Guiding Strategic Change

 

Charting a company’s course for the near-term future, outlining the steps to its goals, is critical for success. Overtly and correctly making strategic decisions, deciding what markets to pursue, what advantage over the competition to exploit, how to extract value from the market once captured, creates success. Squeezed by the demands of operations, this critical function often gets ignored by management or lacks a process that fosters the innovation, or insight needed to succeed. A budgeting cycle is too often the only process that considers strategic challenges. Inadequate in its scope or approach, a budget-centric approach misses key opportunities for creating value.

The Mountain Group advocates a planning process that goes far beyond the typical amassment of analysis into policy and option books ending with senior executives pooling ideas in a conference room: Using a company approach, distinct from the budgeting cycle, new insights, and answers found to common strategic decisions.

  • Market selection is focused on customer patterns, their needs, trends and size
  • Competitive positioning is enhanced through an examination of industry dynamics, competitors strengths and weaknesses, potential for new entrants or substitutes and alternative options and risks
  • Execution blocks are identified by assessing the strategic options with the company’s cultural and operational issues
  • Financial modeling of options and risks allows for insight on key business drivers and selection of performance metrics, as well as five-year rolling financial models
  • Joint ventures, mergers, or acquisition options are evaluated in the context of markets, competitive advantage, culture, and business practices
  • Development of exit strategies and business unit disposal are evaluated similarly.

Implementing Best Business Practices

Over the years The Mountain Group has assimilated the best practices of numerous companies, industries, and organizations. Combined with ongoing academic research and study, The Mountain Group has developed a suite of best practices for key areas of business. Areas we have addressed previously include:

  • Engineering and product development inbound logistics, including procurement, warehousing, handling
  • Manufacturing, or service delivery sales and marketing
  • Outbound logistics, including channel strategies, distribution, inventory management
  • Budgeting and planning structures 
  • Financial modeling
  • Board roles and management
  • Human resource development
  • Leadership tools and practices
  • Development of efficient, up-to-date operating systems including key operational tracking systems 
  • Financial management and analysis (including cash and risk management systems)

Leading Cultural Change

An effective culture meaningfully rewards innovation and execution. It keeps the organization’s members efforts unified, focused on the corporation's values, strategies, and practices. A company’s course for the future can become derailed through internal inefficiencies or conflicts. Leadership, organizational structure, compensation systems, and much more defines and shapes a corporate culture. If an effective culture does not exist, the Mountain group can work alongside management to understand the core issues, the consequences of culture and to facilitate a change.

We start projects knowing our involvement can influence culture. As we do our work, we seek to model good culture, effective assessment, and decision making. After identifying possible performance inhibitors/accelerators, we engage management in a frank discussion on issues and opportunities through structured reviews and work alongside management implementing these changes and evaluating the progress being made. Our services include:

  • Appraisals of management and existing culture
  • Employee and customer survey’s
  • Compensation program evaluation
  • Evaluation of control/reporting practices
  • Coaching of key managers
  • Team building exercises, workshops, or other similar steps.