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What's the secret to this management consulting firm's success? It's all in its human-centered approach. To devise the best strategies, the firm takes time to truly understand each client's needs, goals, and objectives. By working as an extension of its clients' teams, the firm can guide them to achieve real transformations and improve performance.
It's common for companies to undertake change management initiatives during uncertain times. After all, when facing a potential recession and inflation, knowing how to optimize the business to drive performance is key to weathering the storms.
So when the management consulting firm’s client reached out to get help in designing and developing a Change Management Center of Excellence (CoE) that could carry the client into the future, the firm was excited to jump on board. But there was a slight problem.
Demand for the firm's change management initiatives had been on the rise as a result of 2022's uncertain socioeconomic landscape. With its teams stretched thin, the firm lacked the necessary resources to oversee this initiative. And more importantly, the firm had five months to help the client set up its CoE.
Working with its internal partners, the firm underwent the exercise of understanding whether a full-time hire or an independent consultant would be the best approach to take for filling this project role. After careful consideration, it was decided that the best bet would be to leverage an independent consultant on demand to get the ball rolling.
Having worked with Graphite in the past to onboard independent subject matter expertise on demand, the management consulting firm reached out to its Account Executive (AE) to quickly find an expert within 48 hours.
Once connected, the hiring manager on the initiative started sharing their criteria for the role. Specifically, the hiring manager was looking for a seasoned professional with over eight years of proven change management experience. Prior experience in setting up a CoE and working within an HR organization was preferable, along with change management certifications like Prosci.
The AE identified over 35 independent experts that matched the hiring manager's criteria. Three of the 35 candidates were presented and invited to be interviewed by the hiring manager over Graphite’s video conferencing tool.
After speaking with each candidate, the hiring manager decided to move forward with an experienced business transformation and strategy implementation consultant with over 10 years of experience. The selected expert had extensive experience working at Slalom, leading change management initiatives for Biotech and healthcare clients.
Before getting started on the project, the AE set up a meeting with the client, expert, and Graphite's customer success team to ensure all parties were on the same page. The scope of work, measures of success, identification of the point of contact person, and how to communicate and get paid on the platform were discussed.
With all parties aligned on what to expect, the client moved forward with onboarding the expert to the project — sharing key project information, login credentials, and additional context into the client's current business situation. After carefully reviewing the information provided, the expert started their work to understand the client's current state.
First, the expert identified stakeholder groups that would need to participate in interviews and focus group discussions. Then the expert worked on drafting the interview questions. Once that was completed, the expert received the necessary data before analyzing the findings to develop a leadership readout of key insights.
Finally, the expert used the findings to design and document the outlines for how teams would interact with the CoE. They also developed a charter and identified the tools that would be needed to implement change.
Toward the end of the five-month time frame, the client realized that it would need to expand its timeline to ensure the proper execution of the CoE. Pleased with the expert's work and great client feedback, the firm extended the scope of work with the expert to reflect the additional need.
With demand for its change management service at an all-time high, this management consulting firm realized it would have to augment its team to keep up. Given the sensitive nature of their current client's needs, time was of the essence. So the firm turned to Graphite to find an independent consultant with over 10 years of business transformation and strategy implementation experience.
Eager to onboard a team that could achieve results within six months, the client and their dedicated Graphite account manager partnered to determinze the specifications for each of the four roles. They were:
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