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- »One on One with KPMG's Koecher & Rodriguez
KPMG’s Restructuring Services group just got a lot stronger. On July 16, KPMG acquired Grant Thornton’s supply chain advisory practice, effectively doubling the size of its core restructuring team and broadened its service offerings.
- »One on One with Ed Hess
Grow or Die. It’s probably the most common business axiom, and the least accurate, according to the new book “Smart Growth: Building an Enduring Business by Managing the Risks of Growth” (Columbia Business School Publishing). To better understand the book’s implications for firms, Consulting’s One-on-One sat down with the book’s author, Ed Hess, a former Arthur Andersen strategy consultant and current professor at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business.
- »One on One with Summit's David Litherland
When prospective employees interview for a job, they obsess over making a good, lasting impression. Firms should do the same. To learn how firms can avoid typical pitfalls, Consulting’s One on One sat down with David Litherland, managing partner of Summit Search Group, an executive search firm specializing in placing professionals within professional service firms.
- »One on One with PwC's Tom Craren
Senior executives are becoming immune to traditional marketing. Marketing consultants tell us that to pierce through the white noise of corporate communication, firms should consider “content marketing”. Instead of more traditional marketing, providing valuable insight and perspective in a blog or electronic newsletter can serve as a more effective door opener. One of the best examples is PricewaterhouseCoopers’ “10-Minute” series. For almost three years, PwC has boiled down complex thought leadership into small electronic pieces an executive can read in about ten minutes. To learn more about PwC’s marketing efforts, Consulting’s One-on-One sat down with Tom Craren, the firm’s brand strategy and thought leadership leader. His team of 20 writers produces between two to three 10-minute pieces each month, along with more detailed white papers.
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2010
»The 2010 Small Jewels: The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group
 Like a fine wine, some things just get better with age. That’s true of the Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group.
In the 1960s, Kaleel Jamison, a Cincinnati-based housewife, began running workshops in local churches on the different communication styles between women and men. Her pioneering message of self-empowerment and inclusion caught the eye of one church member who asked that she deliver the same information to his company, Proctor & Gamble.
From there, her intra-personal insights attracted large companies, such as: Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company and Digital Equipment Company. While successful, the firm spent its first few decades as essentially a two-person shop: comprised of Jamison and Fred Miller, an insurance executive who joined her firm after she consulted to his company. Miller took over as CEO when Jamison died of cancer in 1985, at age 53.
“We’ve gone through many iterations, constantly making sure that we were relevant to our clients. But the core is the same. We’re still talking about how organizations can get everyone invested and involved,” Miller says. The current economy has intensified clients’ need to keep their workforce fully engaged. “Clients are in their most challenging environment ever. Employees are running so fast, they’re running on fumes,” he says. “Everyone in middle management and above is working 12-hour days. Front line people are working double shifts. No one wants to over-hire. This is not a long term plan for corporate success, but it’s where we are.”
 Despite the high demands on employees, “CEOs realize that they can’t afford to burn their workforce out,” Miller says. “They need help creating an environment in which their people want to come in. No one says, ‘I can’t wait to work 12 hour days and not see my family.’ No one is saying that, certainly not the current generation.”
The idea that people are valuable, and are not disposable assets, is evident within the firm and intrinsically tied to the way the firm treats its clients. In the late 1990s, the firm was much bigger. It employed 48 employees and was on pace to grow to about 100 staff, Miller says.
“That was back when I thought the firm with the biggest number of employees won the game,” he says. The economic downturn that followed 9/11 “slapped me on the side of the head and made me realize that was a bad idea. I like the staff size we’ve got now,” which consists of about eighteen full-time people and about fifteen contractors.
“Everyone knows everyone. When you’ve got a big staff, you’ve got to feed that monster, and it’s easy to make bad decisions. We don’t do things for the revenue. The word revenue is not part of our language. We do what’s right for our clients. No one at our firm has a billing quota.”
The firm only has a few major clients, served by teams of four to ten consultants for three to four weeks per month, and a handful of smaller clients. Miller says he’s currently in discussions with another handful of companies that could become “major clients” and he is honestly worried they might all want to hire his firm. He’s worried about growing too big, too fast, again.
—Jess Scheer
2010 Small Jewels Lenati Next >>
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