How to select the right strategic specialists to help grow my business?

What is ‘strategy’ – “a detailed plan for achieving success in situations such as war, politics, business, industry, or sport, or skill of planning such situations” (Cambridge).

Executive summary-this paper debates and explores why businesses need external strategic consultants, specialists and generalists. After discovering the need for external interventions, we detail how to get the absolute best from this support network and chart how business leaders can maximise the opportunities.

Chief Executive Officers sometimes feel they require new ideas, fresh perspectives, innovation or an external temperature check when comparing the business performance against sector best in class benchmarks. There are various forms of help available such as strategic consultants, technology consultants, financial specialists or human resources specialists.

Retail Metrics are a network of operating practitioners with specialists’ skills who have led strategic high profile start ups, transformations and growth projects, developing both organizational and economic capabilities. Elite businesses want to measure against and strive to beat the perceived best in class global operations.

External Specialists Provide focus and skills - Industry insights external consultants, specialists and generalists can independently assess, evaluate and trawl business performance data, identify current performance gaps and target opportunities for strategic growth. Adding best practices, academic theories, new industry processes, case studies or anecdotal experiences learned through client experience.

External perspectives provide new insights, are comfortable challenging internal executives thoughts, biases and preconceived ideas which may be outdated with regards to industry performance. Specialists bring industry and cross sector transferable insights and knowledge which can add value to proposals, create new dynamic options and generate healthy industry debates over benchmarking data.

Shape strategic development through no holds barred unbiased reviews of competitive advantage can help influence and shape executive decision making, direction and development of strategic road map proposals. However resident executive teams remain fully responsible and accountable for selecting workable and relevant, high impact strategic choices.

Supporting organizational and economic strategic change specialists, consultants and generalists can help design, development and execution. Adding skills in project management, introducing the latest technology and hard metric measures of progress monitored through structured weekly reviews. Also helping financial modelling, training, coaching of critical skills through phases of change and preparation planning for people lead teams through cultural adjustments.

How do I select and assess specialists, consultants or generalist teams?

Top three tips for success.

• Seek out professionals not friends, review the skills and competencies of the team you are considering, how will they help your business to move forward. Seek out industry experience, best practices, knowledge and skills that can be transferred through your internal teams. Customer centricity, project management, category management, cost optimization, technology, supply chain management skills – where can this team maximise opportunities of my business.

External teams should impact EBITDA of the business whilst developing the skills of the team.

• Effective partnerships need to be constructed between internal and external teams, they require clarity on the Chief Executive Officers brief, requirements and ambition. Change starts with a simple question, when the resistance gets stiff are you willing to remove the barriers regardless of years of service. Effective partners will ask the difficult questions to help target the deliverables, direct and tough discussions are required. If the owners or board are not prepared for tough actions that prepare the field for the new crops to prosper then a change agenda will fail.

Partners will be expected to transfer skills, knowledge and attitudes as they work through strategic development and on the ground delivery. External partners require heavy weight internal partners to provide insights and support to understand internal ways of working, shadow cultures, politics, priorities, sensitive areas and concerns.

This partnership must be seen through the business as credible, autonomous, powerful and capable of removing any barriers to success. The test of reality will come when a significant barrier is required to be moved, at this very point the level of real ambition is demonstrated through actions or inaction.

• Coordinated progress requires clarity and signed off objectives with agreed states of what success looks like. Each initiative and designed project must have a clear owner, declared outcomes, structured and scheduled formal reviews of progress with relevant stakeholders weekly in RACIT (Responsible, Accountable, Communicated, Informed and Timed) format. A clear communication process, escalation process, clarity on team members and a formal end of project assessment detailing successes and learnings.

Retail Metrics have a network of specialists and generalists that advise boards on strategic cost optimization initiatives. We are not consultants, but experienced practitioners, who have the knowledge to make a difference in your business. We would be delighted to have a conversation about how we can help.