KARL MOORE: This is Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, talking management for The Globe and Mail. Today I am delighted to have with us Ron Ashkenas, who is the managing partner of Robert H. Schaffer and Associates, a leading management consulting firm out of Connecticut.
Good morning, Ron.
RON ASHKENAS: Good morning, Karl.
KM: Ron, you were involved in some big management ideas that I have been teaching in executive programs for a number of years: The GE Workout, The Boundaryless Organization, Rapid Results, and now, Simplicity. How does a manager decide, with all these great management ideas, and I think that they are excellent ideas - but how do you decide which ones do I take and which ones do I put to the side?
RA: As you know from teaching all these ideas, managers are very susceptible to fads - the latest, greatest that some premiere company had done - and they think, well because they did it, we did it. That's not a good way to manage a company. Every manager has to figure out what is the right structure for them and what is the right process, and what are the right tools that they need to use.
All of these things, whether it's Simplicity, Workout or Boundaryless, these are really tools for achieving business ends. The starting point for all managers has to be: What do we want to achieve here? What is the kind of company that we want to have? What's our vision for what we want this to look like in a year from now? We can then work backwards to see what are the right tools to do that.
Now it may be in some instances that Boundaryless is very important because you have to break down silos and have much more integration between functions or between yourself and your customers - great! In other companies, that may not be the key issue at this point. If you look at where do we want to get to and say that we are too complex and slow-moving to do that, then Simplicity may be the right idea.
If we need to engage our employees more, then Workout may be the right way to do it. Every company has to look at it and say what are we trying to achieve, what's our vision, where do we want to get to a year from now, and what are the right tools and approaches to that and how do we put our unique stamp on it? We're not cloning [former General Electric chief executive officer]Jack Welch, [former GE and AlliedSignal executive]Larry Bossidy, [former IBM CEO]Louis Gerstner and [Cisco CEO]John Chambers. We're not saying that everyone should be like those great CEOs. We're saying that everybody needs to be their own CEO whether they are a CEO of a company or of their own division. Everyone needs to have their own approach that works for them.
KM: What is the role of a consulting firm in this?
RA: Again, it depends on what the manager is trying to achieve and there are different types of consultants. It's not one-size-fits-all.
There are some technical consultants and it may be what a company needs is an integrated information system and they need the technology and help to do that. This is one type of consulting. It may be that they are not clear about what market they should be [serving]and what the potential of a particular market is and they may need a consultant to do a study about that.
The kind of consulting we do is really thought partnership. Helping a CEO and helping a company decide where do they want to be, what is the right vision, then how do we get there? What are the different tools to use to do that? It may not be our tools. It may be other tools. It may be other approaches. It may be home-grown approaches. How do you mobilize and engage your own people to be able to do that in a way that builds their capacity over the long term?
I think the really best consulting is the old Chinese proverb of teaching people to fish as opposed to giving them the fish. A lot of consultants just want to give their clients a fish and what's important is teaching them how to fish so they have the enduring capacity to be able to deal with the next challenges. Companies are not in static environments; as we know from the last couple of years, things change very rapidly and we have to have the flexibility and the nimbleness to be able to adapt.
KM: As a manager, when I bring in management consultants, I shouldn't lock them away in a room and have them give me a report in three months. You are saying to work beside them and learn from them so you can take that to use in the future.
RA: Absolutely. Even if they are expert consultants that are doing a study that you don't have the ability to do, pair them up with some of your people so your people learn. They may not become experts but they will learn and they will make sure that whatever the consultants are bringing is geared to the realities of your company.
KM: This has been Karl Moore, talking management with Ron Ashkenas who is the managing partner of Robert H. Schaffer and Associates - one of the leading management-consulting firms in the world.