

• The CEO should develop a “stump speech” around the plan – promoting its values, mission statement, actions, etc. – and spread the word wherever possible.
• Enlist a support person (or “champion”) for each strategy and action.
• Organize top and middle managers into a “strategy team” that become agents for change. The CEO should receive direct reports from these teams on a regular basis.
• Avoid common implementation mistakes such as: (1) lack of communication throughout the company; (2) treating the plan as something separate and removed from the management process; and (3) choosing to make intuitive decisions that clash with the plan’s accepted objectives.
• Set up a feedback mechanism so that employees can respond to the strategic plan.
• Share the plan with other stakeholders – investors, customers, alliance partners, etc.
• Keep the plan alive by monitoring its ongoing progress. Conduct 60- or 90-daysenior management reviews. Implement objectives by expanding employee skills through training and recruitment.
• Target sales to make the link between business strategy and sales strategy.
• Reward success to increase employee motivation.

These suggestions should put you on a path toward a successful Strategic Planning session.  Should you need help with your program, please contact us at M Squared Consulting.  Best wishes for a prosperous New Year!