Problems that our clients ask us to help solve . . .

Spurring Growth | Scaling for Growth | Driving Innovation | Becoming More Customer Centric | 
Cost and Complexity | Making the Matrix Effective

Spurring Growth

“We’re over-weighted in our mature markets. The emerging market people don’t have the resources. How do we shift focus to the markets where the growth is?”

“We are optimized at the local level only. Our global brand and category leaders need more influence to drive fewer, bigger ideas across the regions. What is the right mix?”

“Our legacy divisions continue to get most of the capital. Can we create an internal venture capital approach to investing in new business opportunities?”

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Scaling for Growth

“We’ve got a strategy and the good news is that it is working. How do we prepare our organization to double in size?”

“We’ve done several acquisitions that look really good, but it isn’t clear where to place some of these new businesses. We need a framework to determine which ones we integrate into existing divisions and which to keep separated.”

“Are we too large to continue with our functional structure? Should we be considering adding in product or category dimensions? When does a matrix make sense?”

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Driving Innovation

“We’ve got lots of ideas but we can’t get them to market. How do we organize to speed new product development?”

“We need our marketers to partner with our R&D better. We need to connect new product development end-to-end.”

“We’re doing more R&D overseas for developing markets. How do we make sure we keep them linked to our global R&D group?”

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Becoming More Customer Centric

“Our product divisions make us very internally focused. We continue to push expensive widgets into the same crowded space, while other markets go un-served. How do we change the lens?”

“We have divisions competing for the same customers. How do we re-think our go-to-market structure?”

“Our customers are asking for solutions, but we’re still pushing products. The sales decision has moved to the c-suite and we are not organized to manage those kinds of accounts.”

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Cost and Complexity

“We have marketing people spread out upstream and downstream, in the business units and in the sales force. How do we get more alignment?”

“We need our support functions, such as HR and finance, to help us make better, faster decisions, not create obstacles. How do we get out of the centralized/decentralized debate? What are some new ways to think about corporate center design?”

“We have too many layers of management with managers working at too low a level. How do we push down decision-making and lift up strategic thinking?”

“Europe has become a tangle. There is so much duplication and overlap in infrastructure.”

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Making the Matrix Effective

“Our global business units have become the dominant force in our organization and it’s clear we need more robust country and regional-level market leaders. We’ve reduced those people to sales managers. It’s completely out of balance.”

“We need to add the customer axis to our matrix for global trade partners, but is that too much complexity given our current global product and geographic matrix?”

“Our managers don’t have the skills to manage successfully in a complex organization. They need to know how to create clear roles, decision rights, and work across all kinds of organizational boundaries. How do we set them up for success?”

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