Quarterly
The Firmsconsulting Quarterly is our response to the most pressing leadership questions faced by our executive clients. It is the leadership publication of Firmsconsulting. Its mission is to improve the practice of leadership for our executive clients, and their impact in a more diverse and rapidly changing world. All articles are based on the research we undertake to generate ideas in serving our executive clients worldwide.
Firmsconsulting remains committed to teaching management consulting techniques. Although staffed by ex-management consulting partners, we are not a management consulting firm. In working with executive clients, we do not conduct consulting engagements nor produce strategy reports with recommendations.
We help executives at major companies learn the tools, techniques and skills of a management consultant so that they may seamlessly deploy these capabilities in their careers. Our goal is to make sure they can respond as if they had actually worked in a major consulting firm, and have both the hard and soft skills to independently lead challenging corporate assignments .
In all cases, we typically work with our clients in a secure and private site away from the office, to train them through simulated/real exercises which mirror their real corporate assignments. We train executives under a strict code of confidentiality whereby our involvement may never be disclosed. We value discretion and only accept executive clients by referral.
In the process of working with our clients, we solve interesting, relevant and pressing leadership problems. Through the Quarterly, we share some of the most important ideas, and their implications, we teach our clients.
For example, in July 2012, the COO of a large Brazilian multi-national, and a longstanding client, asked us the following question:
“We think a slow down is coming in China and are not ready. How do we get the board to start thinking about the best way to handle this?”
From this prompt and the next discussions with the client, we constructed a series of interviews with leadership of 11 global state-enterprises with revenues >US$4B. Our first article, summarizes some of the key findings of the study and focus interviews.
As the example above illustrates, each article in the journal addresses the specific concerns of one client.
The Winter 2012 edition is undergoing maintenance as we change our website and is not accessible.
Winter 2012 Edition
As China’s slowdown indicates, state-owned enterprises searching for growth and productivity strategies are becoming the norm. This piece outlines the leadership strategies successfully used to turnaround bloated state assets.
Conventional wisdom says the Vietnamese economy is stalling. Firmsconsulting interviewed Vietnamese business and government leaders, and conducted a ground-up inventory analyses to test this hypothesis. We believe the changes are a natural extension of excess-money supply and, while painful, are a necessary step which will only make the economy healthier during this transition period.
Cover Story: Kevin Coyne, the former McKinsey & Company worldwide strategy co-leader, is one of the most influential strategists of the modern era. This author of 8 Harvard Business Review articles, 13 McKinsey Quarterly articles and 2 best-selling books has influenced businessmen across the globe over a multi-decade spanning career. Five former C-suite clients discuss the leadership lessons Kevin taught them and the impact it has had on their careers.
As BRICS companies power up to expand into the west, they square up against a shortage of outstanding managers. Succession planning of senior executives presents an immediate challenge for these companies usually lacking processes to find and nurture senior talent. We look at 4 banks – in South Africa, Brazil, Russia and Indonesia – trying to fix this problem.
There was a time when wearing Hermes ties, using Louis Vuitton luggage and Prada implied status. Does it still do so? Our corporate stylist profiles 3 bespoke tailors who not shun advertising, but will only accept clients on referral and hand-make every item for a coterie of fashionable business leaders.
Over the summer, Firmsconsulting mapped the on-boarding steps and challenges faced by a newly-minted 28-year-old CEO, and Wharton graduate, as he attempted to take control of a stumbling family business. Inspiring his adopted leadership team and altering the aura of his father’s legacy were the greatest challenges.
Senior executives who scale the heights of business do not hide their flaws. The most successful make it a central part of their leadership style and use it to surround themselves with knowledgeable executives who can balance their weaknesses.
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Firmsconsulting Quarterly is primarily based in Toronto, with staff in London, Buenos Aires, and New York City.
