Approach
Our approach is to use client teams to copilot the transformation and communicate our actions throughout the organization in order to get feedback and facilitate implementation. This approach is one of action and innovation, designed to yield financially rewarding results through radical and meaningful change. We want to be your consultant of record.

Explore on the links to the left and read about how each of these individual categories is essential to the fabric of success within our client engagements.

Teams
Our secret sauce in implementing projects has been to work with client teams and allow them to see what we saw early in the engagement…to get them to the same understanding as we have, so we jointly own the problem. We do this through multiple approaches such as:

• Large implementation teams - usually 15-30 people from the client organization who will be the basis for the design team, and ultimately the implementation team. These teams are cross functional in nature with a large portion coming from the area being rethought. We are looking for the informal leaders that people will value hearing from and who can lead change. If it is a manufacturing project, we would expect 50% of the people to be operators or technicians, some percentage to be engineers, and some to be administrative. No Managers! After the first few weeks the design team owns the problem and feels responsible for developing the solution and implementing it. BLMC then moves to a teaching role and advisory position. We transfer knowledge as we work with the teams to analyze and design the To-Be design. But early on, they begin to take responsibility for the project.

• Steering Committees - usually the top management of the enterprise or operation affected by the design and implementation. They have the power of directional and financial approval. They pick the team and hear from them weekly on what is happening. BLMC spends a lot of time with the steering committee and the management team with the philosophy of “No Surprises”, and “No Hidden Agendas”.

• Design teams within design teams - using the implementation team, we will create short term sub-teams to focus on a specific design segment…doing the analysis, the design and then socializing it around the facility with key people. At the end of that work, we will reconstitute that team with other players doing other work. The typical sub-team works together for 1-3 weeks, and moves to another team. This allows a lot of parallel activity in a short period of time.

• Small teams - for those projects that don’t require a large team, we will work with the client’s designated participants as co-members of the design team, where BLMC members will take the lead. But the responsibility and knowledge is transferred over the project period to the client team members.

Training
Training is a significant component of any Barris Lotterer Management Consulting (BLMC) engagement. We will transfer knowledge every step of the way to the client’s designated participants, usually a team of 15-30 individuals who will also serve as trainers during and after the completion of the engagement. This knowledge transfer will include classroom training on methodologies and approach, hands-on training for the to-be design, and guidance throughout the implementation phase of the engagement.

In addition to training the core team, BLMC will also help train the larger organization. Our approach is that various segments of the organization need different levels of training. For instance, training for the manufacturing organization will have customized elements to address the needs of operators and production heads. Similarly, other areas of the organization will need specific training to help them understand their role in the new environment. Working with client teams, BLMC will develop the training plan, including material and roll-out schedule, for each segment of the organization. For this purpose, we will train the Trainers: client team members who will train the larger organization. BLMC will facilitate these training sessions until the Trainers have reached the desired level of comfort and knowledge to be effective in this role.

Communication
Another big success factor for BLMC is to keep everyone informed. We believe in the philosophy of “No Surprises” and “No Hidden Agendas”. We will spend a lot of time working with our client to disseminate information throughout the organization on the path and goals of a particular engagement.

We help our clients develop detailed communication plans around major work, or simple letters to key people when it is a smaller project. The more transparent a project appears to everyone affected, the less uncertainty exists from those who are not part of the engagement.

We typically hold daily “end of the day” sessions with the key players, talking about our findings or issues that need to be handled. We are both a consultant of record for our clients on very specific engagements…and a resource outside the company with whom private and sensitive conversations can be held. We also hold “end of the day” sessions with the design teams to transfer knowledge to all the members, and get them to think about different issues than they typically are called on to understand. This is where their intellectual growth occurs, and the future management becomes visible. It is also a vehicle to feed back their findings and opportunities for improvement.

Steering Committees get formal presentations by the engagement team members at least weekly, so that the design team can tell the management what they have found, and management gets the benefit of being able to take action promptly on simple savings heretofore unseen by them.

We believe in “Socializing” concepts that come out of the projects with the key players to get their feedback and insight. As part of the “No Surprises” mindset, we think that this is time well spent, and get hidden agendas out on the table early in the process, instead of smoldering in the background until the wrong moment in time.

Action, Innovation, and Radical Change
We think that each engagement needs to provide value to the client quickly, and most of our projects are a few months in length (3 to 6) from assessment to design to implementation. Most of our projects are end-to-end in scope, as opposed to a small area of focus. We will tackle the order to delivery process, or the inventory management from procurement through delivery to the customer, end to end. We think that end-to-end process restructuring will take you beyond the Incremental and into Radical Change on the order of 2X-5X - a rapid but major change in processes that fundamentally impacts the way a company does business.

This philosophy of rapid change is action oriented. We think that we can teach our clients two things quickly: How to handle ambiguity in every day business life and, knowing that everyone can do 90% of the work in 30% of the time, what should the focus be for the final 10 percent. Client teams are asked to make this transition at a much faster pace than they are used to. We suggest that the company that can take change at a faster rate will survive in the competitive world, and we practice what we preach on these engagements.

We are also a source of innovation. Typically 30% of our engagements are in developing processes that have never been implemented before. Sometimes it is knowledge being applied in a different manner; or the changing a manufacturing or service procedure technically to speed up a key process, or to improve its quality radically, or to improve changeover. However, in all cases, it provides a strategic differentiator in the market place and grows the top line. Because of our engineering depth and experience, we are not afraid to challenge the status quo on why something is being done.

Most of our engagements reflect significant change in the way our clients do business, and we are most effective when the work reflects meaningful change to the enterprise. We try to be an innovative force in our client’s competitive arsenal by structuring change that gives them a strategic competitive advantage. Our strategic view is one of our strengths and it has helped our clients become giants in their market.

Financially Rewarding
In any engagement, our clients should generally receive a ten times payback in a 12-18 month period starting at the end of an engagement. We rarely engage below that expectation level, unless our client is seeking to acquire a strategic capability as an enabler for future growth. To this end, we are not solely focused on Bottom-Line results, we are sensitive to the realities of intangible benefits that can not be measured in Hard Dollars. For example: our areas of focus may include: Customer Satisfaction, Improved Information and Communication, as well as reduction of Effort and Non-Value Added activities.

Consultant of Record
Most of our work comes from follow-on assignments with existing clients. We maintain a high level of quality on our work, because we know that poor quality will quickly end a relationship with a valued client. We rarely return to redo work, but rather move into other areas of concern for our client… trying to help in other ways. We want to provide economic payback on each engagement, and we want to become your Consultant of Record… the preferred consulting company that our clients always call when they have a problem. We are always asking...
"How Can We Help?".