Facilitation #1

Strategy

Owners and senior executives often wince at the need for doing any type of strategic planning, yet without strategy there cannot be execution. We work with our clients on something we like to call “Practical Strategic Planning.” While there are many definitions of strategy, we think it is best defined this way: creating a vision of the future and managing toward that expectation. We work with you to help position your troops effectively and arrange the battlefield to your best advantage. Strategy is a plan of attack.

Here’s how we can help :

Work with you to co-create a vision into strategic goals, business objectives and operating plans that can be implemented.
Pressure-test these plans with external feedback from customers, suppliers, competitors and employees to ensure that they are realistic and achievable.
Convert your plans into operational budgets and metrics that you can use to judge if your firm is on track.
Identify underperforming areas of the businesses and options to improve performance.
Identify where risks to your strategy could emerge and ways to control these risks.
Identify achievable growth opportunities that may today fall outside your current operations.
Conduct regular strategy check-ups to ensure your company stays on track.
Introduce your company to other members that may have similar issues to provide peer-to-peer opportunities for strategy input and check-ups.

Growth Planning

Facilitation #2

Growth
Planning

Many companies have created tremendous wealth by cutting costs, juicing product lines and reengineering their core processes. Growth, however, is equally valuable and is achievable even by mature companies in mature markets. Creating a plan for growth starts with an understanding that growth is both strategic and tactical. Strategic, because a growth strategy must come from the top and be supported throughout the entire organization; tactical because a strategy without specific action plans and tactics cannot be executed.

Our approach is comprehensive and looks at your organization from the outside in. We will help you assess realistic options for growth, prioritize them, and help you determine what it will take to execute the selected options – especially those important issues surrounding the financing of your growth plan.

Specific – so that you manage to a specifically-stated goal or performance metric that can be measured and monitored along the way.
Measurable – because no goal can be met if it’s not concrete and the target is not measured and monitored.
Attainable & Accountable – to make sure you set goals that are within reach and everyone in your organization is accountable for attaining them.
Realistic – to ensure that your goals are aligned with your organization’s capabilities and resources and that you have a reasonable chance to attain them.
Time-Framed – because goals need a structure within which they will be attained and dates and deadlines create a sense of urgency.

New opportunities for innovation and ways to generate the very best ideas from your employees, business partners, investors and other key stakeholders.

Investment strategies to support growth, and if need be, access to affiliated M&A advisory services.

Business metrics and simple tools that can help you manage for growth as easily as you manage your profits.

Strategies for supplier development and partnerships to support higher growth rates, even in times of pricing pressures.

International expansion opportunities and strategies.

Leadership

Facilitation #3

Leadership & Organization

Great leaders know that leadership isn’t a title. It’s a way of behaving that results in people actually wanting to follow you. The best leaders also actively work at instilling and modeling good leadership throughout their organization. Great leaders create a “multiplier effect” – talented individuals working together as high performance teams which creates a multiple of strong leaders throughout the organization. But developing great leaders is a formidable challenge and we assist our clients with non-traditional approaches to leadership and organizational development. We’re not organizational psychologists or organizational development experts, although we have a couple of great ones in our collaborative consulting network. We’re practical, experienced business professionals who have seen a variety of leadership successes and failures. Our experience can help guide you and your team to create the kind of organizational change and renewal that might be necessary to navigate your path to growth.

As in all of our practice areas, we work with clients on issues of Leadership and Organization in order to produce one primary result – a sustainable long-term future for your organization. Our focus in this practice area is not on training. According to a recent survey by the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), U.S. businesses spend more than $170 billion on leadership-based curriculum with the majority of those dollars spent on “leadership training.” Our bias here is that you don’t train leaders, you develop them. It is a subtle yet important distinction lost on many companies. We favor an approach of focusing less on training while focusing more on development. Our belief is that you don’t train leaders. You coach them, mentor them, advise them, provide them a sounding board and ultimately create others in the organization who become the disciples of good leaders. Development is nuanced, contextual, collaborative, fluid, and above all else, actionable. Specifically, ZTF works with you and your team to:
Assess gaps in leadership roles and recommend approaches for bridging the gaps.
Conduct interviews with owners, executives, and other employees to learn about opportunities for growth.
Serve as a sounding board to owners, key employees and other stakeholders.
Coach and mentor future leaders.
Assess the organization’s current structure and recommend changes as needed.
Develop or improve performance measurement tools.