Group50 Consulting

2012-02-06T18:44:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, I and 10 of my consultants spent a couple of days with a new company called Evaluate to Win (ETW). Jack Welch says, “This is the best management tool I have ever seen”... I agree. It utilizes today's web based tools to allow the leaders of an organization to see where everyone is relative to strategy, mission, values, leadership skills and mission critical objectives. But,

2012-01-22T13:13:00.000-08:00

I was speaking with a client the other day who was expressing frustration with being able to align his organization with the company's strategies, vision, mission, values and tactics. He felt as if the yearly off site meetings and quarterly communications to employees weren't causing the company to build a culture and performance mindset around those. He mused that there must be a better way

Season's Greetings and a 2011 recap

2011-12-29T15:49:00.000-08:00

Season’s Greetings and Best Wishes for a Happy and Prosperous New Year from Jim Gitney, Group50 Consulting and The Global Leaders For Group50 Consulting, it has been a good year with major projects completed in the medical, consumer discretionary, Information technology, and renewable energy sectors. We worked on several long range strategic plans for manufacturing and distribution

Project Management Keys to Success

2011-11-21T16:32:00.000-08:00

Management of a project, regardless of the specific intent and outcome, can generally be accomplished using fairly universal tools and techniques. A team approach has been shown to gain ‘ownership’ in the project and a consistent and uniform means of communication allows participants and stakeholders to stay abreast of the project by providing feedback to the team and the project leader(s).

Intellectual Property Audit

2011-11-21T09:18:00.000-08:00

Group50 Consulting, formed in 2004 announced today that it has added an Intellectual Property audit to its Company Physical (tm), a series of cross functional audits that companies should use to complement their financial audits as further validation of the company's health. Most senior executives believe that Intellectual Property protection is a function of patents and trademarks. This is

Strategic Planning: Who is responsible?

2011-11-11T11:35:00.000-08:00

Recently I was asked to comment on the question: Who is or should be responsible for Strategic Planning? Several people responded. Here is my response:Of course I agree that the CEO is the ultimate decider of the final strategic plan. Strategy is the CEOs primary job and also one of the key areas of attention for the Board. While I agree with the philosophy of the other respondents, I don’t

Group50 Consulting: Protecting A Company’s Intellectual Property

2011-11-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

Group50 Consulting: Protecting A Company’s Intellectual Property: You are the CEO of a small company that has a retail product with patent rights. A very large department store chain sends one of your co...

Protecting A Company’s Intellectual Property

2011-11-02T10:21:00.001-07:00

You are the CEO of a small company that has a retail product with patent rights. A very large department store chain sends one of your company’s products to China and begins buying a knock off from a Chinese manufacturer. When confronted by the company, the buyer tells you: “Your problem is with the Chinese manufacturer, not me, sue them”. How do you protect your rights, against customers

Value Innovation: Beyond Brainstorming to a New Level of Strategic Logic

2011-03-11T13:32:00.000-08:00

If you received today’s copy of the McKinsey Quarterly, you might have seen the article “Seven Steps to Better Brainstorming”. We agree with their premise, that traditional brainstorming does not yield great results. Traditional brainstorming is based on the “throw as many ideas on the wall as possible and see what sticks” method. The authors reveal seven ways to ask better questions in the

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

2011-03-04T13:04:00.001-08:00

The following article was written with inputs from members of The Global Leaders..... Experiences executives have with management consultantsDr. Sarah Layton CMC, FIMC In preparation for the keynote at the 2010 Confab meeting of professional management consultants, we asked about a thousand global business leaders to respond to an online survey about their use of and experience with management

THE RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT TAX CREDIT

2011-02-27T17:50:00.000-08:00

The Credit In the early 2000’s the regulations governing the qualifying, calculating and claiming of the R&D Tax Credit were heavily modified to provide a stimulus for the small and mid-sized business. No longer did one have to create something that was totally “New to the World” and no longer did they have to deal with very concise and detailed record keeping to even be considered for the credit

Picking the right consultant

2011-02-27T17:12:00.001-08:00

Over the last few years, cutbacks have significantly reduced the level of expertise in many areas. Most companies are using more and more temporary resources for their business needs in all areas of their business. This is more cost effective and provides a company the ability to strategically acquire special resources when needed. But, how do you effectively manage that process? You need

What Happened to My Strategy? Part 3 - Growth

2011-01-29T15:27:00.000-08:00

(Download Part 3 pdf) (Download pdf of Parts 1,2,3) You have completed your reorganizations to survive and have been hoarding cash. Your team has gone through the effort to understand what your customers want as the first step in developing a new business strategy for the next economic cycle, which, if like most others gives the company 7-8 years of robust growth. The economy is slowly

What Happened to My Strategy? Part 2: Voice of the Customer

2010-12-22T06:58:00.000-08:00

Before a strategic plan can be updated or created, there is a need to understand what has happened over the last few years and what needs to be done to position the company for growth. Understanding the customer’s view of how markets, technology and attitudes have changed along with their new expectations is strategically important. Suppliers need to know what their customers are thinking, now

Does Your Business Have a Networking Strategy?

2010-11-29T10:29:00.001-08:00

Written by Jim Gitney, CEO Group50 Consulting Every leadership team is asking questions about their networking strategies for 2011 and beyond. They wonder how Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Buzz and others can be utilized for business development purposes. As we have worked on The Global Leaders, we have spoken with hundreds of companies, and have found a wide disparity between their

What Happened to My Strategy? Part 1

2010-11-18T21:19:00.000-08:00

What happened to my Strategy? Part 1 of a 7 part series on Strategic Planning(Click here to download a copy) Written by Jim Gitney, CEO, Group50 Consulting. Just a few years ago, the economic engines were running at full tilt. The downturn occurred and every business was scurrying to figure out how to restructure their entire enterprise in an effort to adjust to lower sales and significant

Quality, Lean and Six Sigma: Often Misunderstood and Not Peers

2010-11-12T10:45:00.000-08:00

This tough economic downturn, which many view as “the new normal,” has led many companies to reexamine many of the best business practices and “hot topics” of the past 20+ years. Of the various hot topics, perhaps none has been hotter recently in manufacturing and distribution businesses than the principle of “getting Lean” or improving processes by applying Six Sigma techniques as championed by

Measuring and Sparking Innovation

2010-10-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

Likely, as seems to be a popular claim, innovation is a key ingredient for enterprise, personal, national, and societal success.Beyond that claim, discussion often drifts toward perhaps sub-optimal questions and debatable assertions such as “can innovation be managed?” and “innovation can be learned but not taught.”Better discussion - and action - might focus on “how can we foster beneficial

Boomers and Millennials: Can’t We Just Get Along?

2010-10-25T15:25:00.000-07:00

Businesses are just now beginning to wrestle with harmonizing between generations of workers and managers that may be as different as any combinations that have preceded them: the post WWII “Baby Boomers” and the up-and-coming “Millennials” (a.k.a. “Gen. Y”). There continue to be many “Boomers” still in the work force, partly due to their need to delay retirement in hopes of rebuilding wealth

Don’t Sell Products (Sell Systems)

2010-10-05T10:49:00.000-07:00

The concept of “system selling” has been tossed around so much over the years that it has lost some meaning. However, the wisdom of offering products and services that don’t stand alone, but which intimately fit into a greater system for the end user or client, continues to be sound and exploitable by marketers. Why? Because systems become enmeshed in how users operate, act and sometimes even

Where are the Global Leaders of tomorrow? Why aren’t they the Role Models our kids look up to?

2010-09-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

Posted by Jayme B. Porkolab - VP Marketing & Sales, The Global Leaders LLCThe headlines are all too familiar; another athlete, starlet or performer has fallen from grace. We shake our heads and say to ourselves “what a shame”…..yet what we really need to do is shake ourselves and say “Wake Up! These are the misguided souls that the young people of today look up to and we need to change that”.As

Pushing with Both Hands (Employee Coaching/Development)

2010-09-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

In business, there are four key elements: equipment and technology, processes and systems, information, and people…but people are the active ingredient. The most important work an effective leader can do is to get the most out of his/her people, helping them perform at highest levels today and grow to contribute more tomorrow. The leader who can coax “growth spurts” out of the people in the

News Flash: 100 of 100 People Die (Succession Planning)

2010-09-14T11:48:00.000-07:00