Corporate LifeCycles Network Inc.

Lifecycle Assessment Workshop

From 1999 to 2006 the average tenure of departing chief executive officers in the United States declined from about 10 years to slightly more than eight. Although some CEO’s stay a long time, a lot of them find that their stint in the corner office is remarkably brief. In 2006, for instance, about 40% of CEO’s who left their jobs had lasted an average of just 1.8 years according to the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Tenure for the lower half of this group was only eight months. Some of these short-timers were simply a poor fit and left of their own accord, but many others were ushered out the door because they appeared unable to improve the business’s performance. Nobody these days gets much time to show what he or she can do.

It is clear then, that within a few months at most, incoming CEO’s and general managers must identify ways to boost profitability, increase market share and overtake competitors. But they cannot map out specific objectives and initiatives until they know where they are starting from. Every organization has its own unique set of issues and accurately assessing these is the only way the management team can begin to know where to focus its performance improvement efforts.

HBR February 2008

We believe that sustainable change can only be achieved through a genuine understanding of the real issues facing an organization and that the bigger the challenges you are facing, the more energy your organization will require to address those challenges.

For many of our clients, our Lifecycle Assessment Workshop was the “breakthrough” event that precipitated wide spread dissatisfaction with the status quo and created the will and commitment required to sustain large-scale change.

It is for this reason that we begin many interventions by bringing together a team from your organization to conduct this assessment. This fast paced highly interactive 2-day session is designed to achieve the following four objectives:

Objectives of a Lifecycle Assessment Workshop:

Perform a detailed identification and analysis of the major areas for improvement within all parts of the company.

Assess the organization’s lifecycle position. If “growing” are there abnormal problems which may threaten the organization’s survival? If “aging” what are the aging factors that need to be addressed for the organization to regain its vitality?

Legitimize the need for change and move “ownership” for action from 1 or 2 visionaries onto the energized shoulders of all the workshop participants.
Develop a high level game plan for getting the organization to PRIME, the optimal stage of the lifecycle.

"When you haven’t been involved in a particular business for very long -- there is no way you will ever get a better return for two days’ worth of effort, in terms of understanding your business and its issues, than by going through a Lifecycle Assessment Workshop"
Mike Tansey
CEO
Thomson Scientific and Healthcare

"I like the way we got the real issues out on the table. It focused us in a unified way on attacking problems instead of symptoms – or each other"
Rick Noble
CEO
Micromedex

Click here to learn more about our Lifecycle Assessment Workshop