Services We Provide
01
Strategy-Execution Gap Diagnostic
Gauge Understanding of and Commitment to Strategy at All Levels of the Organization
Misaligned expectations. Lack of clarity. Duplication of efforts. Friction between teams. Before designing and facilitating strategic sessions, we conduct a Strategy-Execution Gap Diagnostic to evaluate where your problems lie. Then we customize our strategic consultation specifically to resolving these roadblocks.
Key features:
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Strategic Clarity Evaluation
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Strategy Understanding
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Stakeholder Mapping
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Decision Processes
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Organizational Behaviors
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Metrics & Reinforcement Reviews
Typical Engagement Length: 2-4 Weeks
02
Cultural Transformation
Changing How You Work with Intentionality
New direction and new leadership call for new perspectives, which is what First Line Strategy brings. We guide you through change by assessing where your team is today, where it should be tomorrow, and what needs to change, structurally, behaviorally and otherwise, in order to get there.
Key features:
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Mission-Vision-Values
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Business Strategy & Planning
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Decision & Communication Norms
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Organizational Structure, Accountabilities, Roles
- Supporting Processes, Systems, AI, Technology
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Hard & Soft Metrics; Goals & Behaviors Reinforcement
Typical Engagement Length: 3+ months to generate strategic pieces with your team; regular check-ins and problem-solving for the first 18 months highly recommended
04
Leadership Alignment Sessions
Onsite Sessions Adapted to Your Team & Realities that Result in Core Agreements between and within Departments
Socialization. Role clarification. Friction resolution. We share your strategy and address the issues holding you back. We codify alignments into Core Agreements between leadership, ensure their action through Departmental Commitments (e.g. processes, time, resources), and devise a cadence for ensuring the solution is in place and functioning properly.
Key features:
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Strategy Commitment
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Core Agreements Between Departments
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Departmental Commitments
Typical Engagement Length: 2-4 Weeks
06
Strategy Cascade Process
Ladder Everyday Work Up to Company Strategy
Strategy dictates structure dictates staffing. Ideally, the Business Planning process is efficiently run and rapidly results in only necessary Restructuring, clear OKRs / KPIs, socialized Top Priorities and new Ways-of-Working. In reality, the emphasis is on Business Planning and structural changes, but departments, teams and employees struggle to understand and implement the change before the next round of Business Planning begins. This leads to employee fatigue and disengagement. For optimal execution, teams and individuals need to understand how the work they do every day ladders up to company strategy. Our Strategy Cascade Process ensures that tip-to-toe your organization is moving forward as one.
Key features:
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Strategy-Structure-Staffing Cascade
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Metrics Evaluation
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Ways-of-Working Definition
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Socialization & Alignment Process
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Performance Review Embed
Typical Engagement Length: 2-4+ weeks, depending on company size
07
Post Merger Integration Optimization and Change Management
Resolving Friction Points & Improving Ways-of-Working
More often than not, plans that looked great on paper fail in real life. Mergers. Departmental restructures and combinations. Acquisitions. More often than not, the reason for the failure is the Expectation Gap between stakeholders (i.e. the gap between what clients, managers, employees believe a group should be doing, how they should be doing it, and what they are doing) . Frictions emerge. Objectives aren't met. Unstated presumptions cause disconnects. First Line Strategy steeps itself in the purpose behind the integration, and analyze what is causing roadblocks through a combination of process and people analysis. We then work with your teams to clarify roles, redefine expectations, formulate new communication routines and smooth transitions.
Key features:
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Process & People Insights
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Friction Resolution
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Role & Departmental Redefinition
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Expectation Gap Analysis
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Ways-of-Working Revisions
Typical Engagement Length: 2-8+ weeks, depending on scope
08
Behavior Change & Operationalization
Defining What High Performing Means to Your Organization and How to Embed It in Everyday Work
Growth often calls for different behaviors. New behaviors take nurturing. We identify the behaviors to be modeled and instilled based on your company's strategy, implementation roadmap, norms and values. We socialize those behaviors to your employees. We help them to understand how to demonstrate those behaviors in their everyday. We work with your company to incorporate measurements into operational plans, existing pulse surveys and KPIs so that all can see the progress.
Key features:
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Mission, Vision, Values Assessment
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Core Behavior Identification
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Communication & Socialization Plans
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Pulse Surveys
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KPI and Annual Review Guidance
Typical Engagement Length: 2-8+ weeks, depending on scope
09
Measurement & Reinforcement
Focusing Your Organization on the Metrics and Behaviors that Lead to Desired Outcomes
We focus organizations on outcomes. With leadership, we define the ways in which departments and teams are accountable for those outcomes. We codify these expectations as measurable business performance -- in terms of financial and strategic results, and supporting behaviors. We set up programs and cadences for progress checks and annual reviews so that your organization doesn't get distracted.
Key features:
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Milestones, Goals & Measurements
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Core Behavior Identification
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KPI and Annual Review Guidance
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Interventions When Progress is Stalled
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Progress Check Cadence
Typical Engagement Length: 2-8+ weeks, depending on scope
10
Ongoing Strategic Consultation
Strategic Support for More Systemic Issues
For clients in a constant state of change -- high growth, frequent leadership rotations, record number of acquisitions or restructures -- First Line Strategy offers ongoing, retainer based support and / or longer engagements with broader scopes.
Key features:
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Executive Facilitation
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Dedicated, On-call Team
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Regular C-Suite Updates
Typical Engagement Length: 6+ months
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Strategy-Structure-Staffing Cascade
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Growth Hacking
Typical Engagement Length: 2-6+ weeks, depending on team size, business or problem complexity
05
Business Planning Sessions
Concrete Plans in a Concentrated Period of Time
Our facilitators are business and P&L owners, able to initiate critical conversations around financial, market, opportunity and capabilities conversations. We drive your team to define their ambition, articulate the major initiatives involved to achieve that ambition, and the trade-offs and investments that must be made to get there. With your leaders, we put a stake in the sand with the expected ROI and the time it will take to achieve it. By the end, you will have a well-laid-out, concrete, measurable plan.
Key features:
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Annual Planning
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Long-range Planning
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Portfolio & Project Prioritization
03
Strategic Executive Retreats and Key Business Question Facilitation
Customized, Guided Sessions to Focus Your Team
Our Strategic Executive Retreats and our Strategic Facilitation Sessions around Key Business Questions are designed to result in shared purpose, clear goals and aligned action plans. These sessions are purposeful, serious and require thoughtful planning in order to engineer the conversations that result in key decisions and core agreements. While we naturally incorporate team building activities, the tone and methodologies are action-oriented.
Key features:
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Decision-Producing Session Design
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Aligned Outcomes
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Smart Use of Limited Executive Time
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Business Planning
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Executive Facilitators Guiding Candid Conversations
Typical Engagement Length: 2-12 Weeks, depending on session / retreat length, number of participants, scope / number of key business questions, and whether or not First Line Strategy also will handle meeting logistics