Our Consulting Perspective We help our clients achieve a higher level of business performance. Unlike a typical consultative approach, we firmly believe that change can only succeed and be sustained when it comes from within. Although we can and do write reports, we don’t want to write reports that document our expertise, our ideas and our recommendations, and then walk away. The difference in our approach lies in the degree of our involvement with the client’s leadership and staff throughout our consulting process. Addressing Leadership's Key Needs Achieving major organizational, or departmental, transformation always seems to be such a monumental undertaking – and it is! – requiring purposeful change. But it can be a very rewarding journey for everyone involved when it’s done right. This is how our clients' leaders described their key needs: 1. Achieving a client-centric service delivery focus Leaders need to move to a customer focused culture. This move invariably requires creating a collaborative environment to foster an integrated approach that eliminates the silos within the organization, for the benefit of customer experience. Ultimately delivering top value. 2. Operations/Service delivery efficiency Certain key performance targets prove especially challenging and elusive, despite all the efforts and attention devoted to improving these in the past. It’s about improving results by coaching the organization through the solution implementation and developing capacity to sustain the gains.  3. Strategy implementation support Many organizations invest significant time, effort and money to develop comprehensive strategic plans. Unfortunately, too often these plans are destined to spend much of their lives gathering dust on a shelf: the planning-doing gap. Executives are frustrated to find that the plan remains in the “planning” stage well into the execution cycle. The rigour and discipline of execution. Our Approach to Organizational Transformation Protegra’s Performance Consulting process is a problem solving process. For any client, on any project, our work results in the rigourous, disciplined development of solutions to a problem (a gap between current and desired results) – from limited-scope problems to complete organizational transformations – and a comprehensive solution implementation roadmap (from weeks to years in duration). The work is accomplished using a highly collaborative, high intensity, fast-paced, results-driven approach. This invariably results in: increased executive/leadership commitment levels of employee engagement and momentum for the change not previously experienced, and an enhanced capacity, and confidence, for the people in the organization to apply simple and effective tools in a disciplined and rigourous manner. Our projects leave behind a foundation for successful execution that will serve many or all facets of the organization for the future. Most importantly, there is an exhilarating feeling of accomplishment at the end of the project that comes from the fact that we spare no effort to ensure that the client team owns the resulting solutions and roadmap: it’s your project! Many of our clients have said that we focus on developing self-sufficiency and sustainability in their organization, and then work ourselves out of a job – now that’s different. Our approach is grounded on an array of principles, tools and methods aimed primarily at influencing critical behaviours: we inspire leadership teams and staff teams, we generate excitement, and we build the capacity to change what people do – this is our secret to achieving breakthrough performance and results. We do this by developing trust-based relationships, teaching, and drawing on the knowledge of the organization. We don’t position ourselves as the experts in your business or domain; you are the experts. Our consultants’ expertise lies in the basic application of simple, proven, and highly effective tools and processes designed to liberate the organization’s potential. No tricks, no gimmicks, no magic recipes! We work hard every day; we lead! It’s our leadership and coaching skills that help us bring the organization to a degree of self-sufficiency and confidence that ensure the gains can be achieved and sustained, well beyond the end of our engagement. Although our engagements are customized to every client situation, our approach is grounded in the basics of business performance consulting, Juran’s quality design/planning, Lean manufacturing (Toyota), Six Sigma (Motorola) – principles and concepts that withstand the test of time. These include, among others, quality, systems thinking, effective leadership, customer value, communication, objective setting, problem solving, decision making, and the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle – simple concepts that are so often overlooked in search of newer, glitzier, partial variations. Our toolkit is well stocked with tools, methods, programs and exercises from Lean and Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecard, Strategy Deployment, Operations Research and simulation, change management, organization design, experiential learning, and quality management systems. However, our ultimate objective is never to “just apply a tool.” Our objective is to teach a “thinking process” that results in the capacity to understand problems, to know the tools, to select the appropriate tool, and to solve the problem. We demonstrate this during the project, and we create its repeatability in our client’s organization. The project itself constitutes a real example of how the organization can perform in the future, and just how good it can be for everyone involved.