flevyblog

Flevy Blog is an online business magazine covering Business Strategies, Business Theories, & Business Stories.
MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP STRATEGY, MARKETING, SALES OPERATIONS & SUPPLY CHAIN ORGANIZATION & CHANGE IT/MIS Other

Getting People to Use Structured Thinking Disciplines Is Easier Than You Think

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Structured Thinking 101: Clarity Through Storylines (39-slide PowerPoint presentation). Clarity is critical in business communication of all kinds, yet difficult to achieve. To add insult, clarity is necessary, but not sufficient. Powerful professional communication must also deliver an insightful message, while often prepared in collaboration with others and under great [read more]

* * * *

So many of our clients and friends who work in consulting firms tell us that they are unhappy with the clarity of the thinking that their team members deliver in their internal recommendations and client reports.

They worry that clients do not receive the full value from their teams’ efforts and that their clients are working too hard to capture the important insights (that they are paying for) from the teams’ presentations.

They tell us with great embarrassment that rather than taking a helicopter view toward the end of an engagement and clarifying the cohesive story that their audience needs to hear from them, their people throw the final packs together by any manner of means, including

  • Spreading all of the pages from a project over the boardroom table and then walking around cherry picking key ones and then putting them barely changed into the final pack
  • Building the pack one page at a time during the project and then ‘whooshing the titles together’ to create a contents page
  • Describing the work the team did rather than clearly articulating a cohesive set of recommendations
  • Team leaders – partners included – accepting that they will have to redo the pack at the eleventh hour as this is easier than getting the team to do it themselves

We see this sense of frustration and disappointment across many forms of consulting from management consulting, engineering, accounting and the law as well as inside corporate strategy teams.

The busyness of life in these environments leads many teams to assume that changing this situation is too expensive in training costs and time away from billable client work.

As one partner from a global management consulting firm asked recently, “We provide our people with training when they start here and expect them to use sound structured thinking practices throughout all of their projects, but beyond that, how do we actually make them use these techniques?”

This is a great question, and one that has vexed many people that we have encountered in the last 25 years’ or so that we have been helping clients use logic and structure to clarify their problem solving and communication.

Over the past couple of years, we have identified four tactics that may help you and your teams provide clearer and more impactful client recommendations.

Firstly, insist that any recommendation being made to your in-house leadership team is presented as a one-page storyline. See the example below.

storylining

This will not only demonstrate that you are serious that this is just good business practice, it will also provide opportunities for people to practice their structured thinking skills in a low-risk environment as well as making it easier for your leadership team to make good decisions.

This should be the case for your non fee-earning staff, just as it is for your fee earners.

If you want a quick brush-up on storylining techniques have a look at our Storylining 101 pack here.

Secondly, require all problems to be mapped out as an issue tree and confirmed with the team leadership and the client before work begins on any project. It can also be used to scope out the fees and allocate responsibilities across the team.

Thirdly, mandate that no pack is prepared without a one-page storyline being peer reviewed. The one-page storyline can then form a great executive summary for your pack that can be used as pre-reading for your audience, and will also drive the structure of your pack.

Lastly (for now!), introduce the Friday storyline discipline. Whether you are running a change management program or a strategy project, requiring your team to take an hour or so every Friday to prepare a one-page storyline that describes where they currently think the answer is up to for the project will help both your team and your client. It will not only result in clearer client communication throughout the project, it will also get better answers to your client more quickly.

For more ideas on how to improve the discipline around the use of logic and structure in your problem solving and communication, have a look at this pack here.

If you would like to explore these ideas further, visit the following sites:

  • Some packs that will help you remind others of basic structured thinking disciplines and embed them more deeply across your teams: Corporate Communications on Flevy.
  • A (free) elearning academy that provides occasional insights for people who are keen to make the most of structured thinking disciplines in their business: Clarity Secret.
  • Software that will help you build one-page storylines and then convert those storylines immediately into a pack: neosi.co.
74-slide PowerPoint presentation
Curated by former McKinsey Consultants Unleash the Power of Storytelling in Consulting: A Step-by-Step Guide Are you ready to captivate your clients, inspire your team, and deliver compelling presentations? Introducing our comprehensive consulting storytelling step-by-step guide, a [read more]

Do You Want to Implement Business Best Practices?

You can download in-depth presentations on Communications Strategy and 100s of management topics from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives.

For even more best practices available on Flevy, have a look at our top 100 lists:

These best practices are of the same as those leveraged by top-tier management consulting firms, like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Accenture. Improve the growth and efficiency of your organization by utilizing these best practice frameworks, templates, and tools. Most were developed by seasoned executives and consultants with over 20+ years of experience.

Readers of This Article Are Interested in These Resources


31-slide PowerPoint presentation
There is little more embarrassing in business than communicating poorly to your boss - or your boss's boss. We have all experienced moments early in our careers where we have had to communicate with important people and not known how to go about it. We marvel at those around us who can get to [read more]


 
57-slide PowerPoint presentation
 
 
240-slide PowerPoint presentation

About Davina Stanley

Davina Stanley is Co-Founder and Managing Director of neosi. Team neosi consists of a small group of communication specialists who have 40 years’ experience in helping clients clarify their thinking before they communicate. The team, originally trained at McKinsey & Company, offers a range of online solutions, including software and eCourses, while also serving clients in Australia, Asia Pacific and elsewhere. They have published a number of documents on Flevy related to the topics of corporate communication, structured thinking, and communication clarity.

, ,



Complimentary Business Training Guides


Many companies develop robust strategies, but struggle with operationalizing their strategies into implementable steps. This presentation from flevy introduces 12 powerful business frameworks spanning both Strategy Development and Strategy Execution. [Learn more]

  This 48-page whitepaper, authored by consultancy Envisioning, provides the frameworks, tools, and insights needed to manage serious Change—under the backdrop of the business lifecycle. These lifecycle stages are each marked by distinct attributes, challenges, and behaviors. [Learn more]

We've developed a very comprehensive collection of Strategy & Transformation PowerPoint templates for you to use in your own business presentations, spanning topics from Growth Strategy to Brand Development to Innovation to Customer Experience to Strategic Management. [Learn more]

  We have compiled a collection of 10 Lean Six Sigma templates (Excel) and Operational Excellence guides (PowerPoint) by a multitude of LSS experts. These tools cover topics including 8 Disciplines (8D), 5 Why's, 7 Wastes, Value Stream Mapping (VSM), and DMAIC. [Learn more]
Recent Articles by Corporate Function

  

  

  

  

  

The Flevy Business Blog (https://flevy.com/blog) is a leading source of information on business strategies, business theories, and business stories. Most of our articles are authored by management consultants and industry executives with over 20 years of experience.

Flevy (https://flevy.com) is the marketplace for business best practices, such as management frameworks, presentation templates, and financial models. Our best practice documents are of the same caliber as those produced by top-tier consulting firms (like McKinsey, Bain, Accenture, BCG, and Deloitte) and used by Fortune 100 organizations. Learn more about Flevy here.
  


OUR CORE OFFERINGS
Flevy Marketplace: Top 100
· Strategy & Transformation
· Digital Transformation
· Operational Excellence
· Organization & Change
· Financial Models
· Consulting Frameworks
· PowerPoint Templates
FlevyPro (Subscription Service)
KPI Library
Streams (Functional Bundles)
Flevy Executive Learning (FEL)
PowerPoint Services

FREE Resources

About Flevy
Management Topics
Marcus (AI-Powered Consultant)
Partner Program
LinkedIn Influencer Marketing
FAQ / Terms / Privacy / Blog
Contact Us: support@flevy.com



CONNECT WITH US!
       
TOP 100 TRENDING TOPICS
Acquisition Strategy
Agile
Analytics
Artificial Intelligence
Balanced Scorecard
Best Practices
Big Data
Breakout Strategy
Business Continuity Planning
Business Plan Financial Model
Business Transformation
CMMI
COBIT
Change Management
Cloud
Communications Strategy
Company Financial Model
Competitive Advantage
Competitive Analysis
Consulting Frameworks
Continuous Improvement
Core Competencies
Corporate Culture
Cost Reduction Assessment
Customer Experience

BROWSE BY FUNCTION
Strategy, Transformation, & Innovation
Digital Transformation
Operational Excellence and LSS
Organization, Change, & HR
Management Consulting

Customer Journey
Customer Service
Cyber Security
Data Privacy
Decision Making
Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital Transformation
Digital Transformation Strategy
Due Diligence
ESG
Employee Engagement
Employee Training
Enterprise Architecture
Growth Strategy
HR Strategy
Hiring
Hoshin Kanri
ISO 27001
ITIL
Information Technology
Innovation Management
Integrated Financial Model
Kaizen
Kanban
Key Performance Indicators

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Business Strategy Frameworks
Case Studies
Consulting Training Guides
COVID-19 Trend Data
Digital Transformation
Financial Advising Services (FAS)

Knowledge Management
Leadership
Lean
Lean Manufacturing
Logistics
M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions)
Manufacturing
Market Research
Marketing Plan Development
Maturity Model
McKinsey PowerPoint
McKinsey Templates
Operational Excellence
Organizational Change
Organizational Design
Performance Management
Post-merger Integration
Pricing Strategy
Process Improvement
Process Maps
Procurement Strategy
Product Launch Strategy
Product Strategy
Project Management
Quality Management


Free Resources
KPI Library
Lean Management
Lean Six Sigma Training Guides
Marcus Insights
Operational Excellence

Real Estate
Remote Work
Restructuring
Risk Management
Robotic Process Automation
SWOT
SaaS
Sales
Scrum
Service Design
Six Sigma Project
Social Media Strategy
Strategic Planning
Strategic Thinking
Strategy Development
Supply Chain Analysis
Sustainability
Target Operating Model
Team Management
Total Productive Maintenance
Value Chain Analysis
Value Creation
Value Stream Mapping
Visual Workplace
Workplace Safety


Product Strategy
Small Business Owner
Startup Resources
Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning Process
Value Innovation Strategy


© 2012-2024 Copyright. Flevy LLC. All Rights Reserved.