As discussed in a previous blog  (The PS Dilemma of Managing Just-In-Time Talent), leveraging a Just-In-Time (JIT) Professional Services (PS) Talent staffing without having a corresponding operating model can lead to increased risk to both delivery excellence and financial performance. Smoothing the natural peaks and valleys of a JIT model is key and many manufacturing … Continue reading “The PS Dilemma of Managing Just-In-Time Talent – Part 2”

Professional Services (PS) organizations often do not leverage common functional or organizational structure to accomplish their mission. This means that direct-line reporting relationships between individual contributors and managers typically do not exist, instead it is a matrixed project-based structure. For embedding PS teams, this is different than most other groups within the organization and, therefore, … Continue reading “Professional Services Talent – The Talent Pyramid”

Talent Development & Customer Intimacy As I stated in my last post, talent is always important and is one of the key drivers of building and sustaining customer intimacy. Your people will constantly be generating new Ideas, then taking those Ideas to your customers and delivering on the promises made. In addition, these teams are accountable … Continue reading “Talent Development & Customer Intimacy”

Many of our historically product-focused clients are shifting their organizational and operational focus to address buyers’ needs in their key markets. Talent is always important but is particularly critical as businesses move to these customer intimacy-based models that require a deep understanding of the market needs. A transformation to an intimacy-based business necessitates an array … Continue reading “The Talent Imperative: Why People Make the Difference in Customer Intimacy Business Model Transformations”

We work with many new practices that include: people from our clients’ legacy businesses; consultants with vertical expertise that are recent hires; and other new hires that might sell solutions.  While they each have been successful in their own careers and think they know how to build customer intimacy, in practice it is often a challenge to get the group to work together effectively.