Service catalogue

We provide the following services, either separately or (combined) as a total solution to managerial challenges:

Auditing

Internal, in-house or first-party audits are conducted by or on behalf of the client. They provide most benefits of external audits but also serve as discrete ‘test drives’ for (more expensive) external audits. In other words, internal audits discretely provide peace-of-mind about how to increase the probability of passing external audits.

We help with leading internal audits of quality management systems. We do so to help clients with sustainably:

• securing and increasing prospect-satisfaction (lead-conversion) and
• achieving and ensuring customer-delight.

We also help with conducting such audits using industry independent standards (provided our auditing professionals are not also somehow involved with the management and/or operations of the auditee).

Furthermore, we help with introducing or further professionalising:

• audit services (periodically conducted audits) and
• audit programs (limited series of audits).

Business mediation

We have facilitated countless negotiations and often represented either side of the ‘table’. This enables us to constructively act as a mediator between organisations and/or professionals during their negotiations of mutually beneficial agreements. Being a neutral entity, we constantly secure an objective, transparent and lean negotiation process. Negotiating via an unbiased external proxy:

• assures discretion for parties who prefer to remain anonymous,
• helps parties to objectively identify possible scenarios and
• helps to impartially select the scenario which is optimal for the specific circumstances of all parties.

We also act particularly as a broker (i.e., helping with reaching agreements specifically between clients and suppliers).

One or both parties may perceive a business or professional conflict between them which hinders negotiations. In such cases, involving an intermediary may be mandatory (by contract or regulations) or voluntary. We also help as an intermediary with (preparing) settlement of a resolution outside court.

Disputing parties may decide to use us as an arbiter. Our arbitration award then becomes final and binding on both parties, if negotiation fails. This service gives parties shared control over the selection of the arbiter, whereas a court would appoint a judge.

Interim management

We help to ensure the continuity of daily business and ongoing operations of an organisation, a department or team. During a limited period agreed in advance and while reporting regularly, we fulfil specific managerial responsibilities. As a temporary deputy, we act (assure and control) by a formalised mandate. To serve your organisation better, our duties may include for instance:

• helping with recruitment of qualified employees and
• onboarding a replacing employee for a permanent position.

As an authorised manager, we also help to launch or dissolve (partial) departments or teams on behalf of our clients. We provide this particular service exclusively at a level which is non-statutory and does not define policies.

Management coaching

Definitely, even the most professional managers sometimes struggle with managing unfamiliar situations. Therefore, to achieve one’s personal goals more effectively and efficiently, one may seek guidance from an independent senior. Similarly, a professional can gain insight via a coach on how to independently continue and speed up one’s professional growth. As a coach, we help managers to fully understand, use, grow and realise their managerial potential. Such growth may be self-initiated by a coachee and/or encouraged by the coachee’s manager. For example, in a situation where sufficient onboarding and/or training may be impossible in time.

Coaching involves more than describing classification methods and giving instructions on how to apply them to one’s personality or behaviour. We coach by first organising an intake to gain clarity on the coachee’s being (intrinsic motivation and inner mechanisms), professional goals and bottlenecks. Next, we propose, agree and follow a personalised plan, describing the approach for the recurring and/or ad hoc one-on-one sessions with the coachee.

The approach as mentioned above may include: building mutual trust, encouraging meta-communication, helping observe one’s situation, reflecting on one’s behaviour for mindful assessment, dissecting intention, raising awareness through thought-provoking creativity, inspiring to gain constructive insights, exploring alternative scenarios, illustrating by example, suggesting to experiment with other methods and/or tools, guiding with improving one’s situation and eliciting coachee-generated paths of self-development.

We may provide coaching together with training, as part of a management development programme or service.

Management consulting

We help to solve complex, large and/or unique managerial cases. These cases encompass sustainably introducing or further professionalising management systems. After the intake and iteratively, we execute every stage of managerial improvements:

1. Describing the current organisational situation (collecting factual measurements, statistically analysing data, benchmarking performance, assessing managerial records and interviewing stakeholders for example),
2. Diagnosing the (documented) situation and recommending interventions that are business-case driven, actionable and sustainable,
3. Creating concrete management products (revising or co-creating with input from the stakeholders) and
4. Helping the stakeholders with:
   • practically implementing (including testing) the created management products and
   • securing the sustainable embedding (including evaluation) of those products within the organisation.

Management training

As a broker, we help with specification, selection and procurement of off-the-shelf management courses (with optional preparation for certification exams) from renowned sources.

Designed for your needs and specifically for the target audience, we also offer custom-made management training (for example in the form of gamified workshops) and speeches. Our talks are infused with captivating inspiration to raise awareness and activate the audience to apply and integrate the content. During the intake of this service, we propose a didactic method that ensures sustainable transfer of knowledge and development of professional competency. We can provide this service in-house (on-site at a client’s office) or elsewhere. This service includes doing a proper intake, collecting and processing the latest insights, further synchronising the contents with the other speakers (if any), helping to promote the event, creating the presentation, trial running, attending the event and executing post-event activities.

We may provide training together with coaching, as part of a management development programme or service.

Project management

When a client has a mandate for an individual project, we help facilitate the rest of the project life cycle. After the intake and based on the information we collect, we iterate a concrete, structured and concise project plan/ brief. We do so together with the stakeholders (individually and/or collectively) to ensure mutual understanding and commitment. We also help with selecting a methodology (like waterfall or agile) which suits the nature of the project milestones. The steps in the plan may include: specifying scenarios (each with a distinct result and business case) and selecting one of these scenarios for further planning and actual implementation. During the gate-funded execution of the project, we:

• periodically report the status to stakeholders and evaluate the plan with them and
• actively monitor and control project risks and opportunities.

Besides managing individual projects, we also help with introducing or further professionalising project management services, for example of project management offices.