Cain-Stanley & Co. Calibrated Strategic Facilitation
The CS&Co Calibrated Strategic Facilitation (CSF) Method is based on decades of successful consulting results. Success, as determined by the gains client-companies are able to make toward their goals of improving top and bottom line financial performance; gains in morale; gains in market share, and gains in overall operating performance. Repeated success like this doesn’t happen by accident, luck or talent alone; it is the outcomes of an artfully-designed and carefully executed facilitation process. The CSF method focuses on calibrating big ideas with achievable action plans.
Three elements distinguish CS&Co’s Calibrated Strategic Facilitation Method from any others:
- Preparation. CSF projects are extremely well-prepared before the facilitation even starts. Many consultants rely too heavily on their facilitation strengths and business acumen to generate solutions. This happens in good faith because strategy participants are rarely adequately prepared to strategize when they show up at the retreat. Not so with the CSF Method. Before every major strategy event, participants are expertly-instructed to research and prepare for the actual day(s) of strategic planning. They provide input to consultants in plenty of time to allow the facilitator to have an in-depth, cross-functional understanding of the situation which enables the consultant to facilitate to desired results at an optimum level.
- Integration. Facilitating cross-functional integration requires more than assembling the right group of leaders; it requires facilitating an understanding of current process, opportunities, and using that information to forecast short-term implications and create strategies for long-term success. Using the CS&Co. method, consultants blend concept training with ideating and problem solving to generating viable and actionable plans.
- Symbiotic Consulting. Typical consulting relationships are (formally or informally) structured in one of two ways: a) The consultant facilitates the group to an outcome and concludes the engagement; b) The firm embeds consultants into the organization in order to execute strategy. Both of these strategies run a great risk of yielding unsustainable solutions. In the first scenario, the strategic-process leadership departs the project too early, and in the second, the organization becomes overly reliant on the consulting firm to do the work.
When you use the CSF Method, you will lead your client firm to generate solutions and then you will remain to work with them to instruct the implementation leads and facilitate quarterly progress meetings. This method ensures that the client organization retains the strategic leadership it needs, while also taking full ownership of the project. The Symbiotic relationship ensures that both organizations work together, yet remain separate in their functions; over and over again this process yields exceptional results.
The CS&Co Calibrated Strategic Facilitation Method is an eight –phase process. Each step along the way has a defined beginning and end based on each client’s individual progress. Below is the process outline:
- Engage
- Design
- Prepare
- Detail
- Facilitate
- Clarify
- Support
- Analyze