Devin B. Hedge: Organizational Change Management Consultant, Executive Coach
Author: devinhedge
Devin Hedge is a change agent focused on enabling businesses to deal with complexity and changing market conditions. Devin Hedge brings almost two decades of experience working in the IT Industry in his role as an Executive Coach, Organizational Agility Consultant and Lean Product Development specialist. Devin lives in Apex, NC with his wife and two daughters. When not helping businesses change, Devin spends his volunteering to help those that are forced homeless back on their feet and back into a home. You can find Devin running, biking or hiking all over the South.
Bootstrapping a business isn’t easy. The SBA tells us that nine out of ten businesses fail within the first two years. It has been argued (lost the link) that the number is probably higher given that a vast majority of ideas never get out of the planning
Wall Street Journal (subscription required) is running an article about an attempt by several online aggregators to level the playing field in the airfare market by revealing trend information to consumers. Several sites are providing the following data for flights between two points: lowest price, average price, predicted change and a confidence level (statistical confidence) about the prediction regarding a predicted change in the price.
“Deregulation of the chicken’s side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market. Accenture, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), Andersen helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and experiences to align the chicken’s people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework. Accenture convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along with Anderson consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes. The meeting was held in a park-like setting, enabling and creating an impactful environment which was strategically based, industry-focused, and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and aligned with the chicken’s mission, vision, and core values. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business integration solution. Accenture helped the chicken change to become more successful.” (Source: Funny Management Consultant Jokes and Business Jokes)
Have you ever sat in a meeting and heard phrases like the aformentioned? If you have, big red flashing lights and screaming sirens should be going off in your mind. This isn’t a poke at Accenture. The joke’s author did that, not me. What I want to point out is, at the end of the day, if a consultant hasn’t added value to your organization, something more than a warm fuzzy feeling, you should fire them on the spot.
