Internal Consultant Training

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Strategic Toolkit and

Strategic Thinking

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Internal Consulting Training

•  Do your team members sometimes feel underequipped to tackle key strategic issues,

particularly vs. external, ‘top tier’ consultants that are occasionally brought in?

•  Has it been a number of years since your team were part of a consulting firm and had

access to the robust training programs they used to regularly attend?

•  Do some of your team members come from non-consulting backgrounds and

therefore lack training in robust typical structured problem solving approaches?

Our world-class training program to address exactly these issues and will be holding its next Strategy Training Course on November 14-15, 2013 in the Sydney CBD.

The two-day program has been designed to teach your team the core skills that are employed by top tier consultants and "best in class" internal consulting teams. At a high level the modules for the two day program will consist of the following:

The modules will be taught through a mix of theory, case study “real world” examples and an integrated exercise by accomplished trainers who are themselves practicing consultants and alumni of top tier consultancies and internal consulting teams globally.

It is appropriate that all members with different experience levels attend so they learn to apply and manage to the same skill set.

Strategic Toolkit and Strategic

Thinking, November 14/15

1.  THE STRATEGIC

TOOLKIT, covers the 17 tools used most often by strategy and internal consulting teams to evaluate companies, business or solve specific business issues.

2.  STRATEGIC THINKING is separated into:

a.  Defining the Issue: Situation, Complication & Key Questions

b.  Answer First Hypothesis

Development: Pyramids, Assertions, Analysis & Objectivity

3.  DEVELOPING COMPELLING PRESENTATIONS, is based on understanding your objectives, your audience and designing your storyline and

specific slides to optimise your presentation in the time available.

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SUMMARY OF WHAT WILL BE COVERED

•  Provides an initial problem solving approach that immediately narrows and clarifies the scope of a project

•  Deep dives into the Situation, Complication, Questions framework •  Teaches a simple approach that

immediately ensures the critical issues are being addressed

•  Provides a complex integrated exercise to ensure the theory can be applied •  Recommended for all levels so the entire

team can apply and manage to this approach

The Strategic Toolkit

½ day

Modules – Day 1, 14 November

Defining the Issue

½ day

•  Provides an end-to-end framework on the tools an internal consultant should use to approach a project

•  Deep-dives into the 17 most commonly used tools in the following areas:

•  Business Definition (ROS/RMS Matrix, Growth Share Matrix, The Experience/Cost Curve)

•  Cost Optimisation (Cost Reduction, “Quick Hit” Wins, Organisational Restructuring) •  Revenue Growth (Segmentation,

Targeting, Retention, Cross Sell, Salesforce Effectiveness) •  M&A (Strategic Rationale, Risk,

Valuation & Post Merger Integration)

COMMERCIAL IN CONFIDENCE 23 Situation (S) Complications/constraints (C) Critical question (Q) Hypothesis/answer Primary assertions Secondary assertions

•  Describe the background of the problem that the audience is already familiar with

•  Define the major problems and constraints facing the analysis. What has changed?

•  Formulate the primary question(s) to be addressed by the project/ analysis

•  Answer the question to resolve the complications. Each hypothesis should be supported by a “logic tree”

•  Key assertions, which prove the hypothesis, should be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (“MECE”)

•  Each is supported by a second level of facts which verify the assertion •  Facts should verify the primary assertions and be explicit enough to

translate into an effective presentation

DEFINING THE PROBLEM

The first step involves setting up the Situation, Complication and Question

COMMERCIAL IN CONFIDENCE

The Strategic Toolkit – 17 key tools utilised by internal consulting teams

Business Definition Business Position

Competitors Cost Customers M&A

The 3 C’s Evaluating competitors to determine areas of opportunity 5.  Customer segmentation benchmarking 6.  Salesforce benchmarking 7.  Process benchmarking 8.  Cost benchmarking

Tools for cost reduction/ optimisation 9.  Internal best practice /

relative cost position 10. “Quick Hit” expense

reduction 11.  Restructuring

Tools for targeting customers and enhancing revenue 12. Customer segmentation 13. Customer targeting, cross-sell and retention 14. Salesforce effectiveness An introduction to acquiring a company 15. Strategic rationale for,

and risks of, M&A 16. M&A valuation

(including synergies) 17. Post merger

integration 1.  Cost and customer sharing analysis 2.  ROS/RMS

3.  Growth Share matrix 4.  Industry experience/cost curve

ORGANIC GROWTH INORGANIC GROWTH

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•  Provides a comprehensive deep dive to: •  Understanding your audience •  Building a compelling and

audience appropriate storyline •  Putting together data and word

slides

•  Effectively speaking and presenting

•  Provides an integrated exercise that covers storylines, slide production and actual physical presentation skills •  Provides a comprehensive set of

PowerPoint template slides as a takeaway for participants

Answer First Hypothesis

Development

½ day

Modules – Day 2, 15 November

Developing Compelling Presentations

½ day

• 

Deep dives into structured problem solving, including issue trees and using a hypothesis-driven approach

• 

An approach to ensure that all issues relevant to the problem are addressed (are Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive)

• 

A detailed discussion of the steps involved in developing an answer-first hypothesis, when to use this approach and common pitfalls

•  Provides a complex integrated exercise to ensure the theory can be applied •  Recommended for all levels so the entire

team can apply and manage to this approach

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Answer First

•  Formulating a hypothesis from experience, business intuition and the facts at hand, and then developing a series of analytic tests that will prove or disprove the hypothesis (deductive) •  Always more efficient, especially if issue has been

previously addressed

•  Workplan/logic tree lends itself directly to storyline and presentation

•  Hypothesis can be self-fulfilling, new blinding insights may be missed

•  Difficult to employ where no clear hypothesis or experience exists

Appropriate approach 90% of time

Benefits:

Risks:

Applicability:

Inference

•  Collecting facts and performing exhaustive

analysis, the result of which will allow you to infer

the answer to the problem (inductive) •  Effectively builds background data and context

where none previously existed •  Can lead to new insights - may identify broader,

more strategic issues

•  Can easily stray into irrelevant analysis - “yield loss”

•  Difficult to prioritise or selectively prune analysis without central hypothesis

Appropriate approach 10% of time

PROBLEM SOLVING APPROACH

An Answer First (Hypothesis Driven) problem solving approach has been applied by leading consulting organisations to solve many complex business problems

Definition:

EFFECTIVE SLIDE COMMUNICATION SUMMARY

•  Why are we having this meeting? (inform? force a decision? drive to action?) •  What do we want the client to know or do by the end of the meeting? •  What is definition of success for this meeting?

1. Understand the audience 2. Define your objectives 3. Build the storyline

•  Write the storyline with bullet points on a single page

•  Test for logic (horizontal and vertical) and comprehensibility (the “reasonable person”) •  Include key elements: objectives, agenda, situation, complicaton, question, executive

summary, key data slides, summary, next steps

4. Develop the slides

•  15-20 slides (+ backup) for a one-hour meeting •  Choose only the key supporting data slides •  Parallel construction for word slides •  Remove clutter from data slides to highlight key point •  Demographics (size, seniority, age, native language ) •  Prior knowledge of project?

•  Prior experience with Portland? •  Likely opinion/attitude •  Decide on answer first or answer last

Key Takeaways – Developing Compelling Presentations

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COST: $1800 PP (+ GST)

DAY ONE The Strategic Toolkit (9am – 5pm) Defining the Issue

DAY TWO Answer First Hypothesis Development (9am – 5pm) Developing Compelling Presentations Price is inclusive of:

•  all takeaway materials in a binder

•  a USB stick with key toolkit and PPT templates •  light lunch and refreshments on both days

FEATURED TRAINERS

Trainer Overview & Cost

ABOUT THE TRAINERS.

•  Our trainers have been trained and then trained others at the world’s leading firms.

•  We select trainers on a combination of capabilities including: proven delivery execution in the marketplace (they are in the trenches too); proven experience and expertise delivering engaging training; the highest intellectual and professional calibre.

•  The trainers can be unbundled for one on one coaching, small team training and training strategy planning.

Himanshu Dua

Based in Sydney, Himanshu has over 20 years experience at a Senior Executive level in both consulting firms (Bain & Company) and internal strategy teams where he worked for Westpac Banking Corporation as a Head of Group Strategy. Himanshu has extensive strategy and consulting experience in financial services, airlines, retail and mining. He has run internal consulting and strategy training courses for the past 10 years for clients including Westpac, Orica, The Portland Group and David Jones as well as other ASX top 100 companies.

Internal Consulting Group Training

HOW TO BOOK.

•  Send an email to

[email protected]

with the number of attendees you wish to confirm. Payment details will then be provided to secure the place.

•  Please note that places are limited, early booking is advised