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Most of my entries has been pertaining to Project management and how I plan to use this knowledge to build my foundation. This entry is no different. I would say I hope to not forget how important. organizational evaluations are beneficial. Internally looking at processes to make them better while also evaluating external factors. How did the customer feel the process went and what could be better.

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Condition or Characteristic

Sensor

Comparison with Standards

Implementor

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OKRs to achieve goals and become motivated 

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OKRs to achieve goals and become motivated 

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https://youtu.be/L4N1q4RNi9I

In this TED talk, John Doerr talks about the benefit of using OKRs to achieve goals. What is OKR? OKRs stands for objectives and key results. Objective tells you what you want to improve while the key results measure how close you are to the objective. This can be used in personal life or within a business. This is a basis for PMs when completing projects. It's a very useful tool.

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Why the secret to success is setting the right goals | John Doerr | TED

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I take leadership personally. It is a representation of who I am as a person. Being a leader is multifaceted. For me it involves having integrity. It also means stepping up when you can and knowing when to step back. In my current role, I like to lead by example. If I am asking others to do things, then I myself must do those things as well. My first interaction with someone in my adult life who operated like this was my manager at a restaurant. He was the general manager and when needed he would suit up and go wash dishes without being told or if it was busy, he'd hop on the line and start cooking. If needed out on the floor, he would do that too when needed. He was able to pitch in when needed. He led by example. That was always inspiring to me and it's a principle I stand on.

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I like this picture because communicating can be difficult at times. It feels just like how effective using a cup and string can be. Lol :)

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My own personal slip up at work with communication. We had someone checking in and I was suppose to meet them to walk them in and introduce them around. This person changed their check in date so many times that everyone was confused and ended up nobody was there to walk him in. In my job, that is a huge mistake.Better communication with my supervisor would have mitigated the situation especially since I was off that day and my child had an appointment.

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It's essential to understand how to communicate effectively, but being able to recognize the barriers to communicating are just as essential when running a business. Some Barries included in our reading this week were as follow:

Physical barriers

System design faults; lack of oral and written communication skills; poor information technology infrastructure,

Personality conflicts can lead people to delay or refuse to communicate, and dissatisfaction with the style of a message can result in its being ignored or misinterpreted.

Ambiguous words/ phrases that sound the same but have different meanings.

Individual linguistic ability is important to consider: will intended targets understand industry‑specific jargon, complex words, or colloquialisms?

Physiological barriers like ill health, poor eyesight, or hearing difficulties.

The format and delivery of information is important. (FSCJ Online)

One of the main jobs of a PM is to communicate properly and effectively. Initially, when taking on a project it's important to recognize when these barriers will exist. Previous module spoke on management within a global organization tie into communicating with other countries. Do they speak English? Do you speak their language? Is everyone educating on each other's culture and what is acceptable and what is not.

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Consulting Firm Organizational Structure: Best Practices | Consulting Success

This article is a good basis for how the organizational structure will look. The portion about smaller businesses is what I would be wanting to start with and build on.

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Perhaps you're an independent consultant who's looking to grow your business.

You no longer want to be spending the majority of your time on consulting work.

Instead, you want to be a consulting business owner: someone who runs a consulting business.

You'd rather be focusing on leading a team, business development, and building an asset that you can sell.

In this post, we'll break down...

Ready? Let's dive in...

There are many different ways to structure your consulting firm, and there is no "right" way to do it.

What Is The Consulting Firm Model?
The consulting firm model is where you run a consulting business with a team instead of doing all of the client-facing work yourself (like a solo consultant).
You move from spending your time on delivering client projects to management, strategy, and business development. You manage a team of consultants who will do the heavy lifting and the majority of the client-facing work.

Download Free Guide

As discussed in our article on consulting business models, there are pros and cons to this model.
The pros of the firm model are...

Firms scale well you can add more consultants to take on more work

Removes you from doing the day-to-day client work

The business can run without you

Firms are a higher-value asset and are much easier to sell

Allows you to create a greater impact and help more people

The cons of the firm model are...

Requires a lot of people management

Lower profit margin

Firms require more infrastructure to keep running

More people depend on you (and you've got to make payroll)

There are many different ways to structure your consulting firm, and there is no "right" way to do it.

In the next section, let's look at the typical consulting firm's organizational structure.

Consulting Firm Org Structure Breakdown (With Examples)

Here is the typical structure of a larger consulting firm. This will differ from a boutique consulting firm, which has fewer people.
Remember, there is no one way to set up a consulting business. Use what makes sense for the consulting business and lifestyle that you desire.
CEO

As the CEO or founder of the firm, your role should be focused on a few key areas:

Bringing in new business and ensuring the pipeline is full

Being involved in the company strategy, vision, and working on high-level strategy with clients

Keeping a close eye on your company's financials and performance

Building and supporting your team. You may not be doing the hiring, but deciding on who to hire and making sure you have the right people in the right seats is key

Senior Partners (Leadership)

Senior partners often have an ownership stake in the business. They typically have been in the business for a longer period of time and they have the most experience. As senior partners, they help the CEO with leadership decisions for the firm.

Senior partners are concerned with the vision, future, and overall strategy of the firm. They will also have long-standing relationships with key partners, making them incredibly valuable for major deals and business development.

Senior partners typically aren't grinding away on their computers, working on client projects. Day-to-day, they might be attending a conference or even on the golf course. Not only to improve their swing but to build relationships and deal flow.

You'll tend to find that the higher up you go in the org chart, the less involved people are in the delivery of work. The focus at this level in the organization is on relationships, partnerships, thought leadership, vision, and strategy.

Partners

Partners are there to support the vision of the company. They're also involved in client projects, but not as directly. They typically do more of the oversight, relationship management, and some presentations.

Partners are also involved in bringing in new business. But, they can be involved in other aspects of the business depending on their specific area of expertise (like technology).

At larger firms, partners can also organize their teams along specific industry areas, like technology, environment, manufacturing, etc.

These next three sections of the organizational chart can vary widely. In some cases, they are blended together. Other firms will have all three as distinct levels with different hierarchies.

Regardless, let's jump in and cover what these roles look like typically...

Junior Partners

Junior partners are much more involved in client work and delivery. You won't always find them rolling up their sleeves deep in the data and research. But don't be surprised if you do. They are active in client conversations and presentations. They receive guidance and coaching from Senior Partners and most aspire to move up in the organization.

Operations & Project Managers

Once the client work begins, the operation managers and project managers begin to get involved. They are the people who are responsible for managing all aspects of project delivery and the people involved in those projects.

They are overseeing the timelines and schedule. Making sure everyone is on track to deliver the project to the client successfully. In this role, you'll often find people with experience in project management. They will be client-facing. But they don't make key decisions without talking to the partners who are connected to the project.

Operations managers are more concerned with the operations of the business, while project managers are more concerned with the operations of particular consulting projects.

Consultants/Analysts (Delivery)

Consultants and analysts are the ones who are deep in the data. They are doing the research. They are putting together the slides and all the information necessary to analyze the client's situation. They will present this to the partners involved in the project, have discussions, and then decide on the recommendations for the client and what the optimal next steps look like.

To this point, we've covered the key roles related to client work and project delivery. But there's a whole other side of the organizational chart we haven't covered yet.

We now need to look at all the other functions of the business and key areas that are necessary to run a successful consulting business.

Marketing/Content

Marketing people at a consulting firm are responsible for creating brand awareness and visibility. They create content that demonstrates authority and expertise, which can come in many different formats: from organizing conferences to hosting webinars and publishing research and studies. They help generate leads for the sales and business development team.

Sales/Business Development

Sales and business development people are the ones responsible for selling consulting projects to both new and existing clients.

Sales is often a key role that partners at all levels of the firm play. It's a role that is embedded and led by the firm's key partners due to the importance of relationships in the consulting industry. Many partners, especially senior ones, will have an assistant or support staff to help them stay on top of business development (think follow-up).

Finance/Legal

The finance people at a firm handle things like accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll. The legal team (often at an external law firm) handles legal matters, like contracts and negotiations for large projects.

Administration

Administrative people include executive assistants, secretaries, and virtual assistants. They help with scheduling, email and correspondence, filling out forms, and related tasks.

Organizational Structure at a Boutique Consulting Firm

To this point we've looked at roles and structure you'll find most often at large consulting firms. At a boutique consulting firm, due to the smaller size, you'll typically have a:

CEO/Founder

COO/Operations Manager

Project Managers

Consultants/Analysts

Marketing/Content

Administration (who handles bookkeeping)

Keep in mind that depending on the size of your firm and the work you do your titles and number of roles may look quite different.

One of the key differences inside a boutique firm compared to a larger consultancy, is that you'll have fewer junior people doing the work and delivery. Boutique firms usually have a higher percentage of experienced and senior consultants.

This provides the boutique firm with an advantage. Larger firms use senior people to land the business. But once it is won, they turn the ship over to less experienced consultants and analysts. In a boutique firm, the founder and/or their small team of senior consultants (often having years of experience and expertise in their areas) are the ones directly involved in the project, working with clients and delivery.

"Is there a specific number of people I should aim for?" Great question, but no. Not really. It all depends on what kind of business you want to build.

Some boutique firms will look like this:

Founder

1 Operations Manager

2-3 Senior Consultants

1-3 Junior Consultants

1 Marketing / Content person

1 Admin person

And other firms will have double the number of junior consultants, others may or may not have an operations manager.

But here's what the shape typically looks like in a boutique firm...

At boutique firms, the CEO often handles the majority of sales and business development. Eventually, they might hire a dedicated sales and business development person and build a team for that.

They'll also have an external lawyer and an external accountant.

We've looked at the typical organizational structure of both large and boutique consulting firms. Exciting. Maybe it's time to grow?

Best Practices For Hiring & Growing The Firm

Thinking about applying the firm model to your consulting business?

You're likely thinking about hiring if you're feeling overwhelmed, at capacity, and working on lower-level tasks.

Here are several of the best practices for growing a consulting firm:

Shift Your Mindset: Building a team should feel like an investment, not an expense. You're hiring so that you can delegate tasks, enabling you to focus on higher-level work that you enjoy and that moves the needle for your firm.

Get Clear On Your Mission/Values: Writing your mission and values - and including them in your job postings - will help you find and retain the right people.

Audit Your Time: For 1 week, track your time during your typical workday. Categorize what you love doing, and what you don't. Think about what you could offload to bring higher value to your business. Writing this down shows you what you should delegate, and this will give you an idea of the type of role to hire first.

Consider Your Needs: Do you need an employee or a contractor? Do you want someone working part-time or full-time? There is no right answer, and you're free to choose what you can afford and what makes sense based on your time audit. In today's global economy, you can highly customize each role to fit your firm's needs.

Make The Right First Hires: Your first few hires should almost always be administrative, financial, or operational: people who can handle these important yet time-consuming tasks. Having someone to handle tasks like scheduling and bookkeeping will provide you with an incredible ROI.

Write A Good Job Posting: A good job posting is less about the job, and more about the person and fit. Start with the company first: what you do, your values, and why someone would want to work with you. Then describe the candidate: who you want to have working with you, how they fit into your culture, and who the role is and isn't for. Then, describe the role: responsibilities, characteristics, and skills required.

Screen Carefully: Did the applicants follow your instruction? Did they communicate well? Use dealbreakers to make decisions easier. Focus more on the person, value-fit, and making sure they don't have any red flags. You can always teach them learnable skills. But you can't make it work if they simply aren't a fit for your business, mission, and values.

Keep these best practices in mind as you go about building your consulting business and scaling it past the independent model.
We go much more in-depth in our Clarity Coaching Program, where we have an entire module dedicated to team & delegation.
Here are some examples of our clients who've followed what we teach in our Clarity Coaching Program.

One of our clients, manufacturing consultant Dan Burgos, started his consulting business by doing all of the consulting work by himself. Now, he's brought in external consultants to deliver work. He gets to focus on what he loves to do: building the brand and the business.

The same goes for life sciences consultant Michele Benton. From day one, she knew she wanted to build a consulting firm. Today, she has someone to help with marketing, administration, and project delivery - so she can focus on working on the business.

Your first few hires should almost always be administrative, financial, or operational: people who can handle these important yet time-consuming tasks. Having someone to handle tasks like scheduling and bookkeeping will provide you with an incredible ROI.

Get Hands-On Coaching To Build Your Consulting Firm

The beautiful thing about starting a consulting business is that you can build your consulting firm to match your desired income and lifestyle.

There is no single right way to do it. As the owner, you have the freedom to build the way you want.
However, the principles for how you build a successful firm are consistent.
And that's how we've helped consulting firm owners like Doug Nelson, Michele Benton, Dan Burgos - and many more consultants like you - build successful boutique consulting firms.

In our Clarity Coaching Program, we'll teach you the fundamentals of building a successful consulting business.

We'll work hands on with you to develop a strategic plan and then dive deep and work through your ideal client clarity, strategic messaging, consulting offers, fees and pricing, business model optimization, and help you to setup your marketing engine and lead generation system to consistently attract ideal clients.

Learn more about Clarity Coaching and get in touch to talk about your situation and goals.

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Consulting Firm Organizational Structure: Best Practices

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How do you structure a successful consulting firm? Perhaps you're an independent consultant who's looking to grow your business. You no longer want to be spending the majority of your time on consulting work. Instead, you want to be a consulting business owner: someone who runs a consulting bu

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My thought process for this week was to learn different processes to apply to my business when I reach that point in life. My ultimate goal is to retire military, then run my own project management consulting business. From the reading, running a PM business would benefit from a team-based structure. This would allow my business to be well-rounded due to the fluctuating stakeholders. By having different memebers who bring something different than just PM, it'll attract more business as well encourage differnt view points to tackle a project.

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I run a travel business. The easiest way to get organized when I started was using the SMART process to truly map out what my goals were and to make sure I can obtain them. It's unrealistic to think that first month I would just be overrun with booking travel, but rather it helped me set realistic goals in a timeline. I set weekly, monthly, and yearly SMART goals.

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"Planning is the process of setting goals and defining the actions required to achieve the goals. Planning begins with goals. Goals are derived from vision and mission statements, but these statements describe what the organization wants to achieve, not necessarily what it can achieve." (FSCJ Online)

For me I use planning to map out my educational goals. My goal is to complete my Bachelors and move on to a Masters degree. With my Bachelors, I plan to commission in the military. If that doesn't pan out, I will continue my education towards Project management.

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This week we discuss how Sun City Boards could expand globally while discussing what 's important. We noted it's imperative to consider political, economic, and cultural challenges in the global market.

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Nike: A Global Brand - Global Marketing Professor
Nike took their company global full force starting in 1975 with an aggressive marketing strategy and a well thought out brand design. Their focus was top of the line design and innovations marketed using top celebrities and top athletes. The most creative strategy with Nike going Global is using strategic partnership and sponsorships. Being able to collaborate with celebrities of other countries is guaranteed to garner traction from consumers.

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This is a great graphic around Ethics. This would be nice to display within the workplace. It could also be used as a training tool where everyone discusses what different words mean to them and how they can apply it in the workplace.

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Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility 

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Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility 

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11 Ways to Increase Workplace Diversity - ASME

This article is a great share that I found. One of our classmates talked about how they deliberately seek out employees who spoke different languages and ended up hiring with about 10 different languages being spoken at this workplace. That got me to thinking what other ways are out there to develop cultural diversity in the workplace. What stood out in this article that I liked was offering diverse mentorship. I love that ideal because it forces peers and leadership to mingle together, learn from each other, and to build respect each other's differences.

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Workplace diversity results when companies make it a point to hire people who have different characteristics, such as ethnicity, religion, cultural backgrounds, sexual orientation, and gender. The goal is to create a culture where individual differences are respected and all employees are treated equally and receive the same opportunities for growth and advancement.

The benefits of inclusion are well known. These include increased collaboration, higher employee engagement, reduced turnover, improved profits, and stronger brand identity. A 2018 study from McKinsey & Company found that companies with highly diverse boardrooms were 43 percent more likely to attain higher profits.

Diversity starts with hiring and retaining diverse talent. Here are 11 ways for organizations to help create a diverse workplace culture.

1. Leverage diverse job boards. Post openings on job boards that specialize in diversity. Examples of these include Diversity Working, one of the largest online diversity job boards, Recruit Disability, which helps locate potential employees with disabilities, and HBCU, a network of students and alumni from Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

2. Highlight diversity on the career page on your website. Be sure your company's diversity statement and any current initiatives are obvious on your career page and reference it in every job description that is being offered.

3. Provide targeted internships and scholarships. Provide high-value internships and scholarships to employees from under-represented groups that will help them advance more quickly in key roles within the organization.

4. Offer diverse mentorships. Mentorship programs help ensure everyone has the opportunity to advance and also create closer employee relationships. Establishing an inclusive mentorship program can help foster diversity.

You May Also Like: Air Force Grant Fosters Diversity in Engineering

5. Conduct diversity training. It is likely the executive team and other leaders will require diversity training. which will likely surprise them when it points out their shortcomings. They can then take this new awareness to launch meaningful cultural and sensitivity training throughout the organization.

6. Create an inclusion council. Recruit a council of eight to 12 top leaders who are committed to inclusion. They themselves should be as diverse a group as possible. The council then meets regularly to create strategies that increase diversity.

7. Reward diverse referrals. Ask employees to refer job candidates they know from under-represented groups in your company and offer rewards or bonuses for recommending diverse candidates who join the company.

8. Celebrate employee differences. Invite employees to share their backgrounds and traditions in the workplace, including religious and cultural practices. For example, for the fifth straight year, Merk has sponsored its GD&I Experience Month, a full month dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion across all its global locations.

9. Unconscious bias training for recruiters. For even the most experienced recruiters, being unbiased is one of the biggest challenges in hiring. Recruiters, hiring managers, and others who participate in the hiring process should be aware of potential biases. Train HR staff to recognize and avoid bias in the recruitment and hiring process, which may require outside consultants.

Editors' Pick: Why is Diversity in Engineering a Major Opportunity

10. Incorporate diversity into company policies and practices. Develop or amend workplace policies to be more inclusive and diversity-friendly, from hiring practices to performance reviews, promotions, and benefits. Check if your company is an equal opportunity employer and has been approved by the Federal EEOC.

11. Strengthen anti-discriminatory policies. According to a 2019 article in Harvard Business Review, about 75 percent of respondents reported that the language of their anti-discriminatory policies was insufficient to drive improvements in diversity and inclusion. Conduct a thorough review of existing policies and report the results to top leadership and/or the inclusion council.

Moving Forward with Technology

Many studies show that the hiring process tends to be biased-typically unconscious sexism, racism, and ageism. A report from IBM indicates that bias impacts every aspect of recruiting, retaining, and engaging talent.

To eliminate unconscious bias, HR software programs and tools have been developed that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to make better diversity and inclusion hiring decisions.

"Some tools and applications use machine learning algorithms to create a more inclusive and unbiased interview process," stated Headstart, a provider of applicant matching and management software, in a 2020 report. "Algorithms in these tools help managers and recruiters build diverse interview panels that reduce individual bias and attract more diverse candidates."

Further Reading: Does STEM Diversity Promote Workforce Diversity?

AI-powered recruiting tools also help write unbiased job posts, find best-fit candidates, reject irrelevant applications, offer fairer salaries, and speed up screening. "AI will continue to help companies build more diverse, talented workforces," Headstart reported, "as long as business leaders-both those building the AI tools and those implementing them-make diversity and inclusion a main priority."

Mark Crawford is a technology writer based in Corrales, N.M.

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11 Ways to Increase Workplace Diversity - ASME

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Diversity is a key element for worker engagement and productivity, reducing turnover and boosting profits. Methods for creating a diverse workplace include diversity job boards, internships, mentoring, referrals, bias training, diversity training, celebrating employee differences, strengthening anti-discrimination policies, and using advanced software tools such as artificial intelligence.

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First week of class we discussed the importance of management and why they are needed. We discussed management can be defined as management as a process or management of people. I decided to share this meme because either way as managers any decision made someone will have a reaction to it. It's the nature of the beast. Decisions made shall be overall made to further the company and sometimes it won't make everyone happy. When looking at this meme it makes you think about the reactions people will have on each level: upper, middle, and lower. The goal is to make everyone happy but decisions must be made.

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Hello everyone,

My name is April and I’m super excited to get started with this class. I have two kids, a girl (6) and a boy (3), that keep me warmed up. I like to stay busy and keep up with many activities during the day. I am in the military Full-time so there is always some kind of training happening. I try to stay organized so there isn’t too much weight on me to get things done, but I don’t always succeed. Keeping a solid routine is essential in my everyday life or else I’ll be running and jumping everywhere lost. I like to use my planner or having a list of what needs to be done is imperative. I also like to read books when I have time to. My current read is Atomic Habits which I’ve read once but I purchased the book to make notes in. I highly recommend it. It’s a great read and an amazing concept. I look forward to learning more in this class and applying what I learn to everyday life. Good luck everyone.