Eikelenboom Organization & Advisory

Strong in strategic management

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I am a management consultant and interim, program or project manager, focused on your strategic management. In my definition this is: 'The general management by which (top) directors of complex organizations, based on a vision, a mission, a strategy align their organizational capabilities aligned with the environment and their staff '. All my services for you are included in this definition.

Can you summarize your strategy in 35 words or less? And if so, would your colleagues state it in the same way?

In my experience, very few (top) directors can answer these questions in the affirmative. And it is also noticeable that the companies where managers work who can, often happen to be the most successful in their industry. On the other hand, there are companies that do not have a clear formulation of their business strategy. These often fall into the category of those companies that failed to implement their strategy, or worse, that never actually had a business strategy. In these types of companies, questions arise such as: "I don't know whether I should seize this opportunity in the market or not, I am getting mixed signals from the top." Or: "Why are we participating in this tender again? We had already lost it last year and I thought we agreed we wouldn't put any more energy into it!" Or: "Shall I lower the price for this customer? I don't know if we're better off winning this lower-priced deal or if we should let go of that business."

“We notice from our research that there is a great need for a vision: where do we have to go?" (Kim Putters, director Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, 18-4-2020)

Managers of these types of companies wonder why their - what they thought was a beautifully polished - business strategy is never implemented. They fail to recognize the importance of having a simple, clear, and concise business strategy that anyone can master and serve as a 'beacon of light' in making difficult decisions. The Social and Cultural Planning Office (The Netherlands) predicts the main theme for after the Corona crisis: vision.

So, hire me for:

Support to help discover your mission (‘hedgehog principle’) (yes, ‘discover’, not design, see here my own example of this discovery here);
Help with writing down your business plan/strategy briefly and well (= your plan to achieve your goals);
Conducting an organization scan using Jim Collins' 7 empirically-founded drivers for performance;
Conducting your interim, program or project management (I have a lot of experience in managing different disciplines and professionals in various industries).

Please, don't hire me for:

Assignments on a tactical or operational level (my strength lies in seeing the big picture, affecting the entire organization);
For your process design or process optimization (that is not my thing, I am also not lean, scrum or agile certified, but focused on vision, mission and strategy implementation).

And yes, I have so much confidence in the positive influence of my efforts on your financial results (in my research I found a positive, statistically significant relationship between your (aligned) organizational capabilities and your final financial results), that I am willing to make my efforts financially dependent on your success (expressed in numerically-based improvements in the performance of your organization before and after the improvement proposals and/or the interim process).

Put your request for help here and let me know what you expect from me. I will respond as soon as possible and I would be happy to visit you for a free intake interview (no obligations).

My offer in a nutshell:

(1) Advice:

Helping to discover your mission and formulate your strategy;
Conducting an ‘organization scan’: a thorough diagnosis of your organizational cabalities.

(2) Organization:

Improve your organizational capabilites;
Help implement your strategy;
Interim, program and project management.

Look here how it works.

My target group in a nutshell:

My target group is the (top) management of companies and government organizations* that I help with strategic issues that affect their entire organization.

* The (adapted) toolbox is also applicable to government and non-profit organizations. Jim Collins wrote an appendix about this: ‘Good to Great and the Social Sectors’.

Look here for an overview of my

experience, classified by industry.

My toolbox in a nutshell:

As a toolbox* I use the empirically-proven, most important and most distinctive drivers of your (financial) business performance:

(1) Leadership;

(2) Recruitment & selection policy;

(3) Business climate;

(4) Strategy (‘the hedgehog principle’);

(5) Business discipline;

(6) The use of (information) technology;

(7) The ‘flywheel effect’.

These are based on the research of Jim Collins' bestseller ‘Good to Great’, which I taught for 15 years.

Look here for more information about

Eikelenboom Organization & Advice (E-OA).