Our Mars Project is a business strategy solution that enables leaders, teams and individuals to embrace, manage and benefit from change. We help you work better together to create, execute and leverage business strategies that improve your results.

What differentiates ABARIS Consulting from other management consulting firms is that we get involved and then we stay involved to ensure that you reap the benefits from your business strategy. We understand how to motivate, improve engagement and help people work better together. We know how to improve processes and skills to help your leaders and teams embrace change and get the right things done in the right order.

We design the processes, facilitate the workshops, train your people and act as your trusted advisor throughout the three stages. Each stage in logical sequence answers the questions:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where do we want to be?
3. How will we get there?

In discussion with you we clearly articulate the online project plan to guide, monitor and report on the process. Our proprietary Business Growth Assessment^© helps quickly and effectively determine “where you are now” by identifying your internal constraints and opportunities. Through a facilitated workshop with your team the implications of the assessment on your future business strategy is determined and supported. As a result, managers are engaged and committed to the need for change and understand the implications to your business strategy.

Leveraging your team’s detailed understanding of the business and the implications from the assessment your clearly documented strategy is established through facilitated workshop(s). This ensures that your business strategy is based on credible information and analysis and that your team understands and supports it. We then move beyond the creation of a great business strategy. We ensure it is deployed so you achieve a more effective business and better results. The first step is communication. Using our one-page Strategic Profile^© we help you communicate your business strategy in a way that your employees understand.

Based on your clearly documented business strategy we work with your business unit teams to establish and align goals, initiatives and relevant metrics. Then, using facilitated workshops within the action planning process we help your teams create the success indicators, tasks, leads, timelines and resources that define role clarity and build accountability throughout your business. As a result, financial implications are understood, online action plans are finalized and feedback processes entrenched. This ensures that you measure, monitor and reward the right things. It aligns operational activities with your business strategy and confirms the right things get done. Getting things done is the only way to achieve results. The outcome is that everyone understands what to do, in what order, how success is measured and clearly recognizes how their efforts tie to rewards. They are committed and become advocates for your business.

Using your documented business strategy and action plans we…

• Train your teams on improving their effectiveness and managing for results.
• Conduct annual facilitated workshops to sustain strategic alignment through review of your business strategy and deliver agreement on goals, initiatives, metrics and timelines as well as role clarity and responsibilities for the coming year.
• Provide on-going advice and guidance and track and challenge all teams through our on-line project management of your action plans.

The results…

• Employees throughout your business are more engaged and accountable and understand how their efforts align with your business strategy and tie to rewards.
• Teams clearly understand their role, how to work effectively together and how to achieve results.
• Leaders improve their ability to build and sustain employee engagement.

We leverage your employees’ knowledge of your business and help you get it done faster by supporting their effectiveness through the delivery of:

• Business Growth Assessment^©: Identifies your internal constraints and opportunities with specific recommendations.
• Employee and Management Conferences: Facilitate issue-focused workshops that define and produce recommendations to complex challenges.
• Emotional Intelligence Seminar: One-day facilitated training session to improve leaders’ emotional intelligence.
• Leadership Engagement Seminar: Half-day facilitated training session to improve the ability of your leaders to engage employees.
• Team Development Seminar: Half-day facilitated training session to improve the effectiveness of your teams.

Throughout the Mars Project we…

• Conduct assessments to help focus on the right things faster.
• Facilitate workshops, project start-ups and annual reviews.
• Document facilitated workshops and meetings.
• Train leaders and teams’ in engagement and effectiveness to manage for results.
• Monitor and follow-up on a methodical basis through our on-line project management of your action plans and provide guidance.

The logical sequence of our Mars Project imbeds critical management practices for executing effectively and ensures the right things get done in the right order. As a result, the measurable performance of your business will increase and be more sustainable.

Business Strategy Process

Throughout our Mars Project we deliver…

• An online project plan to guide, monitor and report on the process.
• A proprietary assessment that provides a fast and effective way to focus on what matters.
• Excellence in the design of processes that helps leverage the knowledge within your business to create sustainable solutions.
• Effective workshop facilitation that enables participants to engage in meaningful discussion, innovative thinking, achieve consensus and leave with a clear direction, defined roles and scorecards that are aligned with your business strategy.
• Tangible actions, accountability and processes to monitor, measure and reward getting the right things done in the right order.
• Training that builds leaders and teams’ engagement and effectiveness to manage for results.
• Better engagement so staff is more productive and applies discretionary effort to the right things.
• Feedback and guidance throughout the process.

You are best served when…

You know that our Mars Project is right for your business when you believe or come to believe that:

1. Results are more important than reports.
2. Your people possess the knowledge of your business to solve your most significant issues, and what they require is an efficient process and skilled facilitation to get there.
3. An organized and integrated solution will always achieve more than an ad-hoc approach.
4. Assessments provide a fast and effective way to focus decision making on the right things.
5. Team decision making is used when successful deployment is dependent on the understanding and acceptance of others or when the situation is sufficiently complex to benefit from multiple perspectives.
6. Skilled facilitation improves the efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of decision-making.
7. Strategy is a management process, not an episodic event and as such requires an effective process for monitoring and adjustment to remain relevant.
8. Successful deployment requires a specific set of behaviors and management practices that businesses can master to achieve competitive advantage.