To mobilise an empowered organisation

“The best (non-executives) are the ones who have sense enough to pick good people to do what they want done and self restraint to keep from meddling with them whilst they do it” 

Theodore Roosevelt

Our Governance service will assist in moving your organisation’s Governance approach away from the unsatisfactory “challenge” model of the last century to a modern 21st century “empowering” model. The old fashioned “challenge” Governance model is functionally focused with an emphasis on “managing the managers”. This can be a valueless, additional tier of management that bears little or no benefit other than meeting the oversight obligation of “box ticking”.

The modern 21st century model we provide will cover Board EQ capacities as well as IQ competencies, leadership abilities and an individual’s strengths. Governance process is superseded by Governance outputs and outcomes in our service. This will benefit your organisation by mobilising your Board to create inspired, ethically centred corporate personnel driven to achieve a world class vision that will provide assurance for stakeholders.

Applicable for all sizes and types of organisations our service is particularly suitable for Boards in a Group. The cultures of such Boards within a Group can be diverse. Our Governance service aims to create a resonance in attitude and approach by all Boards resident in the Group.

For an exploratory discussion or initial Governance upgrade review that will set out the strengths and, critically, areas for progress in your Governance discipline contact :

Ron Mendes

Mobile: 07970 784482

Change Management Consulting Service

Addressing causes not symptoms

“The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings by changing the inner attitudes of their minds can change the outer aspects of their lives” 

William James

Does your organisation wish to have incremental, transitional or transformational change?

Different techniques apply to each type.

What type of Change Management should be used?

Vision based change management is appealing but often difficult to sustain when confronted with daily operational reality.

Hard, reactive, process based change management is least likely to succeed.

Softer, proactive, people based change management is more successful in the long term.

Resistance to change is normal and in fact indicative of success in earlier times. We provide a means for your Board and Management to understand this and to identify the various types of resisting individuals. Importantly we provide the use of a “burning platform” technique to change resistance into co-operation.

Our cultural Change Management service uses diagnostic tools that have been internationally developed over the last half century and proven for effectiveness. Uniquely the same tools and approach are used to effect change in the individual, the team and the organisation, the only methodology that does so.

The techniques also ensure that an “unfreeze”, change and “refreeze” approach is adopted that aims for sustainability of the change you achieve.

Change management is critical to harmonise cultures in newly forming Groups or even established Groups to create organisational resonance. Our diagnostic tools are in the forefront of developments in this regard.

For an exploratory discussion contact :

Ron Mendes

Mobile: 07970 784482

Leadership Consulting Services

To help create an inspired, quality driven and customer focused organisation

“Pull the string and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it and it will go nowhere at all”

Dwight Eisenhower

Leadership and management are entirely separate disciplines, a distinction that is sometimes missed. Leadership is also the right of everyone and not just the preserve of the few. Most organisations blessed with long term success are also blessed with leaders throughout their ranks  besides their formal leader.

Our leadership service and interventions initially aim to identify the instinctive leaders from the instinctive managers. It will then aim to further develop the former and transform the latter into leaders. Various types of leadership approaches will be covered from servant leadership and the 4 “Es” of directive leadership, through moral leadership and inspirational leadership to the

multiplicity of situational leadership.

Other techniques will also be covered such as the third type of powerful questioning used by leaders (beyond open and closed questioning) to unblock negative thinking and create high performance. Influencing with integrity, recognising and addressing corporate politics and the use of “decision maps” are some of the other topics covered in the programme.

The Leadership service also uses internationally recognised diagnostic tools that are computer based to assess leadership abilities. The methodology has been developed and enhanced over the  last half century, including “bench testing” under battlefield conditions in the Middle East in more recent times. It is considered by some to be more effective as a diagnostic tool than others available such as Myers Briggs and Belbin.

Suitable for stand alone organisations of any size, this Leadership programme is particularly beneficial for Groups as it promotes a Leadership ideal profile, thereby standardising a Leadership approach across the Group.

For an exploratory discussion contact :

Ron Mendes

Chief Adviser 

Email: ron@justvalueconsulting.com

Mobile: 07970 784482

Strategic and Business Planning Consulting Service

To help transform vision into reality

“They who have a why to live for can bear almost any how (to live)”

Nietzsche

Most Strategic and Business Plans are not shared on a wider basis than the Board and Management levels of an organisation. Volume of information and difficulty of simplifying are some of the usual reasons given for not sharing on a wider basis. Our Strategic and Business Planning service overcomes such obstacles.

Clients are provided with the benefit of a “one page business plan” that highlights an organisation’s “now” position, “where” it wants to get to and, critically, “how” the business aims to get to its planned destination. The “how” element is often missing from plans.

The one page business plan is the most effective vehicle for carrying to every part of the organisation the corporate vision, mission, goals and plans and, critically, how to achieve them. This should result in motivated and inspired work forces, who will know the direction and destination of the organisation and how to get there. If the work force do not have such knowledge how can they deliver?

The one page business plan is of particular benefit in bringing standardisation and consistency in the Group planning process and is therefore especially useful for Groups.

For an initial discussion or Strategic and Business Planning upgrade review of your organisation that will set out the strengths and, critically, areas for progress in your Strategic and Business Planning discipline, contact :

Ron Mendes

Mobile: 07970 784482

To exploit the upside not just minimise the downside

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” 

Bob Dylan

Risk Management is more a state of mind than a process. Yet techniques that originated in the last century are still in use. Largely paper based and static in nature they may not protect the organisation nor enable it to succeed in the complex, fast moving and high risk environments of the 21st century. There are a number of examples demonstrating this ineffectiveness such as Ujima Housing Association in the not-for-profit sector and Northern Rock in the private sector.

Our Risk Management service will transport your organisation’s Risk Management to the frontiers of current best practice. More proactive and real-time in nature these techniques are people based (the only effective approach) and centred on a common language of risk to accompany the common corporate mindset of risk. It also covers state of the art elements such as differentiating between positive and negative risks (the new British Standard on Risk Management considered this aspect but was unable to make it practical – we can).

Using our methodologies such as the “Broken Triangle”, Hornet and Hawk Techniques, your corporate personnel will feel empowered to walk towards risk in a controlled manner so that the organisation can achieve its mission and goals. The service will also introduce your organisation to “Force Field Management” that is a progression from Risk Management, making the latter almost outdated.

Applicable for all sizes and types of organisations, our service is particularly suitable for Groups. It creates an integrated Risk management culture and approach across the Group based on the common language of risk where, previously, fragmentation in attitude and approach may have existed.

For an initial discussion or Risk Management upgrade review that will set out the strengths and, critically, areas for progress in your Risk Management discipline contact :

Ron Mendes

Mobile: 07970 784482

Customer Service Surveys

Comparing internal attitudes to external perceptions

“Listen or your tongue will keep you deaf”

American Indian Proverb

Some customer surveys generally are half completed exercises that focus on customer satisfaction only. The other half that is uncompleted is establishing the attitude of customer facing staff. Some other services focus on the attitudes and behaviour of customer facing staff but omit the customer satisfaction survey element and are therefore also half complete. Comparing and matching the two sets of feedback is what gives the real platform for developing customer service excellence.

Our Customer Service surveys are holistic and comprehensive. They cover the in house customer facing staff attitudes under twelve sub-categories. There are four of these in each of the three generic categories set out below :

•           Constructive category

•           Passive / Defensive category

•           Aggressive category

The surveys then establish the customer effects in three areas :

•           Customer satisfaction

•           Customer loyalty

•           Customer advocacy

The combination provides valuable insights into customers’ experience and a genuine platform for assessment and action planning to produce tangible improvements in the way customers are treated.

The service can also be used for internal customers too e.g. the Board and Management’s experience of an HR department or other departments.

For an exploratory discussion contact :

Ron Mendes

Chief Adviser 

Email: ron@justvalueconsulting.com

Mobile: 07970 784482

Creating a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts

“If you want to build a ship don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work. Rather teach them to long for the immensity of the open sea.” 

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The focus of the Team Development service is   to exploit individual team member strengths and collectively compensate for individual weaknesses. A combination of value based team working with (rather than exclusively) a goal focused approach tends to promote higher performance, better results and longer term team harmony and stability.

Content of the Team Development service covers a range of areas. For junior level teams it commences with the identification of individual attitudes and behaviours, sender-receiver message perceptions, body language and the stages a collection of individuals go through before becoming a higher performing team.

For senior level, experienced teams the service by passes the preceding content to immediately use internationally recognised diagnostic tools that have been developed and enhanced over the last half century including “bench testing” literally under battlefield conditions in the Middle East in more recent times. Whilst some of the diagnostic tools are computer based others apply game type face to face simulation exercises to draw out the level of team and individual performance. Unlike a number of other team development methodologies this service sets out a clear ideal for the team to work towards so that progress can be plotted towards its achievement.

Critically, for the foregoing reason of an ideal team working construct, this service is particularly suitable for Groups in creating a standard team working culture across the Group.

For an exploratory discussion contact :

Ron Mendes

Mobile: 07970 784482

Coaching and Mentoring Consulting Service

“The world is full of solutions looking for problems”. 

Paul Evans, INSEAD

It is estimated that coaching and mentoring are the third most frequently used solutions to learning in UK organisations behind on the job training and traditional training courses. Whilst coaching and mentoring are different in nature both are about enhancing and developing the performance of the individual and their personal development and growth.

The context for use of this service may be as a sounding board for Boards and senior Management, or, for other corporate personnel in managing change, mergers, restructuring, promotions, adverse appraisals, and leaving the organisation.

Critically, the service can be used for establishing a coaching culture and coaching management style in an organisation. Such a service is radically different from the one-to-one coaching of individuals. The duration of such a service is relatively more comprehensive and long term than individual coaching.

Where one-to-one coaching or mentoring is concerned this is “offline help by one person to another in making significant transitions in knowledge, work, thinking or actions” (Higginson & Clutterbuck) therefore matching a coach/mentor and coachee/mentee is important in terms of their relative experience and personalities.

For an exploratory discussion contact :

Ron Mendes

Chief Adviser 

Email: ron@justvalueconsulting.com

Mobile: 07970 784482

Other Consulting Services

A further range of other consulting services are provided. These are briefly described below.

1. Awayday Facilitation

Board and senior management time is scarce and valuable. Therefore the facilitator’s service is not just a presence on the day or weekend but also to ensure that the event is properly planned, organised, managed, monitored and controlled with post event action also part of the facilitation service. You will receive a comprehensive and value added facilitation service.

2. Mergers and Group Restructuring

A full scope merger service is provided from option appraisal, partner identification and negotiations through to settling in the new family member or absorption into the main merger partner. Crucial to the merger process is that post merger integration planning is carried out well before a merger proceeds, to ensure benefit and added value is derived from the merger. Similar comprehensive services are provided for Group restructuring initiatives to extract maximum commercial value for the restructure.

3. Internal Audit and Fit for Purpose Reviews

Besides internal audit a full range Business Assurance services are provided, e.g. corporate culture reviews, partnership and alliances reviews, leadership reviews, and Treasury Management reviews. Additionally, the efficacy of an in-house internal audit service can be assessed to determine optimum future options, e.g. retention, outsourcing or a combination thereof.

4. Motivational Talks

Motivational talks for a variety of occasions are provided on a tailor made basis.

Ron Mendes

Chief Adviser 

Email: ron@justvalueconsulting.com

Mobile: 07970 784482