Newsletter
July – September, 2016
A Posteriori
Research | Analysis | Integrity
Volume 1 | Issue 1 July – September, 2016
Interview with the
CEO
In our Next Issue:
Thriving in the new
normal
Building a creative
economy
Improving corporate
citizenship in SMEs
We are pleased to introduce our first quarterly newsletter. We hope that our newsletters would serve as a thinking trigger for your professional journeys. We kick off our newsletter with the interview of our CEO, Gagandeep Singh and wrap it up with a photograph of our Chief Technology Officer, Sunil Kumar.
Interview: Gagandeep S Issar
Do we really need another management consulting firm?
Absolutely. I can’t think of any all-encompassing management consulting practice that is focused purely on small and medium scale businesses. Yet, 45 percent of total employment and up to 33 percent of national income (GDP) in emerging economies comes from the SMEs.Here in Canada, there are almost 1.1 million SMEs employing ~8 million people. Still, only half of the new firms survive their fifth year of operation.
(http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/financialsector/brief/smes-finance)
While top tier management consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, Bain& Company have been instrumental in improving the competitiveness and productivity of bigger businesses, SMEs usually lack the financial prowess and access to these levers of growth and productivity improvement. As a result, while some SMEs continue to leverage their existing internal knowledge for product refinement, and efficiency, they often lack the skills in exploratory learning that are crucial in continuously changing and turbulent business environment.
At GCI, We believe that every business is unique so we aim to apply rigorous research in providing an unbiased analysis of the most salient problems to our clients. We plan to work together with small to midsize businesses in developing a holistic continuum of both strategy and tactics, also providing IT support and training as needed.
Could you please elaborate on GURNOOR’s Integrated Design Framework?
The philosophical underpinnings of GIDF© lie in the works of Immanuel Kant, Herbert Simon and most recently by our own Canadian thinker Roger Martin (Roger Martin is one of my personal role models, was Dean of my MBA school and has recently been conferred with The Order of Canada, one of our country’s highest civilian honors.). Gurnoor’s Integrated Design Framework (GIDF©) focuses on applying adaptive reasoning in real world setting’s to help our client’s change their focus from ‘What is’ to ‘What ought to be’. Real world problems are unique and complex. Scientific and standard techniques alone aren’t enough in dissecting these problems into their component elements. GIDF© ensures that our clients gain a complete picture of profitability drivers in their respective industries and identify game-changing trends earlier to increase productivity, reduce costs and drive growth.
Can your models be applied to any small and medium size businesses?
Let me clarify that our models are not any standards that we aim to apply to every business problem that we encounter. These models are about more divergent and imaginative way of thinking. What we mean about providing bespoke solutions to our clients is that we analyze all the parts of their business by spending time with them, by questioning, observing, and listening. Most small and medium businesses are adept in capitalizing on their own learnings, by building on their strengths. However, it is often a challenge for these companies to confront their limitations. Prof. Malcolm Gladwell describes it as “Compensation Learning”. That is where our consultants work with our clients as an internal consultant, and as change catalysts.
What are your thoughts on the future of Canadian economy?
In a political context, President Obama made all Canadians proud with his recent comment that the world needs more Canada. In the economic context, however, we do have some work to do in improving our competitiveness. While Canada ranks 7th in the world for providing efficiency enhancing labor and goods market, higher education, technological readiness and financial market development; we still have some urgent work to improve upon our business sophistication and innovation, where we are ranked 23th in the world.Our industrial capacity utilization rate has also been sliding. Though our country is endowed with natural resources, to harness these resources productively, our companies need to allocate more budget towards R&D and in hiring the highly skilled employees. Rather than exporting unprocessed commodities, we need to move up the value chain through upgrading. Effective government policies that encourage and stimulate the companies to make such investments are needed.
The Petrochemical diversification program announced by government of Alberta is one such example at the provincial level. On a Federal level, the government has identified six areas of action viz. building a creative and entrepreneurial society, building innovation clusters, accelerating clean growth, pursuing digital developments, and improving the regulatory framework. All these initiatives will require a sustained investment in both physical and human capital. It’ll be interesting to see the policies in the coming future that promote these well-defined themes, including promoting on the job skill training by Canadian private sector.
What are some of the challenges that you foresee in building your consulting practice?
In my opinion, most of the smaller consulting practices fail due to two reasons. First, due to inconsistent delivery of results as the company grows. This is largely due to inability of smaller consulting practices to attract and retain the right mix of consultants. Every consulting company is vying for a similar skill set and you are battling formidable foes with stellar reputations in consulting business. Second, boutique consulting firms are so focused on getting new clients that they tend to reduce their efforts in research.
We are cognizant of the fact that economic rents of our efforts would dwindle if we do not invest in R&D, training and education of our consultants. We plan to form research partnerships with top universities of the world. This should also help us in attracting the right talent and keeping them enthused.
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better” Albert Einstein Our Partner and Chief Technology Officer Sunil K in the tranquil environs of Lake Louise
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