“CONSULTING: SHOW US THE MONEY”

Australian Financial Review Boss magazine, September 9th 2005.

Skipp Williamson has a masters in engineering from MIT and a masters in management from Oxford. In 1991 she joined McKinsey but five years later hung out her shingle, casting herself as a “resultant” rather than a “consultant”. Her company, Partners in Performance International, is based in Melbourne. She spoke to HELEN TRINCA.

“When we go into companies we start by coaching managers about where to ‘find the money’. We’re interested in identifying the levers of the business and how much they’re worth. Then we generate heaps of ideas for the business and ensure they are tied to cash through the pipeline, and that they can be tracked. We’re trying to train people inside the business to generate and track ideas. We’re not saying, let’s generate 5000 ideas; we’re saying, where’s the money and let’s go and get it. Typically, CEOs and the top layers of management do know where the money is, but we can go in and work with people at the lower level to help them identify the levers.

When I go into a site at the start of a job I walk the floor and ask managers basic questions like how they measure their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Often people have no way of articulating and passing on those measurements. The third thing we do is create an ongoing process to continuously improve. It’s very Japanese in terms of getting a little bit of improvement every month. Then we train managers in how to ‘wire’ the business. The idea is to develop processes and systems so that it’s hard-wired for a high-performance business.

We train people how to manage talent (how to wire them into the values of the company), how to manage operations – right down to things like how you run the meetings. We coach them and we do it all on the job. We typically spend nine to 12 months on a site, with about five or six of our people working there full time. They basically join the organization. Most of our people are former consultants, CEOs, managing directors. CFO’s – but they are typically older than many consultants. Our gender balance is one of my greatest concerns. We have about five women out of 50 people and it drives me nuts.

We have about nine projects at any one time – Southern Africa, Australasia, North America and Asia. We don’t really have a head office; people tend to float on their mobile phones and they work at the client’s. Our core is heavy industry – processing, mining, ports and transport – but we have now started in the service sector with banks and the finance industry. There are a lot of gains to be made here: it’s fertile ground, because so far they have not had to make a lot of changes because they have been making money. The grubby industries have had to work really hard, so they have already made a lot of changes.”

Source: AFR BOSS Magazine

Back to top