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| Welcome to our Library of Articles. You are welcome to use this material for your own organization. If you use it publicly or for other peoples' organizations, we ask that you credit InterLINK Management Consulting in writing and note the URL for this site: www.InterLINKBusiness.com. How InterLINK Management Consultants strategic planning process played a major role in the growth and profitability of L.B. Foster. Read more How InterLINK Management Consultants survey process was instrumental in RedStone Highlands successful expansion. Read more. Executive Coaching as a Business-Builder Companies grow by a combination of sales increases, acquisitions and support from the internal capabilities. Most companies manage their internal capabilities well enough with respect to matching production to sales. They do less well in developing leadership skills and organizational systems necessary to effectively manage the increased complexity brought on by growth. Why 70% of Mergers and Acquisitions Fail, and Why This Doesn't Have to Happen to You It's a fact: most business acquisitions and mergers fail. Management desires the gains that consolidation and economies of scale should bring, but in fact the great majority of M&As-across all industries-do not live up to their promises. CustomerLINK: Building Extraordinary Customer Service From the “Inside-Out” Creating excellence in customer service from the "Inside Out" builds a successful sales and supply chain. Open Space Technology is a process that enables people, in any kind of organization, to create inspired meetings and events. Over the last 20 years it is clear that Open Space, as an intentional leadership practice, can create inspired organizations where ordinary people work together to create extraordinary results. How Lessons from the Farm Grow a Great Organization One of our partners discovers that growing up on a farm provided time-honored principles for business leadership. In this harvest season, he offers three real-life lessons in leadership. Optimizing Business Performance This is our model for how it "all comes together". It also serves as our "practice model": how we work on client projects. It is the basis for InterLINK, and for good leadership in general. Better, Cheaper, Faster: Redesigning the Sales Lead System This article originally appeared in the Fall 1998 issue of the Quality Management Journal. It was written by Dan Stowell. Reprinted by permission. Tapping Into People: How One Company Involves its Employees in HR and Business Strategy This article presents a case study of an innovative and holistic approach to employee satisfaction and strategic planning. It was a feature article in the April 2000 issue of Quality Progress magazine. Face-to-face presentations are essential to advancing a career. Here's how to present your message with confidence, passion and power. Eight Steps to Networking Success Networking is a proven marketing technique for advancing business agendas, and individual careers. Even so, many people attending social and business events are uncomfortable networking, or question its value. In the past, employee loyalty was assumed; people stayed in their jobs for decades. Today, employees expect to change jobs several times during their work life. The cost to employers is enormous. Disney Worlds' Magic Kingdom…or a Mickey Mouse Company? Making Change Work: How to Make Sure that Strategic Planning Fails Strategic Planning Made Simple Do you have a plan that guides your day-to-day operations, or are your plans gathering dust on the shelf? Have you involved the entire organization in goal-setting, or do you send your managers to weekend retreats to do the organization's thinking? Understanding Workplace Change in the Pittsburgh Region Planned Picking of Providers Prevents Problems When Dick Headley was on the provider side of the table, marketing non-degree management education for Pitt and then at Babson College, a common complaint expressed by companies was that they could not differentiate the capabilities of one business school from another. All of the brochures and other sales literature looked and sounded the same! As a result, it was difficult to do even a preliminary screen of possible providers. The Perils of Celebrity Sweepstakes Beware of Collusive Client Relationships How do you Measure and Manage "People" Issues? Most of the deal-makers in a typical acquisition situation have skills outside the people area, such as financial skills, legal skills, business analysis skills, etc. Not surprisingly, by training and by inclination they might want to avoid the "messy" people issues. Having Your Own Sounding Board You have them every day. The big ones often pop up when you least expect them. They come from different members of your team. They happen outside your organization and impact it. They can be small or big. They come from the competition. They can come from another city, state or country. The federal, state and city governments produce them. Changing times reveal them. What are they? Many companies begin with a small group of individuals developing a new product or service and taking the initial risk to go into business. They succeed! Then they hire and move their best people to the challenges and rewards of pursuing sales and market share. Certainly, the daily business of marketing and expanding capacity requires persistence and creativity, but what happens to that entrepreneurial spirit that started the business? That original business idea will not last forever. Innovation doesn't always require lab coats and R&D departments, but it does require investment and a desire to return to the spirit that created your business. Managing uncertainty may sound like a contradiction, but not only is it possible to manage the risks you take - you can also reduce them. Uncertainty and the need to take risks are an inherent part of any new opportunity. In fact, it's a good chance that the degree of your risk is related to the amount of financial return you hope to achieve, as well as, the financial losses you plan to avoid. Facing risk is difficult. We can help your company move beyond the swings of adventurous risk taking and over cautiousness that result in circular arguments and indecision. Speed to Market - How Important Is It? Today, you can not read an article on NPD without emphasis on the importance of speed, promises of shorter cycle times and the need for being first to market. It would be foolish to argue about the importance of speed. It is important! But how important is it? As speed dominates today's NPD environment, more than ever, project managers need to know what the relative value of speed (or on-time delivery) is to their project. Twenty years ago, Ventana started manufacturing specialty-shaped vinyl windows for local and national window makers, and later started to make vinyl fencing and railing components. Their interest and motivation to adopt lean methods was that, over time the vinyl fencing and railing business had become an "expensive hobby". Some of the factors leading to this conclusion included excessive overtime, unorganized workflow, bottlenecks in production, and lack of production information. Profitably maintaining this side of the business required that they change how the product was manufactured. This change involved lean manufacturing techniques and 5S activities.
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