How do management consultants benefit a business?
They challenge you. Any time you’re challenged on your philosophies, goals or strategies, if you keep coming back with the same answer, and it’s successful, that’s confirmation that it’s right. But if your strategies are not producing the results you’re looking for, something’s wrong, and you have to figure it out. My training was not in business; it was in engineering. I don’t claim to know all of the things you need to know on how to run a business, so I enjoy talking to people who have that expertise and learning from it. How do you measure employees’ understanding of your growth strategy? Productivity of our people is something that’s easily calculated. Customer satisfaction is something we measure and report objectively. For each of our cornerstone strategies, we have these objective measures, and we have a vision for where we want the company to be regarding each of those measures. We’re always working toward either achieving that vision, or if we’re already there, maintaining ou
