Model Implementation – Four Phases

If your passion is to help leaders realize their brilliance, consulting is a great profession. What’s the difference between a subject matter expert and a process expert? The first needs to impress the client with what they know. The second needs to help the client impress themselves with their own latent knowledge by helping the client access and realize it. The fun part of getting to do and be in the second role is that you get to work with brilliant people – the Olympic champions of their field. Imagine getting to sit in on Lance Armstrong’s bike or run in Usain Bolt’s shoes? I get to experience that kind of exhilaration.

We are currently collaborating with Matt Wagner, Director of Strategy and Planning for Hewlett-Packard and his team to evaluate plausible futures as the executive team determines optimal strategic investments options. The strategy team developed a new model to guide this process. Here is an insight provoked by the process:

The implementation of a new model – for evaluation of risk, for decision making or for anything else – needs to go through four stages.

First, it needs to make sense – we need to understand it.
Second, it needs to become credible – we need to believe it.
Third, it needs to be tried and played with – we need to engage in it.
Fourth, it needs to be applied – we need to put it to practice, to use it in real time and to have it guide our decisions and the way we do business

Through the process, the model is tested, refined, improved and optimized.

© Aviv Shahar