Consulting as a Career

Often times when people think of careers, they consider fields and professions with stability, routine and regularity. The traditional sense of the word “job” conjures up visions of reliable and regular activities that fill your day, and that you learn to love. There’s a sense of comfort in knowing what every day will be like, and that repetition will lead to a strong sense of confidence.

Nowadays, consulting has risen to become a popular and growing field for young professionals starting their careers, as well as new MBAs pursuing fresh paths. Unlike the situation detailed above, consulting is not a traditional job. It varies on a regular basis, and you are posed problems that are unique, challenging and require critical thinking. You are pushed to apply new perspectives to age-old problems and generate novel solutions that reassess the status quo. The very attributes that make consulting difficult also make it attractive.

By developing skills through challenging assignments, consulting provides an accelerated path toward strong professional credentials, while gaining valuable insights into diverse industries as you perform multiple functions. However, this value proposition is not without its compromises. Traditional consulting also requires hefty travel and long hours. Often, a Monday through Thursday travel schedule is complemented with weekend work and periodic weekend trips in support of the engagement. This leaves little to no room for a personal life. As such, most individuals at the top of the traditional consulting pyramid struggle to juggle work and life.

Kenway was built on a different kind of consulting model: a form of the profession with all the strengths and few of the weaknesses. When Kenway was in its infancy and all consultants were local, we focused our work on the Chicagoland-area, allowing us to negate the travel component of consulting. An emphasis on services, respect for the individual, and balancing time to meet deadlines in the office as well as at home helped keep our workforce happy, productive and family-oriented. As Kenway expanded, a large and growing client base with varying engagements allowed us to ensure the career development trajectory that is a hallmark of consulting.

Kenway has evolved since our founding in 2004 and the pandemic has changed how we work. We now have clients across the country and colleagues on different continents. Through this, we have kept true to the strategy that has allowed us to retain a strong employee base. Our consultants are still not expected to travel. Work-from-home is an increasingly feasible option. Kenway employees are still given the same flexibility to manage their work in a way that aligns with their personal lives.

By practicing a different kind of consulting, we are able to balance work and life while also delivering excellent results. By taking care of the most important parts of a professional services firm (the people and the client), Kenway represents an attempt at disrupting the consulting industry by connecting the best of consulting with the best of more traditional jobs, combining challenging, valuable work with local locations and dependable schedules. The path has not been easy, but it has been quite rewarding for all those involved. As we continue our journey toward redefining such a promising field, it is critical that we keep an eye on all factors to make sure we all “walk the walk” the right way.

Learn more about Kevin’s thoughts on Kenway and why he’s choosing to stay.

 

Driving Towards Your Goals

Last month, I went to lunch with a friend who I hadn’t seen for a few years.  As most conversations go with people I haven’t seen for a long time, we started by covering pretty standard topics.  What’s new? How is the job?  How is the house?   Eventually, she smiled and said, “I guess not a lot has changed since we last talked!”  She went on to say that she had hoped to get a new job and to be in a new house, but the days seem to turn into months, the months into years while life remains status quo.  She certainly isn’t unhappy, but looking back there were some goals she would have liked to have achieved.

My guess is that most people reading this can relate to my friend and have been in her shoes once or twice.  In fact, research shows that only 3% of people actually set goals, and only 1% actually writes them down and reviews them.  Given these statistics, it’s not surprising that a lot of us find ourselves wondering why we haven’t met all, let alone, some of our goals.

As my friend and I continued to talk, I started telling her about a process we employ at Kenway Consulting to help our employees achieve their personal and professional goals.  The process is known as Roles, Goals and Tactics and can be completed in three steps.

I’ve used this process several times, but most recently I used it to set some goals to improve my golf game (role = golfer).

Now, my golf game was pretty non-existent, so my goal to become a better golfer shouldn’t have been that hard to achieve. However, it’s not surprising that simply telling my husband I’d like to become a better golfer wasn’t doing much to improve my game.  So, with our charity golf outing quickly approaching, and my sister taking every opportunity to remind me how bad I did last year, I decided it was time to get a little more serious about my golf game.

At a high level, my goal was to become a better golfer, but I found this difficult to measure.  Therefore, I came up with a goal that I could measure and accomplish in a reasonable time frame.

Now that I had my goal, I came up with four tactics to help me achieve it:

Going into the golf outing I couldn’t say with 100% confidence that I was going to meet my goal.  However, I did know with 100% confidence that had I not taken the time to lay out my plan using Roles, Goals and Tactics, I would have failed to achieve my goal for the third time.  Regardless of the role in my life or the goal I am setting out to achieve, taking the time to develop my Roles, Goals and Tactics yields the following benefits:

After golfing for the first time (part 1 of my fourth tactic), my hopes of meeting my goal were pretty slim.  However, I stuck with my tactics and by the time the golf outing rolled around on September 14th I was feeling pretty good about my chances.  In the end, my sister did edge me out (we used 13 of her balls and 10 of mine).  Technically speaking, I didn’t meet my goal, however, we used 10 more of my balls during the scramble than we did last year and I won the ladies closest to the pin competition!  Neither would have been possible without setting the goal and sticking to the tactics and I couldn’t be happier with my drive towards success.

 

More Than Just a Hashtag

As we all know, 2020 was a record-breaking year. The COVID-19 pandemic caused human and economic devastation across the globe. Australia and the U.S. West Coast saw some of the worst wildfires in their history, burning millions of acres and displacing thousands. And in May 2020, protests erupted worldwide in response to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many other Black Americans who have been killed at the hands of police.

As a result of May’s events, the Black Lives Matter movement swept the nation, becoming the largest social movement in U.S. history. It calls for police reform and an end to systemic racism that plagues our schools, government, health care systems, and workplaces, and has since resulted in many organizations discussing how to create real, long-lasting change to ensure a diverse and equitable workplace.

On December 8, 2020, Kenway hosted “More than Just a Hashtag: 2020 and What’s Next.” This virtual women’s event was headlined by two Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) professionals – Kara Wright, managing director of Envisioning Equity, and Deirdra Donahue, Leo Burnett’s vice president, director of equity & inclusion. The event discussed how, as both individuals and organizations, we can begin to change our practices for the better, and explored tactics we can employ to continue to create a brighter 2021 and beyond.

Throughout the event, attendees asked Kara and Deirdra questions about the current state of their DEI efforts, challenges they see in the workplace, and strategies to improve DEI in our own organizations in 2021. It was an informative and hope-filled event, filled with many actionable learnings. Following is a summary of five key questions and takeaways for those who weren’t able to attend:

1. “The title of our event is ‘More than Just a Hashtag.’ How are hashtags helpful for social movements?”

Hashtags like #BLM or #MeToo can be powerful tools to encourage social media users to connect to a cause, and can help them find specific themes or content related to the social movement that interests them. This kind of activism, sometimes called #activism, serves as a way to promote conversation and information sharing about a cause, and can have a big impact on cultural dialog about the topic. Although this can be a powerful tool, it is crucial to remember that there are people and lived experiences connected to these hashtags. Sharing a hashtag is not enough to promote social change without follow-up action. It should not serve as a veil for the real work that needs to get done.

2. “How can unconscious or implicit bias be identified in the workplace?”

Only 50 of the 11 million bits of information we consume per second actually reaches our conscious minds – the remaining information is processed without our awareness. Over time, this processing is committed to muscle memory and becomes our routine. When we interact with others, this can create a lot of tension as we develop preconceived ideas about certain groups of people. “When we fall back on automatic, deeply engrained beliefs, those things have the ability to influence our behavior and our choices, and all too often our behavior and our choices impact other people,” said Deirdre. Advertising and media, as well as a person’s upbringing, education and general life experiences all impact bias. In our workplaces, this bias shows up when you think about which people are getting certain jobs, who is getting learning and development opportunities, and who is being promoted. When there are not diverse voices at the table, it is extremely hard to check and solve for this bias.

3. “How can we start employing tactics in our organizations to overcome this bias?”

To overcome bias, it is important to first understand our own biases. Once we do, we can begin to look to a bigger picture perspective and build an inclusive environment. Training and education are extremely important. It is also important to do a gap analysis to understand where bias is showing up within the organization, and it’s critical to put in systemic safeguards. When assessing hiring practices, ensure that the minimum requirements include skills that can be learned on the job, that there are not educational barriers that would limit the population of eligible applicants, and that language used throughout the recruiting process is gender and racially inclusive. Investing in these DEI efforts is crucial for discussion and problem solving. If you hire everyone from the same bubble, it is very likely problems will be solved the same way over and over again. Diverse talent gives you people at the table with differing perspectives, which will lead to very different solutions in the end.

4. “What are the biggest DEI challenges you see today and what tactics are you using to overcome these challenges?”

During this time of COVID, the two biggest issues that rise to the top are race and gender. One in five working adults are unemployed, partially due to uncertain childcare arrangements which disproportionately impact women. Women are three times more likely than men to take on the housework, and three times more likely than men to stay home to handle childcare responsibilities. This creates a huge burden on how you show up to work. Many women are now working around the clock to keep up, and are exhausted. If this trend continues, approximately $180 billion in annual potential earnings will be lost for women alone. This disparity is even greater for women of color, Hispanic, and indigenous women. It is likely to set women back a generation, especially Black women. Another large DEI challenge today is the discomfort people are feeling watching what is going on around them. “If you can’t have these conversations about race, you’re not going to be able to create the kind of change that needs to happen,” said Kara.

5. “How do we ensure our organization is racially inclusive?”

This starts by being honest about how we got here as a country. People need to understand that this problem is systemic and has an impact at both an organizational and individual level. Many people don’t have the skills to talk about these issues, so it is important that we create brave spaces where people can learn how to have these conversations in productive and healthy ways. Leaders have to be crystal clear that these efforts are imperative, and need to be the champions of change. According to a study by BCG, companies with more diverse leadership teams have 19% higher revenue. Similarly, McKinsey found that racially diverse companies are 35% more likely to outperform their peers. Dedicating time and energy to DEI efforts is essential, and can improve business outcomes. Without board, investor and leadership involvement, these efforts are unlikely to be successful.

As part of Kenway’s 2021 DEI strategy, we plan to incorporate many of these above-mentioned tactics. Amy Ehrmantraut, Kenway’s director of human resources and culture, noted, “We have much to do in the world, our local communities, and at Kenway to address the social injustices that continue to occur. We are committed to increasing our dedication around education, training, recruitment and philanthropic efforts.  Being able to be a part of events like this, with such a diverse group, brings to light new ideas, resources and people from whom we can learn.”

To view a complete recording of the event, please fill out the form located here. For a refresher on diversity, equity and inclusion terms, please see the DEI Vocabulary sheet provided by Envisioning Equity.

 

 

 

 

Thriving Post COVID in Business and in Life

I’ve been rightfully accused by my wife and daughter of not always being able to separate work from home. As I’ve learned new concepts to help Kenway colleagues and / or our clients, many times I have also applied them to the other important organization in my life – our family. While I understand it can get old at times for my wife and daughter, I believe that we also benefit more often than not.

The latest example of this work / life overlap resulted from sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. When the reality of COVID hit in mid-March, Kenway, like most companies, immediately documented and implemented our Business Defense Plan. The plan had many components but, to simplify it and create a rallying cry of sorts, we started referring to our progression through the plan as Survive, Pivot and Thrive.

The Survive phase of the plan first dealt with our top priority, which was (and still is) to preserve the health of our employees and clients. We aligned to CDC health guidelines and started remote work immediately. We also had a robust communication plan to make sure our employees remained informed of the rapidly changing environment in which we were living and working. This section of the plan also involved modeling our risk exposure and planning liquidity preservation tactics. As the saying goes, we had to plan for the worst while also hoping for the best.

At home, the Survive components of our Defense Plan also first involved ensuring our health. We immediately ordered large amounts of soap, hand sanitizer, masks and gloves. We have a very active and athletic 10-year-old daughter, so the next part of survival involved preparing our small back yard for months of playing and practicing soccer and basketball at home. In her infinite wisdom, my wife immediately ordered a basketball hoop and soccer goals, which have provided many hours of enjoyment and relief from e-learning.

By the end of April, we hit a remote work stride both “at work” and at home. While we would have preferred to be “open” with both youth sports and Kenway business back to normal, at least we had learned a lot about the virus and its impact on our personal and professional matters, and new information was coming in at a much more manageable pace. It was time to Pivot and plan to Thrive.

At Kenway, the Thrive phase of our Business Defense Plan had three main pillars: increase staffing versatility through intensive training on tools and skills that we know will be in high demand as the economy continues to open safely; create new revenue streams through strategic implementation partnerships; and develop and market a software product. Historically, we had not invested heavily in these opportunities, but with significantly higher excess capacity than ever before, it was critical to view this time as an asset to improve future performance.

At home, Thriving meant to use our time normally spent commuting to and from work and sporting events to get healthier, but our daughter took it to a whole new level. She set stretch goals to be able to make proper off-hand layups, and to set a personal soccer juggling record. I’m happy to say that she is nailing her left-hand layups, nearing 2000 juggles (and then some) as you can see in this video.

The last four months have no doubt been tough on everybody, but everywhere I look I’m inspired by people and companies taking lemons and making lemonade. I could not be prouder of my daughter or my Kenway colleagues for applying themselves so vigorously to grow and improve while also figuring out how to productively work from home. As I type, I see signs of both sports and business coming back, and the individual improvements we’ve made will very soon help our teams and companies win again.

 

A Silver Lining

I want to start off by thanking Brian King for providing years of thought-provoking content in this section of our quarterly newsletter, the Kenway Compass. I have awfully large shoes to fill, but I look forward to the opportunity to engage with our readers via this forum.

I find it hard to believe that Kenway employees, like many in Illinois and around the country, have been living in self-quarantine for the last two weeks. During this time, we have learned quite a bit about this crisis we are facing, but, unfortunately, there has been very little good news to share.

We have learned that COVID-19 is a terrible virus that spreads more aggressively than anything we have seen in our lifetime. We have learned that nobody is safe from its health or economic implications, with millions losing their jobs due to no fault of their own. And on Sunday night, we learned that we will continue to practice shelter in place guidelines until at least April 30 to contain the spread of the virus.

Fortunately, I have also learned some positive things over the last two weeks. I’ve learned how lucky I am to have such a wonderful family. If there is a silver lining to this situation, it’s that I have gotten to spend more time with them, and I could not ask for two better people with whom to be trapped inside. We support each other and have found opportunities in our new routines to bond more than ever. While I do not think I took my family for granted previously, I can say that I now have a greater appreciation for them than I ever thought possible.

While being away from the Kenway office, I have realized a similar appreciation for my Kenway colleagues. Anybody who knows me will tell you that I’ve never been shy about sharing my love of what I do for a living. From our Why to our Guiding Principles, I’ve enjoyed every minute of my time at Kenway and never plan to work elsewhere.

What I’ve learned in the last two weeks is how much I miss the people. My coworkers are not only great consultants but, more importantly, great people. I miss hearing daily or weekly updates about their lives outside of work, and I miss the energy I gain from being together in our office. They say that laughter is for the soul what soap is to the body. Each Friday, we now host a virtual Kenway happy hour, to which I look forward with great excitement, because it’s the most I laugh all week. I can’t wait until we’re laughing together in person again.

I’ve also learned how much I love living in Chicago. Like many, I’m critical of some of the politics and cost of living, but absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder. I miss going to the great restaurants and visiting the parks in our neighborhood. I miss the excitement of baseball’s opening day, despite being neither a Cub nor Sox fan. I miss going to see live music with my friends.

On the rare occasions I do go outside now to quickly walk the dog or buy groceries, I have noticed that, ironically, people seem to be smiling more than normal. I’ve noticed that people, while respecting social distancing, are more polite and respectful of others in our community. As a result of this crisis, I think many of us have gained a greater appreciation for the people and things that have been temporarily taken away.

My family, Kenway and Chicago are resilient, and I have no doubt that we will continue to band together to get past the COVID-19 crisis. And when we do, I’m going to remember all that I’ve learned about myself, my colleagues, and my community during this time of isolation. Times of crisis shape our future, and I’m committed to taking these lessons learned to become a better husband and father, a better co-worker, and a better citizen.

 

 

Evolving the What. Always Grounded in the Why and How.

Over the past 13 years, I’ve run 15 marathons.

One thing I’ve learned from my experience is that a marathon isn’t really 26.2 miles long.  Rather, it is the culmination of a massive effort that led up to the big event – the final 26.2 miles that come at the end of 500+ miles of training.

Each time my training commences, I pull motivation from different places; however, the reason that I run, my Why, has remained the same.  Each marathon in which I’ve participated has been run in support of a charitable cause that is near and dear to me.  Likewise, as simple as it sounds, my How has remained unchanged. Left foot forward, right foot forward, and repeat with a healthy dose of mental stamina.

What has changed over those years is my What, and what I do to prepare to run all those miles.  My What has evolved as I’ve learned to listen to my body, know which pains are ones I can push through, and others about which I need to be concerned.  Every year, I’ve pushed myself harder and layered on all sorts of cross-training to round myself out. In Kenway speak, resting on my laurels was never an option if I wanted to complete these races; my means had to adapt in order to allow me the experience of finishing 15 races (outcomes) in these 13 years.

Today is a big day at Kenway Consulting.  We’ve changed our What.  In an effort to increase the clarity of the areas where we can provide the most value to our clients, we’ve renamed our Capabilities and Services with which we go to market.  

Similar to my marathon experiences, this is a big event that comes after months of planning and preparation.  And while this announcement has the appearance of a big change, many foundational elements remain steadfast.  Kenway’s Why and How – our competitive differentiators – remain tried and true.

Our Why, “To Help and Be Helped,” is the very reason Kenway exists.  We exist to help businesses that need help.  But more importantly, we want to provide it to businesses that want it.  At the same time, as individuals and as an organization, we must be brave enough to seek out and accept help from our peers when we need it. We need to be willing to enhance or tweak the means we are employing in efforts to achieve even greater outcomes.

Our How is how we deliver.  We staff our engagements optimally by bringing on the right skills, at the right time, in the right volume, for the right duration.  From a staffing and resourcing perspective, it takes a little more effort on our end to do so, but we believe it worthwhile because this is how we help maximize the value and minimize the cost for our clients.

This leads to the alteration of our What.  As a company that is acutely focused on the means over the outcomes, I would be remiss if I didn’t articulate how this most recent outcome was achieved.

First, the question that must be asked: Why change if Kenway has grown every year since its founding, through both positive and negative economic conditions?

One of our Guiding Principles is, “To never rest on our laurels, always looking to the future to identify necessary changes to maintain and improve Kenway's strategic advantages.”  At a leadership meeting last year, the rationalization of our Capability and Service offerings was identified as one of our most important strategic objectives.

While we’re officially changing the messaging of how we go to market and what we do, the reality is, we had already evolved to this point.  It just hadn’t been formalized.  We wanted to make sure that the market clearly understood what we do and, where necessary, align with what the market understands.  This should allow us to spend less time explaining what we do and more time on our Why and our How – our key differentiators.

As the rationalization of our Capabilities and Services began, we were again rooted in a few Guiding Principles.  First, “To debate options prior to decisions, implement the selected option without second-guessing, but make necessary changes as experience and knowledge increase.”

Changing the market-facing message of an organization does not happen without debate.  There was a significant debate.  There were multiple proposals and a few trips back to the proverbial drawing board.  But once the debate was settled, we all knew the direction we needed to head, and we were all on board.  However, as we worked through the debate, we were also grounded in a few other Guiding Principles.

The first, a Guiding Principle with a client focus: “To provide premium-level consulting services at below-market pricing.”  To align with this principle, we needed to focus on the value we could deliver to our clients.  We needed to make sure that the services on which we were focusing could be delivered so that our clients realized maximum value while addressing some of their most pressing and complex problems.

What we found was that we were most effective at addressing those problems and maximizing value when we owned a greater amount of project scope, and maintained clear lines of delineation between where our responsibility ended, and somebody else’s began.  Our updated Capabilities and Services align most closely with engagements on which we owned a greater amount and clarity of scope and, therefore, had greater control over successful delivery.

None of that would be possible without high caliber and talented employees to deliver those services.  Therefore, we also needed to align to a Guiding Principle with an employee focus: “To encourage professional growth through challenging work opportunities, training and mentoring, and to provide employees the freedom to maximize their own potential by enhancing the aforementioned opportunities.”

In other words, if we weren’t pursuing opportunities to help our clients that our employees felt were challenging, we wouldn’t have the high caliber resources to help our clients.

One capability is Technology Solution Delivery.  At the highest level, this is how we help our clients run their business.  We do this by helping them to enable their people and processes through technology.  This starts by establishing an IT strategy that aligns with a client’s business strategy – through solution architecture to custom-built or enterprise packaged application solutions.

Another capability, Information Insight (or what we refer to internally as "all things data"), is the capability that helps our clients better understand their business. We do this by helping them draw insight from data they may have, or by helping them identify and define a flow for the data they may be unaware exists.  We may also help to instantiate data governance frameworks or build business intelligence and advanced analytics platforms on their behalf.  We turn data into information, and information into insight.

So, if Technology Solution Delivery helps our clients run their business, and our Information Insight capability helps them understand their business, then our Enterprise Program Leadership capability is the glue that holds it all together.  It is this Kenway skillset that ensures our clients’ people, processes, and technology are aligned for successful transformational change in the business.

Delivery Excellence is the table-stakes of any engagement.  On all our engagements, we ensure that the right amount of Project Management, Business & Technical Analysis, and Quality Assurance is applied to deliver successfully, and then complete a full handoff to the client through our Transition Planning.

On our journey of planning and preparation for our new What, this feeling is a familiar one.  We’re now toeing the start line, ready for the final 26.2 miles.  We’re well rested, refreshed, and ready for the starting gun to fire.  We are happy and excited about the means we executed to get here.  But there is one final Guiding Principle I should highlight: “To generate revenue by being good, being truthful and spreading the word through personalized, intentional and consistent networking.”  In other words, you can expect to hear more from us soon!

In the meantime, we’ve updated our website to reflect these evolved Capabilities and Services, and refreshed the pages with a new look.  We encourage you to visit www.kenwayconsulting.com to learn more, and reach out to us with feedback at [email protected].

 

Asian Carp and the Kenway Why

You know the algae and plankton-eating Asian carp problem threatening our waterways? Well, two people from Chicago came up with a sustainable solution to this ecological issue: they make dog treats out of this fish.  By doing so, they provide a healthy treat for dogs, employ fishermen to catch hundreds of thousands of pounds of the Asian carp every month and reduce the Asian carp population.  As their business grows, they provide more and more help to the fishing industry and our local environment. Cool, huh?

I recently got a beautiful necklace from a company called Noonday Collection.  Noonday is a jewelry company that works with over 2000 artisans in over 10 countries, providing them dignified jobs making quality jewelry at a living wage. Noonday also provides these artisans no interest loans, scholarship programs and emergency assistance. Noonday creates great products and makes money doing so, and in the process, they help people and the communities in which those people live.

What do these companies have in common with Kenway?  While we don’t make dog treats or jewelry, we do share a common goal of “To Help and be Helped.”

Back in 2014, Brian King reflected on why he started Kenway and why our clients and employees choose to work with and for Kenway.  The answer was simple: each and every one of us at Kenway has a passion to help our clients through their biggest challenges and to improve their businesses.  Simply stated, Kenway exists to help.

A few recent examples might spell out specifically what I mean:

Kenway Consulting is helping people and companies, every day, every week and every month.  It’s in our DNA, and it’s what we do best.  It’s our why, the reason we come to work each day and behind everything we do.  The question I have for you is, “How can we help you?” Let us know at [email protected].

 

The Outcome Is Not the Whole Story

I am just about to hit the six month mark in my career with Kenway Consulting. One aspect of the company that attracted me was its focus on the means rather than just the results. For ethical, philosophical, and practical reasons, I am a big believer in this approach. While it’s clear that companies, organizations, people, etc. need to have good results, I believe that how those results are achieved are more important than just the outcomes.

I had never seen an organization operate in this manner. Throughout my career, when a revenue goal was at risk at the end of a quarter or at the end of a year, the mantra became, “Do whatever it takes to make the number.” Inevitably, the sales manager dropped prices in order to entice friendly customers to agree to deals to buy and hold more product than their demand warranted. The short-term results appeared to be a success. The revenue number was met, and the sales manager and organization head collected his or her bonus, but the long-term effects were devastating. The discounted price and its razor thin margins became the standard price. The excess inventory held by the customer led to little to no sales at the start of the next period, setting up the same situation at that period’s end. Finally, the customer would eventually lower the price at which it offered the product to end consumers in order to relieve themselves of the excess inventory. This ultimately damaged the brand of the producing company. This is just one of many examples of a real-world situation where a focus strictly on the end result (meeting periodic sales goals) and ignoring how you get there (cutting prices to suboptimal levels) leads to long-term bad results (lower prices moving forward and a damaged brand reputation).

Decisions

A driver of this way of thinking is how decisions are valued. A decision should not be judged by its outcome, but by the choice that was made based upon information available at the time it is made. While good decisions should lead to good outcomes and bad decisions should lead to bad outcomes, this is not always the case. The reasons for these unpredicted outcomes are:

Examples of these outliers are:

To put a little more rigor behind this, if you’re faced with an opportunity where the potential risk is equal to its potential reward, and your chances of success (i.e. achieving the potential reward) are 90%, you would be a fool not to pursue the opportunity. However, one out of ten times that opportunity is not going to pan out. An unreasonable response to the opportunity’s failure would be to look solely at the outcome and deem the decision a bad one.

The opposite case is true as well. If an opportunity’s potential risk is equal to its potential reward, but your chances of success are only 10%, it would be foolish to pursue this opportunity. That is because your expected value is negative, you’re expected to have a negative Return on Investment (ROI). If someone were to do this and be fortunate enough to be the one out of ten that succeeds, that success should not be celebrated as the actions of a bold risk taker or a crafty gambler. The person made a foolish decision and got lucky.

While we rarely face decisions with clearly defined probabilities as detailed above, the principle is what is important. Whether it is a manager evaluating an employee, or a person reflecting on the decisions that were made, it is important to not second guess the decision or the rationale behind it if the outcome turns out bad, provided all the prior information signaled to move forward. It is equally important to not ignore the previous warning signs when an outcome is good.

I am sure you have heard the phrase, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” This is usually said when an outcome is the result of good fortune rather than sound methodology. At Kenway Consulting, our approach in both strategic initiatives as well as client engagement is driven by planning, sound processes, and rational objective decision making rather than relying on luck. I guess you could say we would rather be good than lucky.

 

Journey of a Lifetime

I have been a part of Kenway Consulting for eight and a half years of our ten-year journey. With my joining, we went from a company of one to a company of two. I can clearly remember my Dad saying, “You are going to do what?” when I told him that I was moving from my current consulting company of over 100,000 employees to join Kenway. I knew there was some risk, but something told me that Kenway would be special, and I would regret NOT taking the journey. I recently read that the success rate of a small company surviving for ten years is 35%. As I read on, I found several top ten reason lists for why small companies do not survive. I could not help but think of the top ten reasons why Kenway is part of the 35% that have succeeded.

Guiding Principles

In 2008, Kenway Consulting documented its set of Guiding Principles. These guiding principles serve as our foundation for decision making in complex situations. They are not simply words that are written on paper, but we live them and ensure that they are reviewed, discussed, and used each day on our internal and client projects. With the adherence to these principles, we ensure that we are doing what is right, rather than simply what our clients want at the moment. It means we treat all who we encounter (employees, clients, prospects, partners, and recruits) uniquely, that we ethically focus on the means to success, and embrace whatever the outcome.

Limited Overhead

One of the key reasons cited for small business failure is too much investment in fixed assets. Kenway elected early on to be a virtual company with no formal office space. This allowed for minimal fixed operating expenses, which allowed us to keep our rates much lower than our larger competitors. Each year we asked ourselves, “Is this the year we enter into leased office space? Are we losing credibility with our clients or potential employees by not having a physical office?” We quickly realized the right answer was no, and continue to pass the value along to our clients.

Great Location / Market

It did not hurt that Kenway Consulting was founded in Chicago as opposed to somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Chicago’s opportunities are endless and have allowed us to provide our services across a large spectrum of industries.

Uniqueness of Model

In the beginning, Kenway primarily provided resources in increments of one. As we started to grow, we felt we could do more for our clients and transformed our business into a consulting services model. Today, we provide clients with the right skills (i.e. the who) at the right time (i.e. the when) in the right volume (i.e. the how much) for the right duration (i.e. the how long), resulting in the best possible solution for the lowest cost.

Tortoise and the Hare

Another key failure of many small companies is overly rapid growth. Our CEO often talks of the fable The Tortoise and the Hare in reference to our growth. While we have grown in terms of employees and revenue every year, that growth has been slow and steady. We only say, “Yes,” to work in which we know we can succeed, and we only hire employees that we feel will be successful in our culture and model. Kenway could have grown more rapidly, but had we elected to do so, we likely would not be part of that 35% that survived.

Clients

It goes without saying that we would not be where we are without our clients. Kenway has been lucky enough to work with great companies: small, medium, and large. Old and new, we are proud of the relationships we have built and the guidance we have been able to provide.

People

It also goes without saying that a company’s greatest asset is its employees. In our case, this is no exception. As we started growing, we hired people we already knew, people with whom we worked and wanted to again, and who were extremely good at what they did. Of course, hiring people we knew only worked for so long. As we moved onto interviewing people that we did not know, we were extremely conservative in who we hired to ensure the integrity of our brand and quality of our services stayed consistent.

Employee Contribution to Internal Work

Above and beyond their client work, each employee at Kenway Consulting contributes time to the internal work it takes to run Kenway. This includes Business Development, Marketing, Training, Human Resources, Finance, Relationship Management, and much more. This methodology started simply because as a company of 2, 3, 4, and 5 employees, we had no other choice. It has continued because of the tremendous value our employees’ ideas bring to Kenway’s strategic vision, and the invaluable experience it provides our employees in what it takes to run a business.

Continual Self-Assessment

One of Kenway’s guiding principles is to never rest on our laurels. We are constantly looking at what we should start, stop, and continue doing as a company. Each year, we get together as a company for two all day meetings, and each month we break into smaller groups for two hours to brainstorm on new ideas that will improve us as an organization. The focus of these sessions is widespread covering our employees, clients, and new growth.

Focus on the Means

A common phrase is “The End Justifies the Means.” We believe the opposite, “The Means Justify the End.” We believe that focusing solely on the outcome of a situation can often incentivize people to do things in a less than optimal way, or for the wrong reason. As long as we are proud of the means we took, then we believe the ultimate outcome is the right one.

Going back to my decision eight and a half years ago to join Kenway, I now realize that I was already focusing on the means even back then. Whether I succeeded or failed, I knew my part in this new company would teach me more than I could ever have learned by staying in my situation at the time. That idea could not have proven to be truer. Not only did I strengthen my consulting skills and broaden my client, industry, and technical experiences, but I also learned how to build a business. I was able to help build our brand and learn the ins and outs of internal operations such as HR, Marketing, and Finance. Most importantly, I was, and still am, able to help set the strategy and vision of this company.

 

Blood Pressure and Process Efficiency

I got to my doctor’s office 5 minutes early, so I expected to wait 5 minutes before seeing him. Time kept passing, and every 10 minutes I started asking the receptionist, “How much longer do I have to wait?” Each time her response was, “I don’t know.” With each passing minute, I felt my blood pressure rising and thought, “I should not come to the doctor to feel worse!” After 35 minutes, I was finally called out of the waiting room and into a room with the nurse. I asked her the same question, and her response was, “Well, he has one more patient before you.” By the time my doctor came to see me, he was 45 minutes late and my blood pressure was through the roof!

Since tardiness is the norm for my doctor, I would love to do a gap analysis in order to understand their current scheduling process and to define a new and improved process for his office. Cleary, there is a substantial gap between their current state (i.e. angry customers waiting close to an hour past the start time of their appointment) and their planned ideal state (i.e. on-time adherence to scheduling). In business process circles, gap analysis is just that, the exercise of comparing actual performance against potential or desired performance. Having done gap analyses for clients in the past, I knew I could use the same methodology.

A gap analysis is useful at the beginning of projects driving change, because it helps you identify the gap between your current situation and the future state that you want to reach, along with the tasks that you need to complete to bridge the gap. Below I will take you through 4 high level steps for completing a gap analysis and delivering a recommendation to address those gaps.

Step 1: Identify Future State Objectives

First, identify the objectives that you need to achieve in order for a project or program to be deemed successful. These objectives provide you with your future state, or where you want your organization to be once your project has been completed.

While you might already have a possible solution in mind, it is important to force yourself to first focus on individual objectives in order to get maximum value from a gap analysis. Much of the benefit is achieved by unearthing improvement opportunities that are missed by taking a less methodical approach. So before the final solution is chosen, you need to identify what needs to be done to meet the over-arching objectives.

Using my doctor’s office as an example, the objectives would look something like:

Step 2: Current State Analysis

Every gap analysis starts with introspection. For each of your objectives, analyze your current situation. To accomplish this, consider the following questions:

In regards to my doctor’s office, the people with the knowledge about current processes would be the doctors, the nurses, and the receptionists. Since I don’t know their standard office processes, I would interview each group and gather any documented artifacts. After the interviews, I would review my notes and the artifacts and create current state documentation and process flows. To the extent technology is used to navigate the business process(es) being evaluated, information flows are also beneficial to capture. If needed, I would conduct subsequent meetings to clarify my understanding or ask questions before the documentation is completed, at which time it is imperative to gain consensus from stakeholders that the current state documentation and opportunities for improvement towards business objectives are complete and accurate.

Step 3: Identify How You’ll Bridge the Gap between Your Current State and Your Future State

Once you have captured your current state and defined your future state, you can think about what you need to do to bridge the gap to reach your project's objectives.

You need to compare the objectives against the current state, and document a comprehensive plan that outlines ALL possible solutions that will fill the gap between its current and future states and reach its target objectives. By defining all possible solutions inclusive of automation, process changes, adding human resources, etc., you provide stakeholders with a menu approach to meeting their business objectives that fits their unique culture and most importantly their key drivers, i.e. budget, date and quality.

Using my doctor’s office as an example, I would start by populating a gap analysis spreadsheet template that I have used at past clients. This allows me to identify gaps and possible solutions at each step in the process.

Step 4: Provide Recommendations to Stakeholders

After the gap analysis is completed, schedule a review meeting with stakeholders. Details to discuss during the stakeholders meeting are as follows:

Recommending a phased approach allows for gained value ASAP. This minimizes organizational change all at once to ensure that the recommendations will be institutionalized.

In this example, the doctor is the key stakeholder. I’ll explain to him how the office business objectives were defined, and I’ll explain the approach taken to identify the office gaps that support the recommended solution for the office. Once I present him with the facts, I’ll ask for sign-off to move forward with gathering detailed business requirements to implement the recommendations. Once implemented, I hope to be able to go to my doctor’s office without suffering through elevated blood pressure!