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Whitewater Consulting - Invest NI Supplier of Business Improvement Services

Whitewater Consulting was thrilled to hear they were recently successful in being appointed as a supplier of Business Improvement Services for client companies of Invest NI. Whitewater were one of only two organisations to be appointed under all three service areas of this agreement:

· Business Direction

· Process Services

· People Solutions

This work will make a significant contribution to delivering Invest NI’s mission to:

“To deliver expertise and resources to accelerate the creation and growth of businesses committed to, and capable of, being entrepreneurial, innovative and international”.

Further details of the services areas are outlined below or for further details contact either Terry Denny or John Mackel at Whitewater Consulting:

02890 618 067, terry@whitewaterconsulting.com, john@whitewaterconsulting.com

Business Direction

Working in partnership with Lean Business Systems, we offer a Business Direction Service that can be used with other Invest NI company Capability Development offerings. We specifically offer business direction services in the following:

1    Reviewing and developing strategic direction

2    Reviewing and developing the business model

3    Identifying and developing product/service required by customers and business USP

4    Identifying and expanding market niches

5    Expanding channels to market

6    Defining key markets and geographic coverage and developing/ implementing plans to exploit them

7    Determining methods to maintain market position

8    Focusing on attracting new customers and securing repeat orders

9    Identifying and embedding use of key reporting data in a business

10    Management style used in the company

11    Culture change and people transformation

Process Services

We specifically offer process services to meet the following aim: “To enable companies to improve profits through sustainable improved internal and external business processes across their value chain (supplier-customer) whilst ensuring that the process changes help the company to achieve their strategic objectives in the long-term and give them operational competitive advantage, e.g. Cost (or value for money), Quality, Speed, Flexibility and Reliability.”

Relevant service areas include:

· Workplace organisation and layout;

· Waste elimination;

· Elimination of process defects;

· Overall Equipment Effectiveness and planned preventative maintenance;

· Quality management;

· Management of materials flow and supplier relationships.

People Solutions

The purpose of the People Solutions service is to improve organisations competitiveness by maximising people engagement and contribution to business success. We provide services in:

1 Attracting and selecting the right people
2 Getting the most from your people

Exciting Personal Development Opportunity - Local Government Staff Commissioner Development Centres

Local Government Staff Commissioner have contracted Whitewater Consulting to design and deliver a series of Development Centres for Senior Level Staff. Against the backdrop of RPA, these development centres provide an exciting personal development opportunity for local government staff who aspire to progress to Assistant Director level or higher.

The development centres are running from Autumn 2008 until February 2009. There are three planned Development Centres and places will be limited. So if you are interested please register your interest and we will make sure you receive information closer to the time.

For more information please contact Eimear Hillen at Whitewater Consulting eimear@whitewaterconsutling.com or on 90 618 067

What is a Development Centre?
A development Centre is a similar experience to an Assessment Centre but with a much stronger developmental focus. You will have an opportunity to go through a series of exercises that simulate the demands of a senior level manager in local government. However, in a Development Centre there is no question of pass or fail but rather a focus on how you can optimise you strengths to improve performance. Most importantly you will get feedback on your performance throughout the day and following the Centre a detailed one to one feedback session which you can build into your personal development plans for the future.

What are the benefits of taking part?

· The Development Centres are a unique opportunity for staff in these senior positions to have a chance to take part in a powerful personal development and career planning tool that will equip them for the inevitable challenges that the implementation of the Review of Public Administration will deliver.

· Research and practical experience demonstrates that Development Centres are a very powerful tool for achieving behavioural changes and enabling participants to identify important personal developmental goals.

· The experience of attending a Development Centre is very similar to an Assessment Centre and therefore is excellent practical experience if you have to attend Assessment Centres in the future as part of a recruitment exercise for a senior position.

· There will be ongoing learning throughout the day. You will receive feedback and coaching following each of the exercises so you will be learning while doing.

· Following the Development Centre you will have a one to one feedback session with an experienced consultant. This is an excellent opportunity to get in depth feedback against core competencies and discuss and clarify your personal development goals.

Recent Conferences

Whitewater Consulting have recently been involved with two high profile conferences:

The SOLACE Annual Conference

The 2008 ROI Global Conference

The theme for the Solace Annual Conference took place from 7^th – 9^th October 2008 in the Belfast Waterfront. Whitewater Consulting were a proud sponsor for this event, with the outside back cover of the conference handbook.

A wide range of policy issues central to the challenges facing UK local government and society as a whole were captured at this conference. By exploring local government’s unique role in generating more prosperous and cohesive places, the conference contributed to some of the most important public policy debates in the UK. The issues surrounding prosperity and place were debated at the conference through a selection of plenary workshop and discussion sessions. There was plenty of time for networking with colleagues and exhibitors, and a full programme of social events!

The 2008 ROI Global Conference was hosted at the Royal Marine Hotel, Dunlaoighre, Dublin, Ireland from 8 – 10 October. Some of the world’s most influential experts in human capital measurements attended, in addition to the global ROI gurus Jack and Patti Phillips and Gerry Doyle of the Impact Measurement Centre.

John Mackel, Whitewater Consulting Director was a speaker, sharing his experience of implementing ROI projects.

Team Complete Belfast City Marathon!

The Whitewater Consulting Team successfully completed the 2008 Belfast City Marathon. The team completed the relay in 4:29:31 and came in an impressive 1157^th place! What seemed ambitious only a few months ago was achieved in style on the day with all team members putting in an impressive performance.

The team ran in aid of Northern Ireland Hospice and would like to thank everybody for their help and support - we raised £869.88.

The team is now resting and contemplating its next challenge!
The team at the finish!

Motivation of others signals a job well done

As a consultant, Sharon Douglas advises organisations on how to move forward and improve their performance. Here she tells NIGEL TILSON how it's really satisfying helping companies to come up with real and practical solutions to problems.

THE POST : Business psychologist and consultant, Whitewater Consulting.

THE POSTHOLDER : Sharon Douglas.

What does your job entail?

I'm an occupational psychologist and I have been working as a consultant for about 10 years. Previously I worked as a training manager.

Whitewater is a provider of organisational development solutions within Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. It offers change management consultancy services to the public and private sectors.

In other words, we provide practical assistance to companies and organisations to help them improve performance.

This usually involves visiting companies to look at the goals they want to achieve and working out how they can develop the capability to get there.

We work with them to improve their people and processes and to challenge their thinking on how the organisation is designed, built and run.

In reality, this covers a wide range of work, such as strategic planning sessions and leadership programmes or designing assessment methods for selecting people for key posts in the private, public and local government sectors.

We tend to bring practical solutions based on leading edge products.

What types of people are there in the Whitewater team?

We have a team of 10 people plus eight associates. We are all highly qualified professionals.

Typically we are occupational psychologists or have a post grad or professional qualification, such as membership of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

More importantly, we also have strong business backgrounds. It's a very collegiate atmosphere - we work together on solutions. Sometimes it's difficult to get a word in edgeways, at least that's what some of the others say when I'm involved.

We recently achieved the Investors in People award and the assessor commented that we were "an example of a team working at its best".

We all work very hard but also have fun. That's one of our core values. Actually, the qualities are more important than the qualifications; we have core values that people try to work by.

You also need to be good at multi-tasking, juggling lots of different projects and working with a broad range of people.

Practically, what's a typical day like for you?

It sounds like a cliché, but no two days are the same. A lot of the time I'm out with clients doing consulting work.

This can vary enormously. It could involve running a workshop, for example, or a coaching session with a manager. Often it means fighting with planes and trains to get to client sites.

At other times we will be working as a team on projects such as assessment or development centres.

These usually involve four or five of us working together over a period of a day or two, which is great as there are times when we don't get to see each other.

We also have project teams for our various products and meet regularly to plan and review how we are doing against our organisational strategy.

In addition, each team member is responsible for service innovation in particular areas, which means keeping up to date with reading and research projects.

What is particularly enjoyable about your work?

It's really satisfying helping organisations to come up with real and practical solutions.

I personally get a real buzz in seeing clients moving forward and really improving their results.

Part of the work also means that we are helping to improve the quality of people's working lives, which really appeals to me.

I really enjoy the variety.

One day I can be in a hotel facilitating a strategic planning session, while the next day I can be in an old track suit out in a forest facilitating a team-build.

There is no other job I can think of where each day is so varied. It certainly isn't boring.

What, in your view, is the biggest impediment to organisational success?

Poor leadership. It impacts on the whole character of the organisation.

As soon as you meet the head of an organisation you get an idea as to how successful it is likely to be.

People in organisations perform best under the direction of a good leader - someone with a vision for the future who involves their people and who does what they say they'll do.

But that's a significant challenge in most organisations.

We have found that using 360-degree feedback and coaching can be really powerful tools for helping people to develop in this area.

You mentioned management development. What, from your experience, makes the difference between a mediocre manager and an excellent one?

A lot of managers focus on efficiencies rather than making their teams effective.

Really good managers, on the other hand, have a very clear focus on the results they want to achieve. They also have an ability to inspire people to give more than the bare minimum.

We are currently delivering programmes that help to address these issues across a range of industry sectors, including IT, pharmaceuticals, financial services and the hospitality sector. Generally these include training modules and coaching sessions.

A more innovative approach to management development that we are using with several clients involves managers participating in a range of business simulations during a two-day programme and then getting feedback and coaching to enhance their competencies.

As a Chartered Institute of Management-accredited centre, we can also accredit programmes; management qualifications are important to some clients.

Consultancy can demand long hours; do you have a work-life balance? If so, what's your secret?

Work-life balance is a very important value to our team but also an extremely challenging one to achieve.

We tend to work on a peaks and troughs basis. We are expected to work very hard but when it's not quite so busy it's fine to take a Friday afternoon off; this is the accepted norm in our team.

Personally, with three young kids, it's very important to spend time with them, especially since our house has turned into a menagerie of pets over the years.

Along with watching rugby and mini football, work-life balance becomes essential.

What are your plans in Whitewater for the future?

I want to be part of the growth plans that we have for the business and to develop the opportunity to provide our services in GB and Europe.

As a business we have developed a reputation for providing new products and services that deliver results and we plan to continue to do this and I want to be part of this exciting future.

Our work in providing assessment and development centres has grown significantly in the past few years and we also expect that to continue.

In addition, we are already doing some international work on some of our products and expect to have some more travel in the future.

Personally, I'd like to keep on working with a great group of people, doing a job that I thoroughly enjoy.

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