Why Every Leader Needs an Affordable and Actionable Audit
Audits get a bad reputation in the corporate world and I understand why. They are often incredibly expensive, long-winded and end up providing vague actionless solutions that aren’t easy to operationalize.
But the audit itself isn’t the problem. The truth is, every organization needs some sort of auditing—there is no time or space for leaders in this fast-paced world to get a comprehensive read on the holistic system they are accountable for operating, an incredibly important and competitive vantage point. With more work to do and an ever and an expanding list of job responsibilities, it’s hard to find time to think, let alone see the landscape clearly.
That’s why we’ve created an affordable and actionable audit:
Our objective-based, quick-turn, lightly collaborative audits give you an outside-in-view of your challenges and opportunities across existing information, understanding, people, process, and tools. Oftentimes people come to us with a specific problem in mind—but others just want a deeper or wider understanding of their organization, department, brand or challenge to help identify and prioritize what to take on next.
What it entails:
We provide both insights AND a blueprint that leaders need to approach the unseen or slightly out of scope opportunities that exist within their roles and responsibilities. We draw clear lines between findings and recommendations when it comes to aligning their organization, marketing department or brand for more efficient and effective operations at a fraction of the cost of large consulting firms.
How we do it:
We work to understand the ambition of the leader and the organization and the challenge or barriers that are getting in the way. In order to save our partners time and energy, we usually do this in the form of a conversational discovery session—one that our partners often tell us feels like a really good therapy session.
We dig into the challenge—what we are trying to uncover or solve, against the structure which we refer to as people, process and tools. Acting almost as journalists or detectives within the system, we uncover unforeseen perspectives, barriers and opportunities that allow organizations to be both more efficient and effective. For example:
People: we help identify where roles may need to shift, cross-channel collaboration could occur, and streamline for redundancy and efficiency. Our process works to understand the impact of individual motivations alongside organizational structures. Common finding: every departmental lead is motivated by something entirely different—there is no accountability to any north star.
Process: we look at the touchpoints that exist within your process (more likely processes) to determine gaps, redundancies, collaboration and clarification opportunities. Common finding: there is a major gap between brand marketing and channel or department marketing that creates shallow, disjointed communications.
Tools: We evaluate the use and practicality of all the tools you are currently using to execute – identifying where you can streamline or adapt to create a unified, versus siloed, system. Common finding: the majority does not know how to properly use the tools they were given.
Based on what we find, we develop a prioritized and custom set of recommendations that have an immediate and appropriately sized action plan to match. Unlike other audits, these create forward motions. They move people with both excitement and clarity.
How our partners describe our audits:
“It felt like taking the blinders off.”
“Because it’s so objective and clearly actionable, we don’t have to argue about the right way to move forward.”
“The best part was the prioritization. What a relief to have someone organize my problems and then tell me exactly how to solve them.”
We’ve taken on a wide variety of challenges with our audits—everything from how we can make a brand more operational to uncovering sticking points or barriers within a marketing process or team. No matter what the situation is, we always uncover a new perspective and an actionable plan. We truly love this work and the kind of partnership it creates.
Interested? Reach out and we’ll share the most relevant case study we have for you.