Our Organization Services fall within the following framework
We help make talent a source of value and competitive advantage.
Recognizing the crucial link between talent and value, we help clients run organizations that create value and adapt at the speed of business.
Adapting to a fast-changing world is a defining challenge for leaders today. The critical differentiator in talent management is the ability to deploy and redeploy talent as opportunities arise and dissipate. In today’s economy, characterized by an abundance of capital and growing skill gaps, talent management and HR capabilities are key sources of competitive advantage.
This is an exciting time for HR; the function is moving from business partner to business leader, from a service provider to an executive-officer mentality. The chief human-resources officer (CHRO) is now a partner to the CFO and CEO, equally responsible for implementing the strategic business agenda. While the topic of strategic HR is not new, advances in technology are changing the game. HR can now consistently apply data, not instinct, to make talent decisions. At the same time, new automation technologies are enabling more consistent HR service at lower cost. We see a tremendous, often untapped potential to generate business value through talent outcomes.
Our client support is grounded in the belief that organizations must link talent to value. Our work on talent:
- begins with what drives value for the business.
- is underpinned by data and advanced analytics.
- develops the capabilities of the G3—the CEO, CFO, and CHRO—to build the talent systems and culture necessary for linking talent to value.
- aggressively allocates talent to business opportunities.
- leverages grounded, research-based approaches.
- is fit for purpose in the digital era.
We apply our “Talent to Value” philosophy to help clients:
- Actively match top talent to critical roles. We identify the critical roles required to deliver on an evolving business agenda and help our clients ensure the best talent with the right skills are dynamically matched to those roles. We focus the leadership team on the roles driving the greatest value and help ensure a rich pipeline of qualified succession candidates for critical roles. Throughout the process, we draw on the power of data and analytics, such as our Talent Match solution, which allows clients to identify and define roles, build high potential and succession lists, and match talent to roles with the ease and speed of a swipe.
- Build a strategic plan for your workforce. We help clients determine what skills to focus on, based on the skill’s value and projected scarcity. We quantify the skills required in the future and project internal and external supply based on organizational workforce-trend data and market labor analytics. We prioritize likely gaps between supply and demand and develop talent strategies to address talent gaps.
- Identify, attract, and select talent. We deploy some of the best consumer branding approaches to design winning employee value propositions. Using advanced analytics, we expand talent sourcing pools and reduce risk in hiring decisions.
- Develop, motivate, and retain talent. Drawing on our seminal research on next-generation individual performance management, we build the mind-sets, capabilities, and behaviors that drive business performance. We offer an extensive suite of manager capability-building programs through Cambridge Consulting Academy.
- Transform the HR function into a powerhouse that delivers value. We help HR make the leap from service provider to business leader. We revolutionize the HR function by embedding People Analytics in HR processes and building HR-team capabilities. We support HR transformations that improve efficiency, effectiveness and the employee experience.
WHAT MAKES US UNIQUE AMONG OTHERS
- We operate in different Cultures. We operate in different geographies around the world supported by our unique staff from various cultures giving us the advantage of tailor designing solutions that are up to date and fit the market needs and requirements.
- We link your value agenda and talent strategy. We serve a variety of clients, from established multinationals, publicly traded companies, and public-sector organizations to private-equity firms, NGOs, and start-ups. We understand the nuances of what it takes to win in the industries in which our clients operate. The breadth and depth of our business expertise allows us to delve into value agendas in a way that traditional HR consulting firms and boutiques cannot.
- We craft strategies based on facts, data, and analytics. We custom build our models instead of offering a one-size-fits-all solution, driving richer results and answering the strategic questions that matter most to our clients. Our Human Capital team helps clients achieve the widest lens by aggregating data from multiple sources—including basic HR data (such as demographics), advanced internal data (such as performance and recruiting), active channels (such as assessments, interviews, and surveys), and external data. We work with clients to develop a sustainable People Analytics capability. We help clients establish their own analytics teams, processes, and tools and identify future use cases to scale the impact.
- We build client capabilities and win hearts and minds. We establish the right combination of governance, process, systems, and incentives to build capabilities and support for initiatives. Recognizing the challenges that can accompany implementation and change. Our goal is to ensure self-sustaining, continuous HR improvement for years to come.
- We are flexible in how we work, but uncompromising on impact. Because of the flexibility of our work models, tools, and solutions, we meet clients where they are in their individual talent-management and HR-transformation journeys.
We help clients realize maximum deal value from mergers—by tapping the right synergies, building capabilities, shaping the new era for them.
We help clients realize maximum deal value from mergers—by tapping the right synergies, building capabilities, shaping the new culture, and speeding up integration.
Cambridge Consulting has supported several organizations in their Mergers. We help clients realize maximum deal value as quickly as possible by tapping the right sources of value; getting the new culture right; using the right tools and approaches to speed up integration; and building capabilities to execute the right future deals. We take a broad view of merger management, supporting clients from pre-announcement planning through post-close integration.
Specifically, we work with our clients to:
Tap the full value of synergies
Because 60–75 percent of historical mergers have failed, many companies are risk averse in their integration approach. We encourage clients to “aim higher,” using our synergies framework and extensive experience to explore the entire landscape of revenue and cost opportunities. This approach has helped them identify revenue-growth opportunities that exceed due diligence estimates by 30–150 percent.
Establish cultural compatibility
Culture—“the way we do things around here”—can be a real obstacle to successful integration. Our Organizational Health Index lets clients compare company practices along nine measurable dimensions to establish the cultural compatibility of the merging companies. A simpler version of the assessment, using publicly available information, can gauge compatibility even before deal announcement. We have catalogued more than 100 actions clients can take to mitigate the risks of culture clash.
Build client capabilities
As we help our clients execute today’s deal, we also build their capabilities for future mergers. Our Merger Management Boot Camp, an intensive workshop for integration teams, covers the entire merger process and produces practical solutions for the client’s top merger issues.
For example, in a merger of two major consumer goods companies, the acquirer recognized the superiority of the target’s distribution management approach and retooled its practices to match. Deal value jumped 75 percent.
Speed up integration
Our deep experience and proven tools accelerate successful merger integration. Our “clean teams” work behind legal firewalls until deal close, analyzing competitively sensitive data to locate potential synergies. Our proprietary software, Transformation Express (TEX), tracks progress against integration milestones, synergies, and integration costs across integration teams, around the world, in real time. Our Integration Management Office template helps create a master plan of all the activities of all of the integration teams, to speed up effective integration.
Our consultants help clients design organizations to reduce costs, drive growth, and strengthen both short-term performance and long-term organizational health.
We go beyond lines and boxes to define decision rights, accountabilities, internal governance, and linkages. Our design solutions help clients manage complexity and global scale to ensure sustained performance.
Specifically, we work closely with our clients to:
- Bring a rigorous approach to organization design: We assess the strengths and weaknesses of the current organization and design a robust new structure. In the current-state assessment, our diagnostic tools highlight areas where the organization presents challenges, which might lie in its structure, linkages, or culture, and help define criteria to guide the design process. In the design itself, our design tests help clients make choices on critical questions such as the optimal business-unit structure; the role of the corporate center and shared services; and capabilities needed for pivotal roles.
- Link organization to strategy and realize value: We make sure the design focuses management attention on the strategic priorities and critical operations of each business unit, region, or product—be it international expansion, cost-cutting, or growth through acquisitions. Once the design is finalized, our unique implementation approach helps our clients quickly realize the economic value determined by the redesign.
- Focus head offices on value creation: Many CEOs are concerned about waste and redundant hierarchy, particularly in head offices. Our approach identifies an explicit, value-adding “mandate” for the corporate center—for example, co-ordinating key functions or driving specific strategic initiatives.
- Drive accountability: By careful design of performance-management processes, we make sure all units have clear performance measures. Our accountability tools and decision-making frameworks help identify accountabilities for cross-unit processes.
- Enable enterprise-wide collaboration: Achieving large-scale collaboration across the entire enterprise—on customer solutions, product development, innovation, and the like—can unlock tremendous value. Using our Social Network Analysis tool, we go beyond organization charts to reveal and tap into the informal communities through which the organization shares information and knowledge. We help clients understand the value collaboration can bring and the mechanisms to enable it.
- Deal with complexity: Effective organization design must remove complexity that creates unnecessary cost and organizational friction, and channel what’s left to employees who are equipped to handle it. Using our proprietary complexity survey, we pinpoint issues such as a lack of role clarity or poor processes that could hinder productivity.
We have distinctive knowledge, tools and expertise to help large organizations design and implement major change programs.
We have distinctive knowledge, tools and expertise to help large organizations design and implement major change programs in contexts where business results are dependent on people shifting their day-to-day behaviors and mindsets to drive value.
The ability to drive transformational change—such as moving from good to great performance, cutting costs, or turning around a crisis—is a key source of competitive advantage. Yet despite the 25,000 books published on the topic, one in three change programs fail. We work with major corporations and public services to overcome these odds.
Our deep experience and rigorous approach help clients shape successful transformation programs and build cultures of continuous improvement. Specifically, we work closely with clients to:
- Strengthen organizational health: We help clients attain excellence by managing both performance and organizational health with equal rigor. “Health” can be defined as an organization’s ability to align, execute, and renew itself faster than the competition.
- Shape and deliver transformational change: We help clients design and deliver far-reaching change efforts through our Five Frames methodology. This approach helps leaders shape a change vision and set targets that are tightly linked to business outcomes; diagnose the organization’s ability to meet those targets; and deliver improvement initiatives that strengthen performance, build capabilities, and change organizational mind-sets and behaviors.
- Shift behavior to shape organizational culture: Achieving sustained improvement in performance and health requires that organizations move beyond structures, processes, and systems to address individual and collective behavior—including culture, mind-sets and capabilities, and team and group dynamics. As a key aspect of creating transformational change, we work with clients to design and implement interventions to build skills, shift mind-sets, develop leaders, and manage talent to ensure a successful and sustainable change in behaviors.
- Help leaders become models for change: Senior leaders have a unique role in transformational change: They must provide cues about what really matters for everyone in the organization to follow. We help leaders make the transformation personal, role-model the change, openly engage others, and spotlight successes. We also help build commitment and alignment within the senior team.
- Convene leaders and share insights: We share our insights at a range of external and Cambridge Consulting forums.
To survive and thrive in today’s world, organizations must adopt more agile ways of working across their entire company.
Rapid and accelerating developments in technology, customer preferences, and employee expectations are transforming all aspects of our lives. To survive and thrive, companies must, in turn, transform how they operate. Becoming an agile organization allows a company to increase speed of execution, better respond and adapt to customer needs, increase productivity, and engage and empower employees. Ultimately, an agile organization can deliver higher returns to shareholders.
Organisational Health Assessment (OHA)
Put real numbers and targeted actions on organizational health
An organization’s health—its ability to align around and achieve strategic goals—is critical for long-term performance. However, many leaders overlook organizational health because they lack a clear way to measure and improve it. Organizational Health Assessment (OHA) applies analytical rigor to organizational health management. Our quantitative diagnostics and proven recipes for success empower senior leaders to measure and achieve the organizational health required to sustain long-term performance.
