"We don't give these guys the easy things to do . . ."

A number of years ago, my CEO used the above phrase to introduce our team to the Chairman of his Board. While not scripted, his comment gave me valuable insight regarding the value we brought to his business. He went on to say that "when it comes to the most complicated of our strategic initiatives, especially those that are hugely transformational, this team allows the business to keep moving by tackling the big one-time changes that we're just not good at, driving collaboration across the company, and providing me with the visibility we need to assure success."

Today at ESG, that CEO's description describes our value proposition. Our clients know their business, they've got great people and understand their strategy, but if extensive transformation needs to happen, they tell us they "just don't know where to start and for that matter, who can do the work?" Making strategy happen has been especially challenging over these last few years of economic turmoil, when many large projects and associated initiative resources have been jettisoned, and leadership is already stretched to the limit with its focus on operational execution. Couple those factors with a relative level of inexperience in strategy execution and the disruptive effect of change on a company can be huge or alternatively the strategy remains unexecuted.

At ESG, we view ourselves as experienced practitioners --"specialists"-- when it comes to executing complex business transformation initiatives (or strategy). Our people have owned these transformational initiatives from the inside of large companies. They've owned the P&L's impacted by them. And they know their way around the boardroom and have managed the expectations of senior executives.

We're proud to have worked with more than a dozen firms over these last three years at ESG, and are excited to continually broaden our scope of experience. If your firm is focused on complex integration, consolidation, sales force effectiveness and improving your overall customer experience (and we're willing to bet that none of those are "easy things"), we'd love to explore ways we can help make your strategy happen.