Why Bridges?
Contents
I. The Bridges Unusual Selling Proposition (USP)
II. Consider Bridges Executive Coaching when . . .
III. A miniscule strategy coaching firm versus . . .
1. A mammoth consultancy
2. A boutique consultancy
3. A generalist executive coaching firm
IV. Points of Departure
A. Set smart goals
B. Be cogent! The 5 C's of Strategy
V. Bridges Guidelines
A. Vision, Mission and Ethic
B. Eminent Referrals
C. Strategy Metaphor
Appendix: Information Overload - A Bridge Too Long?
I. Bridges Unusual Selling Proposition (USP)
• Results based fees.
• One client per industry.
• The Bridges guarantee.
II. Consider Bridges Executive Coaching when. . .
Bridges clients, primarily CEOs or entrepreneurs, meet three conditions for an executive coaching query:
1) I have a distinct, immediate and on-going business problem or opportunity. The time frame ranges from immediate (a week to a month), short (one to six months) to medium (six months to two years). Results with a long-term impact (three years and thereafter) are wanted.
2) I am not particularly interested in conceptual advice as a stand-alone. I need to see how a solution or strategy will work step-by-step to deliver results.
3) An executive coach should be the catalyst to our firm taking action decisively.
To summarize, I want straight shooting - auf gut deutsch, unverblümt - with the kind of results that warrant premium pricing.
III. A miniscule strategy coaching firm versus. . .
1) a mammoth strategy management consultancy? (As of 2010 the preeminent "Big Three" of McKinsey, Bain and BCG respectively had staffs of ca. 8,700; 4,800; and 2,800.)
An obvious, albeit not very good, answer is the assumption that the tiny firm will cost a correspondingly tiny fraction of what a giant consultancy would charge. That can be 100,000€ a week! The better answer is given in (3) parts (a) and (b) below.
2) one of the smaller boutique strategy consultancies?
These have less aggressive pricing than the "Big Three," but what really count are the results, the price/performance ratio. Furthermore a consulting team and an executive coach are not necessarily mutually exclusive.1 In fact, they may well be complementary.
3) a generalist Executive Coaching firm?
a) the short answer
With "results based billing," "one client per industry" and the Q3 methodology we strive to have the best price/performance ratio for strategy executive coaching in the profession.
b) the medium answer
For the medium length answer, peruse the website and view the two minute Bridges USP Video.
c) the long answer
Read some of the chapters on the subpages to get a better idea of this website's content. Be sure to view The Ant Fable with Happy End for a smile. Examine the websites of other executive coaching firms. Consider their strengths and weaknesses in comparison to those of Bridges.
After this preparation, return here and take three steps, each one of them a long stride.
- Stride one is to read the next section, which discusses the setting of SMART goals. Decide on the goals and make a preliminary determination of the Key Factors for Success (KFS) for strategic issues at your firm.
- Stride two is to go to the first FAQ "Ein Coach auswählen HOW" (how to select an executive coach), with the answer given in English.
- Stride three is after preparing your questions accordingly to schedule exploratory consultations with your shortlist of coaching firms.
IV. Points of Departure
A. Set SMART Goals!
"It´s hard to get there from here if you don´t have a destination."
Goals should be SMART:3
Specific Strategic - goals should generate
Measurable Momentum - and include several
Achievable Alternatives - as well as negotiating
Realistic Reconciliation - of differences with
Timely Tenacious - monitoring and follow-up.
One can re-order the SMART acronym and change "timely" to timed (i.e. with deadlines) for Timed RAMS for a better sequence with which to set goals. The M is critical: "What gets measured, gets performed." Beware of goals that are Achievable and Measured Specifically but not Realistic. These are goals that are a low priority, or face more resistance than is worth overcoming. An excellent one-page guideline has been written by Andrew Bell: "10 Steps to Setting SMART Objectives".
The devil is in the detail of the six "W´s:" Why What should be done, Where and When, by Whom, with which Wherewithal.
B. Be cogent! The 5 C's of Strategy
• Common sense: use it
• Concise: without superfluous detail
• Cost-sensitive: containing costs over time
• Coherent: logically consistent
• Communicated: at all levels of the corporation
The five C´s in turn may be compressed into one single potent word, viz. COGENT. The definition from Webster's Third is (italics added):
1: having the power of compelling or constraining the actions of management and the workforce
2: appealing persuasively to the mind or reason to those within the company, to the customers, to suppliers and to the financial press
3: being pertinent, concise and timely; to the point and relevant, hence able to accommodate change, flexible.
V. Bridges Guidelines
A. Mission, Vision and Ethic
These are concisely treated in section (3) at "Über uns und die USP." We intend their being taken seriously.
B. Eminent Referrals
If we do not think we can help you, we will tell you so, and try to refer you to someone who can. The common denominator to these referrals is a passion to deliver value, driven by creativity and high energy.
C. Strategy Metaphors
These metaphors range from the ant and the grasshopper (Aesop, Greece, ca. 600 BC) to the cash cow and the dog (Bruce Henderson, BCG, 1970) and the hedgehog and the fox (Jim Collins, Good to Great, 2001). To hold your interest, to make the -- sometimes demanding -- content more memorable, and to have some fun with the writing, this website contains quite a metaphorical menagerie.
4
Elephants slip and slide across an icy bridge. Underneath it are a leaping goldfish and the circling fins of, what, friendly dolphins or menacing sharks? Eventually the bridge is crossed, bit by bit, by a veritable Noah´s Ark ensemble. Besides elephants, travelers include a lion, cow, dog and owl. They are accompanied by an insect contingent, on the one hand, of up-beat brightly colored ants, bees, butterflies, cicadas and dragonflies; on the other hand, of dark colored, gloomy, cockroaches, flies and spiders, cf. The Ant Fable with Happy End.
Suggestions
We welcome suggestions on how to improve content and make the site easier to navigate, more "user friendly."
Addendum: Information Overload - a Bridge Too Long?
A note to busy people, CEOs, C-level officers, senior partners, entrepreneurs, indeed to anyone who finds this "textbook website" a trifle long and, with its mixture of German and English, somewhat difficult to navigate:
Walking into the million-volume library of a world-class research university, the freshman´s eyes roll back in his head. He staggers, stumbles, and crumples to the floor. The paramedics are called and he is rushed to the hospital. "Information overload" comment the grizzled graduate students. "Some of the victims never do come out of the coma."
Graduates of elite universities are able to walk into a bookstore and stare at an offering of three or four hundred business titles without even getting dizzy. A few can even search for books and information without ill effects on Amazon. com (1,748,230 titles), Wikipedia (10,000,000 + articles in ten languages, a third of them in English), or even on www.abebooks.com (140 million books) -- as of 2010, with all three sites growing steadily.
Professors advise that the open sesame to such research is to delimit the search parameters to manageable proportions. Bridges advises: "Be selective!" Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), for example, wrote up his research in psychology in a style charitably described as leaden. Yet his work is important. To review it thoroughly, you need to go through the 53,735 pages he published in his lifetime. That is the equivalent of one hundred 530-page textbooks. Of course one would not attempt to do that in one sitting. Similarly, one would not attempt in one sitting to go through the 1000+ webpages of the major management consultancy websites, such as those of Bain, BCG or McKinsey.
In comparison with such efforts, the Bridges website is modest. It admittedly exhibits "a perilous penchant for a prolix plethora of paginal subordination with a proclivity towards sesquipedalian logodaedaly." * Nonetheless, the website is intended as a resource. It seeks to provide useful, and also entertaining, content according to the guideline of "First, provide value."
* In normal English the sentence is: "We admit that the Bridges website shows a dangerous inclination for too many wordy subpages. These show a tendency to coin long new words arbitrarily."
Hidden Agenda
Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613 -1680, not to be confused with his contemporary of the same name, a Catholic Cardinal, also French) once remarked that the wish to appear clever often hindered one from becoming so. This aphorism is worthy of note whenever there is an agenda of self-promotion (true of just about any website). Successful Germans, such as CEO´s, tend to view askance self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. Therefore we repeat to them our awareness that the Cardinal's remark applies to Bridges. „Der Wunsch, klug zu erscheinen, verhindert oft, es zu werden.“
The Donghai Bridge, second longest in the world, Shanghai2
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1 Both the coach and the consulting team are seeking to provide value to the client firm. The relationship between the strategy coach and the senior partner in charge of the consulting engagement will determine in large part whether the two do, in fact, complement one another. Some negotiations are, per force, "win/lose" rather than the universally promulgated "win/win." Similarly sometimes the choice between a coaching and a consulting firm will also be an "either/or."
2 The Donghai Bridge © Zhang, 25.06.2007, released to public domain 2008 (Wikipedia): in China it is known as the "East Sea Grand Bridge." Opened 2005, it connects Shanghai with the deep-water port Yanshan. Its length of 32.5 km (20 miles) is second in the world. (The longest is the Hanghouz Bay Bridge, also in China, opened 2008.)
3 The original acronym SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) was created by George T. Doran, 1981. A German version is (zugebeben, ein bißchen Weit hergeholt):
Spezifische Strategische - Ziele zu
Meßbarem Momentum - führend, mit
Aktionsorienterten Alternativen - mit denen man
Realistisch Reüssieren - kann, um zwar mit
Tempo Treffliche - Langzeitwirkungen zu erzielen.
4 Elephant at Kariba Lake © Miguel A. Marti, Getty Images FKF 86008253
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