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Mick Crews
Chairman Association Management Development and Education (AMED), ex HR Director Trafalgar House,
CSI have helped us produce results by linking strategy and people. Developing strategy was part of it. Building the requisite leadership skills was part of it so we understood better how to formulate strategy, create the projects that mattered most and get it rooted into our organisation. Finally changing our culture was key so we didn't get in our own way when we started implementing.
Most of all, CSI's work got to the heart of human performance and interaction. Over the last 30 years in business I've found that usually the really intractable problems are not technical but behavioural. What really makes the difference is free flow of human interaction.
CSI's work is very practical. It takes the mystery out of strategy and how people can become effective at it. It unclogs the arteries in companies rather than putting more stuff in. It deals with restraining forces that stop good ideas flowing.
It's not so much what CSI does but who these people are. CSI consultants bring an air of authority, experience and confidence in their own ability that shows up as solid not showy. They have a way of delivering that commands attention and are able to present an idea in a way that is very effective. They come across as being trustworthy. Finally one of my main reasons in working with them is that they are always inquiring and developing their work.
CSI's latest thinking on formulating and implementing strategy represents a new paradigm of doing business which has immediate face validity but I like the fact it's well researched. I would recommend that this is used as a way of looking at business. It's powerful but not complicated. If I could only give my organisation one new thing today it would be facility with CSI's tools. They commend themselves to me enormously and I've not seen them anywhere else. They are comprehensive as an intervention. If people really take them on and explore them, they would take you into all kinds of areas where you find out why things in your organisation aren't working.
Richard Manners
MD Time Warner Publishing
What we got from CSI were clear strategies and targets. A team who feel like they're a team and are now less selfish about being players together. We were already getting a tighter portfolio of writers but it was previously from an explosive team with heavy egos.
Before working with CSI our creative meetings were unproductive shouting matches, sixteen people all shouting at once killing each others ideas. Now it's 'night and day'. Initially we worked a lot more on the strategy and vision for the company than I expected. But then I was also surprised how CSI got the 'creatives' to take on the discipline of changing their style and the structure of working on specific challenges.
At first, I asked Mike at CSI why do you have to involve all of my company. He even included the receptionist! I didn't understand at first, but I saw afterwards that they had to own our future as well as much as I did. They had to feel part of it."
Mike Curtis
Head of Global Consulting Group BP
CSI are not really consultants in the traditional sense, rather they are coaches in the key aspects of making strategy happen, of improving performance through managing change in business. Over the last few years we have been engaged with transforming our company and looking for new ways to be increasingly effective. CSI have challenged our thinking throughout that process and made an unreasonable commitment for us to raise our performance beyond what other consultants and ourselves considered achievable by conventional standards. In this respect they are more like co-leaders and partners than consultants. We've had a number of successes that have generated billions of dollars and whilst we're still on the way, CSI have played an important part in our progress to date.
Steve Spurgeon
BP Global Consulting
I soon realized that our original efforts would never work in the time we had. We had to win over business unit leaders and their 65,000 staff to take on procurement as a fundamental way of doing business rather than a back office function.
We were targeted to achieve $1b of savings in just 18 months. We called in CSI to work with us on three critical areas - enlisting the hearts and minds of our people to a new way of working, creating the strategic imperatives that would meet our numbers and implementing these imperatives in the face of initiative overload and scepticism.
What was most striking was how CSI helped us marshal our staff around these new precepts and ways of working. We ran a series of roll out sessions and introduced CSI's breakthrough principles. During these sessions wave after wave of our people created their view of the future direction and imperatives once we had outlined the challenge. Once people got clear that we trusted them and we believed they could contribute, they went way beyond what we expected. In the end we produced $2b in savings in 21 months.
Global Head of Management and Organisational Development International food retailer
CSI don't consult in the usual sense. They design and deliver programs of training and coaching using our most pressing issues as the live material to work with and move forward. They work hard to grasp all of our most complex commercial and people issues. The effectiveness of their work in implementing strategy in my view is unparalleled.
Robin Dickie
COO Barclays Retail (previously COO WH Smith)
CSI provides both processes and an insight into strategy and people dynamics but with a clear focus on results.
There are very few consultants who are responsible for my income stream and also are willing to participate physically and financially. CSI are leaders, not really just advice givers; you don't consult in the traditional sense - you work alongside me. Less about theory more about results.
Whilst there's a clear structure to their work, we often found ourselves rewriting work sessions in the light of the conversations we has just had as a team. I was quite comfortable with this. It demonstrated CSI were had the kind of awareness and flexibility we needed.
Unlike most consultants CSI provide hard tangible techniques to engage people and produce results. Their style is "Use us when you want to". They don't over sell.
- You can't tell the difference between CSI and other firms without big results to play for. Unless there's a sizeable, noticeable gap - don't expect to see what makes them distinctive.
- Before CSI work with you they make an agreement up front that you can say anything to each other. It means you can get to the heart of issues much quicker especially when it concerns your own effectiveness.
- Unless there's a commitment to learning from the client, you won't get the best out of CSI.
Karen Feenstra
Head of consulting Damovo (previously Ericsson)
I had a team of twelve. Of the twelve involved in this strategy project, I knew one of them reasonably well, but had no previous relationship with the other eleven. Our business required us to generate $18 million of new services business in six months from scratch, a very unreasonable request, as the business was already selling $180 million of products a year, with a sales force of over 60, and there were only twelve of us.
While sceptical, the challenge was accepted, and the training got underway to arm us for what was ahead. CSI's training taught us to stand for our colleagues, to do all we could to ensure our team mates were a success, and whether through their successes or our own, to ensure that the team won through.
Now, this may seem like a team building exercise carried out by countless others. It was not. This training in strategy, values, practice and application had such a profound effect on me and my team mates, that our very language changed; we stood for each other every moment of every day. We ceased to be colleagues and became close friends, in an exceptionally short space of time. If help was needed, there was always, always, someone on hand to get past the problem. Whilst working in an office our little group was fast getting a reputation as a vibrant, fun place to be around. In a short space of time, other members of other teams were positioning themselves within the building to be nearer our team. It was inspiring.
The team then began to look across the business, to ascertain other areas in which it could have a positive effect. Intervention was a mantra, and nothing was allowed to get by the team that they felt didn't meet the expected standards. This in particular amazed me, as the employees within the business (myself included) had been somewhat indifferent about areas of the business that didn't appear to have a direct impact on their own roles.
By the end of the six months, we succeeded in our quest. We met our targets and in addition, won the largest telecoms project in the UK in 2002, identified and built a relationship with a powerful partner and increased the pipeline of global opportunities for the next year by $40m. The team had built a reputation of winning, a 'can do, will do' team. This was remarkable, especially since the initial mood was scepticism and doubt from the rest of the business. I witnessed individuals noticeably grow in stature and confidence. We had become far more purposeful, focused and effective, and along the way, achieved in revenue what the others said was impossible."
Bill Warner
VP IBM CEO Enterprise Management Systems
What I admire most about CSI and the work they did for us was their ability to reach the hearts of the people on the team. They can get to the heart of the matter fast. They get their points made, and people get to see for themselves what's in the way of being effective.
Carl Weldon
VP Manufacturing Warner Lampert Pharmaceuticals
I have listened to many consultants who were not in the least bit effective about what they had to say - how they thought they could get me to be enthusiastic was beyond me.
Everyone who was involved in the process with CSI was impressed with their consultants' knowledge, communication skills and mostly their enthusiasm. That was the vehicle to get the message out that this team was 'in' and the culture around here was going to change.
Ted Soujourner
VP Sales, Schering Plough
CSI's experience and powerful presentation of their implementation programs as well as their knowledge led us to see what was needed to interact with our new people, our managers and our customers. In a nutshell, CSI taught us how to better communicate and to work as a team. Moreover, I could translate CSI's teaching into my own life and consequently to being a better manager.
