Many (if not most!) companies view “change” as an extraordinary event that must be dealt with using change management techniques and special skills. A leading management consulting author (Robert Schaffer) offers a compelling argument that this common view of “change” is outdated. He argues that rather than view change as a subspecialty of management, companies should consider the fact that “all management is the management of change.”
We all understand that the amount of data that modern companies use to drive their businesses is growing exponentially. You may know the roles of database administrators, database architects, and data scientists. But are you familiar with the role of the “data artist”?
Valued at $45 billion last year, the US management consulting market relating to healthcare is booming. How so? Well, the healthcare consulting sector is expected to break the $60 billion mark by the end of next year.
The main drivers of growth in the US healthcare management consulting market include:
1. Project management
2. Market analysis
3. Growth strategy
4. Strategic planning
5. Corporate and business unit strategy
6. Program Management Office (PMO) support
7. Product development and launches
8. Supply chain
9. Customer experience and insights
10. Innovation strategy
Like other industries, the consulting industry is being disrupted in many ways. With the rise of artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain and advanced analytics, consultants may find themselves working closely with artificially intelligent systems that can analyze huge volumes of data that are incomprehensible to the human mind. Learn more about how data analytics are changing the consulting industry – and what is perhaps the most important consulting skill going into the 2020s.
Read the September 2018 issue of CONSULTING magazine to keep informed of trends in the industry and for ongoing professional development. The Croixstone team recommends that you be certain to read the articles entitled “Workforce Consultants Tackle Future Phobia” and “Mastering the Art of Organizational Change.”
Our friends at Wily—a design agency based at Camp North End in Charlotte—are running a Design Sprint Bootcamp on September 11-12. Jake Knapp—creator of Design Sprints and author of NYT bestseller “Sprint“—will lead Day 1 of the two day training. Jake perfected Design Sprints while at GV/Google Ventures helping companies like AirBnB, Slack, Nest, Flatiron Health, and 23andMe solve big challenges. Jeff Grant will be leading Day 2 to cover prototyping and testing. Jeff innovates the retail security experience as head of product and innovation at InVue, has created satellite hardware for NASA, and was former co-founder and director of IDEO’s toy business line where he helped invent new products. Jake and Jeff will walk you step-by-step through the training and will be spilling all of their design and prototyping secrets.
Details are at wilysprints.com and a nice Harvard Business Review article about sprints can be found here.
On August 16th, the family of Aretha Franklin confirmed that the 18-time Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter died of pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer. Croixstone leaders Mark and Patti Weber each lost a parent to pancreatic cancer, and both actively volunteer with the Charlotte Affiliate of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network to increase awareness of the disease and raise money for research. Maureen O’Boyle of WBTV (Charlotte’s CBS Affiliate) recently interviewed Mark about his passion to rewrite the future of pancreatic cancer. Read the interview here.
A great resource for consultants is the “Consultancy.org” network. This global network of consulting industry platforms (including North America, Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America and Australia) provides the latest in consulting news, market information, and more. Consultancy.org launched its US platform earlier this year. View it here.
In June, the Charlotte Regional Partnership announced that it was launching a new quarterly economic activity report to capture an overarching look at capital investment, job growth and other important business data across the 16-county Charlotte region. We read the published report and learned that the vast majority of companies that located or expanded in the region are manufacturers. The report also reinforced that financial services is not the largest employer among the region’s industry sectors (it is healthcare by a large margin). Read the new report here.