Case Studies - Group Partners - Structured Visual Thinking™

CASE STUDIES AND REFERENCES Achieving successful plans and strategies fast while capturing everyone’s attention

Group Partners led our senior leaders across multiple functions on a journey to shape the vision and roadmap for how how to unleash creativity, leverage technology, and the digital wisdom to grow and reach customers.

Group Partners is not your typical consulting firm. The magic happens through the experience of a brilliant approach that helps organizations to recognize the right problems to solve and solve the right problem in ways we did not dare to think.

In the process, it was possible to create fresh team dynamics that amplified the benefit of the work. The Chief Marketing Officer said it was ‘lighting in the bottle.’

Each time Group Partners enters a client situation, no matter the industry, I’m amazed how perceptive and insightful they are and how they manage to encourage others discover what’s most critical for their success.

Donna Donato - Vice President Strategic Sourcing & Business Enablement American Express

I’ve worked with Group Partners in two different roles now, inside the Cabinet Office and at United Utilities. John and his team bring unique insights into the issues that you’re inevitably facing. whatever your industry you’re probably up against internal silos that stifle progress, a lack of clarity on your vision and how you will execute against it, incomplete views of your customer and partners needs and inconsistent ways of managing and rewarding your teams. And 1001 other issues like this.

Group Partners will absolutely bring a twist on the traditional views you and your company hold and will develop a roadmap for how to resolve them. At key moments along the journey also inspiring those involved - presenting in an unbelievable off-the-cuff freehand drawing that will allow you to present and discuss the issues to and with the rest of your business.

Alan Mather, Chief Technology Officer. UK Cabinet Office. United Utilities.

This is a brief note to say many thanks for giving us a most successful Water Summit here in Johannesburg. I don’t think I did either of you the justice you deserved in ensuring this was such a successful programme culminating in the overall event.

There have been so many complementary inputs from those that attended the week and all agreed that the facilitation and the final frameworks were the key in the events success. A number of people said that they were ‘blown away’ by the ‘tapestry’, and I think that is quite an appropriate description of its effect.

Dave Salmon, Anglo American Technical Division. South Africa

Great, great, great effort and what wonderful weekWITH THE TEAM TOGETHER. Way beyond all our expectations.

Earl Newsome, VP Global IT Services, Estee Lauder. New York. USA

So many thanks Group Partners. This effort has been hugely productive in moving us forward. The entire methodology was robust and credible whilst maintaining a high degree of flexibility.

The graphical representation of the ‘As-Is’ and ‘To-Be’ was paramount. There has been a really positive response from the consortium who engaged in the process, providing inputs, sharing information etc. Looking forward to the next phase.

Olivier Djolian. Cap Gemini. London

I’m sure I speak for the team when I say that your effort and drive over the whole program and of course the end results were superb! We compressed time, we hit all our objectives, we increased the impact and scale of our solutions, we grew in confidence and knew how to enter the markets we needed. We Look forward to working with you further.

Mark Mamone, BT Global Professional Services. London

Group Partners has developed an extremely valuable approach to both help the customer really drive out in their mind what the real business drivers are - and then why (In our case) outsourcing may be the best alternative.

This program changed everything, we identified what was needed, what wasn’t needed and it helped us accelerate many months possibly years into the future.

Jane Kidd, Director of Global Marketing, Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Princeton. USA

The work we did together at WH Smith was really inspiring. The whole approach and the resulting frameworks/blueprints enabled us to get real breakthrough thinking around the brand, in the context of the whole business.

In any strategy work it’s critical that the Board have shared understanding and alignment about where the business is going and the key issues it faces, and that they can see the whole business context, not just the immediate problem. However, in my experience, it’s rare to achieve this. Your process delivers both.

Jo Howard. Business Strategy Director. WH Smith. London

Group Partners artfully guided us through powerful conversations that visually articulated our entire project goals, illustrated the distinct efforts essential to realize them, and revived consensus. a big thank you Jim Struby, Programs Administrator, OKDHS/Family Support Services Division. Oklahoma. USA

your work completely exceeded our expectations, it is so critical to our business and without this event we would be in the dark ages forever Jim Devlin. President. Invensys Home Controls Division. Virginia. USA

Thanks to u all for a very successful program. We like surprises and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised by it all and especially the overall outcome and the manner in which the contribution was made by the whole team. There were clearly some ‘aha’ moments for us all. And through it all we did what we wanted - we transformed the entire operation.

Brian Gouldie, MD MTN Consumer Business, South Africa.

The Customer Journeys and the connected strategy framework overall was so powerful, thank you. This work is critical to the next stage of this change in the business.

Head of Strategy. Marks & Spencer. London

The immediate reaction was one of immense relief that we could discuss the intricacy of the issues with people that could help put them straight into context and meaningful perspective. The plan rolling out now has had considerable impact - market readiness, customer awareness and general considerable buy in across the distribution network and internally.

Alan Thompson, Team Principal, Daimler Chrysler. London

It brought into sharp focus the things that we were doing just as quickly as those essential ingredients that had been overlooked.

The Frameworks became a conscious barometer for the whole business. It helped demystify many elements of the communication mix and most essentially gave credence to what was going on behind the scenes in a way that all people could understand and buy into.

The Frameworks liberated thinking and brought much needed light, understanding and finally empathy to many an erstwhile blinkered ‘Doubting Thomas’.

Alexei Orlov. Strategy and Marketing Director, Mazda Cars. Japan

HAZEL TIFFANY - HAZEL@GROUPPARTNERS.NET