Change Management
How Aon Makes it Happen
Why do so many reputable major companies often fail to achieve desired results when it comes to large-scale change management? Aon Consulting offers these tips on how consultants and the client team can help make it happen:
• Create a clear, compelling picture of the desired state throughout the entire organization, along with a picture of the current reality and the gap between the two.
• Revisit each aspect of the business to focus on what clients value. Large-scale change will require revisiting and potentially restructuring business processes, operations, organizational structures, and especially those policies and procedures that define organization.
• Carefully build a new culture to change how the work gets done. The most effective change programs establish a climate conducive to teamwork, innovation, trust, participation, alignment around the business vision and strategy, and personal development.
• Build an infrastructure that supports continuing improvement and sustains gains. Align core systems to achieve these objectives, i.e., reward and recognition, use of information, personnel appraisal and management, and budgetary control/business planning.
The Consultancy Query
All Things Monitored
It may come as a surprise to many consultants that the upstart strategy firm Monitor & Company turns 20 this year. Consulting recently caught up with Monitor chairman and co-founder Mark Fuller, who seldom disappoints when it comes to advancing a different take on the profession Monitor calls its own.
CM: A lot has changed for consulting over the last 20 years, but what has stayed the same?
Fuller: One of the things that we banked on when we started the firm is that clients are getting much more sophisticated, and that's really become a truism now, and we've seen many other consultants buy into this. We've seen consulting go through several evolutions in terms of the kinds of products or services that are offered, and the common theme is that clients are becoming smarter and more demanding. They can do more things for themselves, and what this means to a consulting company is that it needs to become an engine of innovation and it cannot rest on its laurels.
CM: Don't most consulting firms aspire to be just that?
Fuller: I know that all firms would like to think of themselves as innovative, and I know that an awful lot of companies, at least for periods of time, have done extremely well with a certain practice or methodology that is really attractive, and they really run the hell out of that product. So, I think firms are cannibalizing their products, and instead firms need to constantly be reinventing their content even though there is an economic cost to that — ultimately, it's the cost of doing business. So, one of the things that we launched with, and we tried to stick with, is investment in innovation. And that's investment in the content of what we do and investment in the media or channels we use to deliver content to clients.
CM: You frequently mention the channels you use to deliver content. What exactly are we talking about?
Fuller: I think that innovation is being driven by the growing sophistication of the client and I think another thing which I referenced briefly is just this whole notion that there are lots of media and channels through which content can reach the client to have a beneficial impact on the client's bottom line or results. I've always thought of Monitor as a content company. We develop content here. We're known for developing content around strategy, but we're also good in areas like markets and finance. The notion that content is going to be king in this business — which is ultimately an information business — is something a lot of people will buy into, and one of the things that we have stressed in addition to that is that we really want to bring the content to the client in the channel or format which they find most appealing. And so, we do publish books, and we do make television shows,
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