Professional Organizational Management

To play off a child's nursery rhyme, many folks have come to me and said something like, "Paul, you're not a professional butcher, baker or candlestick maker. We want someone with 20 years of experience being a butcher, bake or candlestick maker." Indeed, if your business is in the mature or declining phase and you just want to "keep the lights on" or survive a little longer, that thinking is probably right. By contrast, if your business is building, growing, innovating, breaking barriers, dealing with new concepts, or new challenges, then may I suggest a slightly different perspective applies?

Examples are overwhelmingly numerous. Briefly, consider: Carriage makes vs automobiles (the Fisher Brothers, new to the carriage making business could innovate solutions, where others were suck in thinking that was not helpful); The company that invented digital cameras (Kodak) would be crippled by legacy thinking and a slow transition to digital photography; As for our candlestick maker ... methods of flame-based / gas illumination were at odds with Edison - new perspectives would drive electric lighting.

If your business is facing new challenges, that might need new perspectives, and you want to constructively, successfully, address those challenges, then maybe you could use a professional organizational manager, leader, or consultant that has a track record of successfully organizing teams for new frontiers. That is where I fit in.