Corp life overview uk

Corporate LifeCycles UK

Ltd

Collaborative Enterprise Transformation

What We Do • Our business is helping owners and senior executives drive growth, improve profitability, and

tackle other tough management problems.

• We are aggressive hands-on agents of change who roll-up our sleeves and work side-by-side with our clients to help them figure out what to do and then do it.

• We extend the reach of senior executives and function as an adjunct member of their management team. The roles we fulfill include consultant, facilitator, mentor, sounding board, and coach. To each we bring the pragmatic perspective of former chief executives with a bias towards strategic thinking, straight talk, practical solutions and rapid execution.

• Over the past 30+ years we have been able to make a big impact on a handful of private and public sector organizations

• Our benchmark of success is a 10X return on our client’s investment in us. We have generated millions of dollars in new revenue, expense reductions, and higher profitability.

• We work in an enterprise-wide environment of collaboration and teamwork that involves the active engagement, not replacement, of incumbent personnel. By working in this manner, our clients are able to rapidly make the transformations their organizations need without the destructive conflict that causes many change efforts to flounder.

• Our core competence focuses in five areas. Since our industry-specific expertise can never match the cumulative knowledge already resident in our clients, we work in a way that harnesses that know-how.

1. Strategy Formulation 2. Organization Alignment 3. Adolescent Organization Transformation 4. Aging Organization Rejuvenation 5. Business Process Improvement

2 Corporate LifeCycles Overview www.corporatelifecycles.co.uk

“Corporate LifeCycles has the best methodology for organizational alignment and change management that I know.”

Richard Harrington, CEO The Thomson Corporation

United States

Services

• Pathway to PRIME®(PTP) is a simple, practical, and powerful methodology that helps management teams work together to systematically transform their enterprises. The essence of PTP is simple; get the right people working on the right issues, with the right resources, at the right time. The methodology provides a high-level strategic approach to enterprise transformation that discriminates between symptoms and their underlying root causes, and resolves both in the right sequence with the right level of effort. By helping organizations discover their own solutions, PTP builds strong ownership, accountability and commitment to execution.

• PRIME Knowledge® is a comprehensive program to transfer the core knowledge of our concepts, tools, methods and best practices to client executives, employees and internal change agents.

• PRIME RoundTables® are powerful communities of smart, no-nonsense, knowledgeable CEO’s from the same industry who get to know you, your people, your markets, your operations, your business philosophy, and goals and help you transform your business from pretty good to really great.

• Speaker Services: We consistently capture the attention and imagination of management audiences for the relevance and entertaining nature of the material we deliver at retreats, conventions and executive seminars.

3 Corporate LifeCycles Inc. www.corporatelifecycles.co.uk

“Corporate Lifecycles is to business as Polaris is to celestial navigation”

Robert Slate, Principal Slate Consulting, United States

The LifeCycle Challenge As organizations grow and age they progress through predictable lifecycle stages. Each stage brings new and unique challenges. How well or poorly management addresses these issues, and leads a healthy transition from one lifecycle stage to the next ultimately determines the success or failure of that organization.

Making successful lifecycle transitions is not easy or obvious. The methods that produce success in one stage can create failure in the next. The required management priorities, strategies, structures, delegation, goals, metrics, and rewards differ quite markedly from stage to stage. Leaders who understand what is needed and not needed in each stage, can accelerate the development of their organization, avoid premature aging and reach PRIME – the optimal lifecycle stage.

Corporate LifeCycles has developed powerful tools that enable organizations to navigate these

difficulties Our methods apply to both private and public sector organizations in any industry.

Corporate LifeCycles Overview www.corporatelifecycles.co.uk 4

We are particularly adept at helping youthful companies overcome persistent growing pains, as well as aging organizations in need of rejuvenation.

Courtship

Infant

Go-Go

Adolescent

Prime

Stable

Aristocracy

Recrimination

Bureaucracy

Death

Growing Stages Aging Stages

Diagnostic Workshop/Lifecycle Assessment:

A Diagnostic Workshop/Lifecycle Assessment is a powerful self-diagnostic activity, conducted as a team process. The team performs a detailed identification and analysis of the major areas for improvement within all parts of the company, including an analysis of the root causes of those problems. Outcomes of this workshop include the following:

• The organization’s challenges are constructively “reframed” using the Lifecycle model.

• The founder becomes aware of the long-term risks of the Founder’s Trap.

• A high level game plan for getting the organization to PRIME is agreed.

Corporate Strategy:

Growing organizations are opportunity driven and often believe that “more is better”. As a result, they often find themselves pursuing too many opportunities with too few resources. In this step, the organization converges its market/product scope and explicitly decides what “not” to do. In addition, the team develops a powerful sense of ownership for the company mission and strategy so that what was previously the founder’s mission becomes a shared “organization” mission.

Organizational Structure:

A company’s structure has a major impact on how well or poorly it will implement its strategy. Growing organizations are typically organized around people, have unclear delegation and too little accountability. Growing company structures typically evolve over time and are rarely the result of systematic, methodical planning. This usually leads to a haphazard design that will severely undermine the organization’s efforts to implement its strategy. In this activity, the team designs an organizational structure that is aligned with its new strategy, and sets up a framework for either avoiding or escaping the Founder’s Trap.

Accountability Systems:

The purpose of this phase of the intervention is to create an accountability system to help ensure that increased delegation does not lead to loss of control. The output is a clear definition of individual accountabilities congruent with the new structure, and a set of financial and non-financial critical success measures that need to be reported for the entire organization.

Reward Systems:

In this final activity, the team designs reward systems that reflect cooperation and team achievement, and motivate people to perform in a manner consistent with the organization's new mission, goals and accountabilities.

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Typical Intervention for Growing Organizations

Corporate LifeCycles Overview www.corporatelifecycles.co.uk

Diagnostic Workshop/Lifecycle Assessment:

A Diagnostic Workshop/Lifecycle Assessment is a powerful self-diagnostic activity, conducted as a team process. The team performs a detailed identification and analysis of the major areas for improvement within all parts of the

company, including an analysis of the root causes of those problems. Outcomes of this workshop include the following:

• There is dissatisfaction with the status quo.

• The organization becomes aware that the “writing is on the wall” and emerges with a renewed sense of urgency.

• The underlying causes of organizational aging are identified.

• A high level game plan for getting the organization to PRIME is agreed.

Organizational Structure:

In aging organizations form drives function; the structure often inhibits strategy. For this reason, structure must be addressed before strategy. A company’s structure has a major impact on how well or poorly it will implement its strategy. Aging organizations are often structured to drive effectiveness and efficiency in the short run with serious repercussions on their ability to be flexible and responsive to rapidly changing markets, competitors and technologies. In this activity, we work with the executive team to redesign the structure in a way that avoids the destructive conflicts and turf battles typically associated with reorganizations.

Corporate Strategy:

Aging organizations are often out of touch with their customers, markets and competitors. With the new structure in place, we enable the aging company to focus on strategy and find new sources of profitable growth, reposition their businesses for the future, and sharpen their competitive advantage.

Accountability Systems:

The purpose of this activity is to create an accountability system that enables financial information to be congruent with the responsibilities of the new structure and to ensure that this information is delivered in a format that is useful to achievement center managers. The output is a clear definition of individual accountability, as well as the financial and non-financial critical success measures that need to be reported for the entire organization.

Reward Systems:

In this final activity, the team designs reward systems that reflect cooperation and team achievement, and that motivate people to perform in a manner consistent with the organization's new mission, goals and accountabilities.

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Typical Intervention for Aging Organizations

Corporate LifeCycles Overview www.corporatelifecycles.co.uk

Change Management System Deployment (Appropriate for Growing and Aging Organizations)

Installation and management of processes that enable the organization to continuously identify and address cross

functional problems and opportunities. This system includes the following:

CORE Team Operations:

In this activity executive team members learn how to provide leadership for the change process underway within the organization and in particular how to resolve the sub-system problems identified in the Diagnostic Workshop.

Participants will understand when and how to compose a team to solve a problem; when not to use a team;

how to correctly define the mandate of a team; how to assign team roles and how to differentiate between problems

that should be solved directly and those that will be solved indirectly.

Impact Teams®:

Very often the most difficult sub – system problems require determined cooperation between several individuals or departments in order for them to be resolved. This activity enables the organization to successfully deploy teams while avoiding the “management by committee” trap. Impact Teams® typically focus on functional sub-system issues such as

sales, marketing, distribution, operations, accounting, and so on. The underlying purpose behind all team efforts is to make decisions that will subsequently be implemented -- so that required changes are happening faster than they

otherwise would.

Facilitator Training:

In this activity selected team members are taught how to facilitate Impact Teams® so that tough problems can be

resolved in an effective and participatory way.

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Guiding Principles Everything we do is guided by a handful of principles. We work to strengthen the culture of our clients with these values.

Customers: The primary purpose of every organization is to deliver compelling value to its customers. Underperforming organizations have often lost sight of this goal.

Collaboration: Productive teamwork in a climate of mutual trust and respect is the ultimate competitive weapon. Change is always something best done “with” not “to” an organization.

Commitment: Accountable execution is the natural outcome of engaging the right people, working on the right tasks, equipped with the right resources.

Critical Thinking: 80% to 90% of the knowledge needed to improve performance in an organization is already known – but by individuals, not the organization. An irreverent search is required to surface this “truth”.

Conflict: Change only begins when there is strong dissatisfaction with the status quo. Meaningful change necessarily creates conflict that must be constructively harnessed.

Clarity: If people can’t understand it they can’t execute it, and if they can’t execute it why bother?

Choice: Tackle first things first and second things never, because there is never the time or money to address them.

Consequence: The achievement of desired results is tied to fair and equitable monetary and non-monetary rewards.


“The Corporate LifeCycles approach to strategic change, founded on a deep understanding of the developmental maturity of our organization, gave us clear insight into the difference between normal and abnormal problems and this in turn helped to guide the order in which initiatives were tackled.”

Brian Marshall, Managing Director Thales Defense Information Systems, United Kingdom

Clients Since 1986, the principals of CLI have partnered with Founders, CEOs, Presidents and their leadership teams in the organizations listed below to design and implement change programs that accelerate the achievement of growth, profit and other business results. To help ensure our ability to make a significant difference, we only work with a handful of clients at any one time, carefully selecting organizations that are deeply committed to change.


• American Airlines - SABRE Division • American Fidelity Assurance • American Public Life • Banc One Leasing • Bank of America • Barclays Law Publishers • Black Letter Discovery • Center for Continuing Education • Charles Schwab & Co. • City of Los Angeles – Department of

Engineering • Copyright Research Group • Delta Environmental • Direct Partners • Domino’s Pizza • Earle Palmer Brown • EDS • Enterprise Ireland • Everyone.net • Flexfoot • Franklin Mint • Freedom Newspapers • Hagkaup • Hunt Oil Company • IBM • Icelandair • Ingvar Helgason • Innodata-Isogen • Knight Ridder • Landssimi

• Sweet & Maxwell • Symyx • Thales Defense Information

Systems • Thompson & Thompson • Thomson Corporation • Thomson Financial Publishing • Thomson International Publishing

Group • Thomson Legal Publishing • Thomson Newspapers • Thomson Professional Publishing • Thorspring • Truworths Stores • U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center

Weapons Division China Lake • U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center • U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center

Port Hueneme Division • U.S. Naval Detachment White Sand

Missile Range • University of Applied Sciences

Ludwigshafen, Germany • Vistage/TEC • Vodafone • Wahler Associates • Westech Geophysical • Whitin Roberts

• Lexus-Nexus • Loislaw • Los Angeles County Department of Children’s

Services • Mentor U • Meyer Associates • Minnesota Mutual Life Insurance • MP Investment Bank • Myllan • National Power Company of Iceland (utility) • National Telephone Company of Iceland • NETg • New York University Center for

Entrepreneurial Studies • Orla Kiely • Pacific Nexus • Palomar Pictures • Pennin • Pharmaco • Physicians Education Resources • Pioneer Press • Reykjavik Art Museum • Rip Curl • Saga Film • Salt Lake City Water Department • San Diego Center for Children • Seitlin • Shell Oil

“We have seen about a 15-20 percent reduction in our transaction costs as the result of Pathway to PRIME®. We defined how we operate our help desks around the world and moved that to a standardized process that has resulted in an additional 10 percent decline in operating costs. We have also seen a three-fold increase in new clients.”

Michael Brannick, President and CEO, Prometric

The Micromedex Story

“I was asked to become CEO of Micromedex in January 1998, one month after the founder left the company. Micromedex is a leading publisher of databases on drugs, disease, toxicology and alternative medicine, as well as patient leaflets and medical reference works such as the USP DI.

When I arrived the company was reasonably successful, having grown to $51 million in revenues in its 20+ year history. However, there were many problems festering beneath the surface that were preventing the organization from moving forward to the extent that the parent, The Thomson Corporation, would have liked. The friends and family program was the rule in management, no new products had been successfully released in years, annual staff turnover was nearly 35%, and if you asked 50 employees or managers what the company’s top priorities were, you got 50 different answers.

After spending an initial few months on board assessing the situation, Thomson offered us the Corporate LifeCycles Pathway to Prime® program as a way for Micromedex to initiate a deep self analysis and intervention. We used a Diagnostic Workshop/Lifecycle Assessment to get agreement on some of the immediate challenges, and we had Corporate LifeCycles facilitate subsequent sessions to help us define a strategy and get our organization aligned with that strategy. From the combination of these activities, our management team and staff emerged aligned around a long-term strategy, we formed IMPACT Teams® to deal with the tactical issues that existed at the time, we gained a language and process that helped us deal with problems that came along in future, and we had an organization built to achieve our goals.

The transformation was amazing. While Micromedex certainly had terrific products and was positioned in an attractive market long before we started this process, I believe that Pathway to Prime® played a substantial role in the accelerated success we enjoyed over the next five years. During that time, our revenues doubled and our profits tripled, all while we invested more than $20 million in a comprehensive new content management and Internet delivery system.”

Rick Noble, CEO Micromedex


Offices


East Coast, USA United Kingdon

4141 Sanctuary Lane 42 Plomer Green Lane

Boca Raton, FL 33431 High Wycombe, HP13 5TT

Phone: 561.447.7393 Phone: 07900 980164

Managing Partner: Ian MacDougall Managing Partner: Andrew King

West Coast, USA

151 Crescent Avenue

Portola Valley, CA 94028

Phone: 650.279.7552

Managing Partner: Clark Wigley

Washington, DC, USA

403 Grist Mill Crossing

Severna Park, MD 21146

Phone: 443.875.4161

Managing Partner: Stephen Phipps

“The Corporate LifeCycles process worked for us. It brought clarity and focus to our strategic options and helped us to develop an implementation plan that had the support of the entire senior management team. I strongly recommend it.”

Fred Cahill, CEO ERA Technology Ltd, United Kingdom

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