Dr. Stephen H. Dawson, DSL
Executive Strategy Consultant

+1 (865) 804-3454

service@shdawson.com

My consulting service offering is identified in the Standard Industrial Classification as 8742 and in the North American Industry Classification System as 541611. My educational service offering is identified in the Standard Industrial Classification as 8299 and in the North American Industry Classification System as 611430. The offerings have me serving your organization as a Change Agent.

An effective consultant serving in the role of a Change Agent knows how to help people solve their problems. My consulting and educational knowledge is a combination of understanding both human behavior and business acumen applied to organization strategy and organization design through capabilities gained from both formal education and first-hand experience. Applying my consulting and educational knowledge to an organization is a unique experience for both myself and the organization.

My service offerings are built on the need to understand where an organization is wanting to go. Go, in terms of a metaphoric location. It is the matter of understanding where they are now and where they want to arrive at for their new location. I regard the location as something such as a phase of their business maturity, their market position, their launching a new product or service, or even their downsizing by eliminating a product or service offering. The organization must first construct the necessary map, then read the map. This map construction is an activity in cartography.

My logo is a three-dimensional map. Let's walk through the concept of map reading for navigation in relationship to an organization's readiness to accept and utilize input from an external consultant and consider the construct of a figurative location. Consider the experience of entering unfamiliar territory when performing navigation as we walk through the map reading concept to both monitor and control the movement of your organization effectively.

Figure 1. Three-Dimensional Cartographic Map

The map presented here can easily be evaluated as curvy, slippery, shiny, perhaps even precious. Successful navigation can only occur by having a concise knowledge of fixed navigation points. The task at hand is to determine both the present location and the preferred destination the organization has for a specific objective of their organization's strategy. The organization has already determined their goal as they must move to a new location. This travel requirement can be necessitated by any of several reasons, such as:

• They need to grow their business as a means of responding to their competitors.
• They have an expectation placed on them by their investors to grow their business.
• They have sufficient evidence validating they will experience a market position decline and associated cash flow reduction if they do not grow their business.

We are faced with the mandate to develop a much safer approach to our strategic planning than risking travel without a map. My conclusive determination is there are only two viable options.

Figure 2. Single Step Movement

Figure 3. Multiple Step Movement

The first option is moving in a single step by way of a jump. A single step by way of a jump to implement any strategy is a significant risk. The concept of jumping means:

• Little time to adjust for landing if the jump goes wrong.
• This adjustment problem is magnified when the landing area is small.
• One could jump higher to have more time to adjust, but the challenge is the higher the jump, the more likely something could strike you in mid-jump.
• The higher the jump, the harder the landing.
• The jumper may not be able to correct any or all problems before landing and come down harder than expected, resulting in injury.

The second option is moving in multiple steps. The more solid the steps, the less likely a risk will become an issue. A strategic plan to move an organization to a new location safely must then occur through a series of steps.

It is unlikely a purchaser of my service offerings will want to go with either a lesser educated or lesser experienced consultant. I say this because my experience working with clients shows unequivocally they need a specific set of competencies feeding into the likely success of any capability. Remember, a capability is something a person should be able to accomplish based strictly on their well-documented competencies. The field of leadership is not the field of management. The field of business administration is not the field of entrepreneurship. The field of consulting is not the field of outsourcing. I hold credentials in all six of these fields through earning both a graduate degree in business administration and a postgraduate degree in strategic leadership along with holding first-hand experience in each field to serve your organization with both humility and excellence.

I am not presenting either a quick fix or a simple project expense. I am presenting the value of organization change leading to greater returns for you, the members of your organization, and the investors in your organization. We can and should use either the internal rate of return with a suitable discount rate or the net present value with an appropriate weighted average cost of capital to help determine the value of this change to your organization. You must decide which capital budgeting method is best for your organization to fund my services to help you arrive at your preferred destination in our cartographic activity.

You should now have all you need to open constructive dialogues both among your organization's leadership and with me about my service offerings. The task of determining the preferred destination your organization has for a specific objective of your organization's strategy is the priority. The question you should be asking yourself now, based on your desire for what you just examined, is ...

where does
your organization
want to go?

Wikipedia. Aivazovsky, I. (1850). The Ninth Wave. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, RU.