Consulting
Making Change
According to recent research by EY and Oxford University, 67% of senior leaders have been a part of one underperforming transformation in the last 5 years. Jennifer Davis has curated market-leading approaches to change management and transformation to help leaders and their organizations beat those odds. Starting with her book, Well Made Decisions, and joining with partners and leaders in their respective fields, these approaches are proven and can be deployed at scale to be transformative.
Business performance requires a lot of interrelated elements to go right. That is why leadership is required throughout. Yet, we find the key elements can boil down to four, overlapping areas necessary to make change happen and deliver the results you intended: Principles, People, Processes, and Projects.
Recent engagements have included creating a brand hierarchy and rebranding a multi-business unit organization, the charter and implementation of a shared services model for key centralized functions, the creation of standard recruiting processes (including AI-powered job descriptions and recruiting guides) and onboarding plans, the charter and implementation of business-unit model for previously centralized functions, implementing Entrepreneurial Operating System to align with business strategy (along with certified EOS implementer), and creating business cases for over a dozen investment strategies for a business with aggressive growth ambitions.
Service offerings include retained consulting for senior leaders (ongoing engagement for peer coaching and strategic advisory), project-based engagement (3-6 month engagements common for rebranding or organization design), or for event-based speaking or meeting facilitation services (priced and scoped per engagement with bulk book sales, book signings, and other services offered).
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CEOs who care deeply about their customers, clients, and employees and seek to serve often find themselves with inefficient organizations that are not set up to scale and achieve their full impact. Jennifer’s services are best suited not to early-stage startups, but rather to those who have built a successful foundation and now find themselves wanting to grow, wanting to reduce employee turnover, expand to new audiences or product/service categories, consider inorganic strategies like acquisitions or partnerships, and generally accomplish more effectively with greater efficiency.
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Branding of products, services, business units, or whole companies takes insight and vision. It is a place where the Well Made Decisions principles shine. Whether the business has outgrown its brand due to organic growth or the organization is a mix of acquired marks, Jennifer’s expertise across different industries and market types will help you define the right approach and create a winning implementation plan.
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There has been record-setting M&A activity over the last few years, which has left organizations and leadership teams with a mix of cultures, processes, customers, products, and go-to-market approaches. In each case, management together with the board and outside advisers, estimated what potential was possible. Most mergers fail to achieve those objectives. If you made an acquisition in 2020-2025 and you feel like you are reconfiguring a plane while you are flying it, then Jennifer can help you achieve synergies, retain talent, and deliver results. Applying her M&A integrations and divestitures best practices. Jennifer helps CEOs and their leadership teams navigate the highest-impact opportunities.
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As businesses grow, it is easy for organization design to be responsive and haphazard, rather than strategic. Unclear roles and responsibilities lead to decision making sluggishness, can bloat expenses, and impact market competitiveness as others move more quickly towards opportunities. Deciding when and where to introduce shared services or matrix reporting structures can be a key pivot to unlock value in the organization.
Principles
This element is the foundation for the others. It starts with understanding the starting place and vision for the future. That vision should be driven by customer insights and informed by the accelerant of technology. Every business who has experienced success is going through transformation of some type and change is hard. Principles are business strategy work, naturally, but also an exploration of the mindsets required for change to occur. This work gives the organization a common roadmap and vocabulary for the journey ahead. These principles should be bested and proven, not simply the musings of the clever. Well-made decisions - and the business results they achieve - require thoughtful and effective strategies.
People
At the heart of any successful innovation is customers! Nothing of significance happens for customers without your people working together and utilizing their strengths and talents. This element is not what is traditionally thought of “human resources” (although having enough of the right skills and motivations on our teams is important). This element is more about the strength of the relationships and the understanding of the personal and organizational motivations that will make change stick. From the board room to the conference room (ahem, Zoom call), it is people who are driving your business. They will grow best in an environment that hears and sees them as individuals and allows them to thrive together.
Processes & Projects
This is where the rubber hits the road with change initiatives. Once a strategic decision is made, then there are a host of workstreams that must be kicked off and managed to succeed. Often people skip to this step with a slick PowerPoint template or software tool without considering the context set by the other elements. Several key processes that have an outsized impact are given extra focus, including executive onboarding and early wins, customer obsession and corporate brand building, and relationship health. Also critical is the selection and fierce prioritization of the high-impact learning experiments or business bets that represent early wins and inform future success. A choice towards a strategy and vision spawns thousands of additional decisions that actually deliver the results.
See Booking for information about additional delivery methods and specific services offered. Reach out to Jennifer Davis to explore options in a free consultation by contacting booking@wellmadedecisions.com.
