What We Do
You can buy a book on strategy. You can listen to a marketing podcast. You could purchase software to help with HR.
Where is the resource that helps you tie it all together? That's what we do.
Sky Blue Collar is a system designed to join the dots - we're in the business of organisational paradigm shifts.
How it works
The Sky Blue Collar is a six month organisational transformation process.
Beginning with your most pressing pain, we systematically address incongruence between your strategy, marketing, operations, finance, product management and technology development. You keep what’s working, but learn to (re)connect the dots to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
You’ll receive class-leading frameworks, tools and templates designed to work with each other, delivered via immersive on-site sessions, on-call remote sessions and customised videos.
The transformation is holistic, from the C-Suite to the front-line staff. It's rolled out in four pillars that scaffold capabilities over time, as outlined below.
Want to get started? The first step is to contact us. Alternatively, please continue reading below for more details.
What we are not
We're not specialists: While we have deep specialist skills, that's not our focus. In today's AI powered world, specialist knowledge is usually within reach. Instead, we focus on effective synthesis of all disciplines to help you to make a coherent and functional organisation.
We're not consultants: The vision for Sky Blue Collar is to develop your organisational capability, not display ours. We do not swoop in creating solutions that only we can generate. Instead we deliver actionable advice in a way that rewires your organisation so that you can independently create solutions.
We don't absolve: Sometimes consultants are hired to absolve leaders of decision responsibility. That's not what we do. Instead, we provide a path for organisations whose leaders seek quiet pride in accountability. We're for the organisation that wants to make a real, lasting change.
We're not a solution shop: Often consultants are engaged to solve pre-identified issues - a new product strategy, an org restructure or a retention issue. While we can tailor parts of our system to relevant topics, our focus is not limited to immediate pain. We're concerned about the root cause behind the pain and how you can develop the organisational capacity to prevent it from recurring.
Customer quotes from our pilot programs
Software Development
"The system has been extremely helpful to us. It gave us tools to tackle all the questions we face in the business.
You helped us establish a clear vision which underpins our strategic planning. From there we were able to better manage customer relationships, revised our pricing, progressed recruitment and improved the working environment.
It really, really worked."
Industrial Manufacturer
"We all speak the same language now. We understand why different departments act the way they do. Now we swarm on value, reallocating budget and resources from the under performing projects - that would never have happened before."
Technology Research
"As an advanced technology research institute we operate in a lot of uncertainty. This was the first time we balanced supportive and opposing views. We've reached a point where we can make truly unbiased observations."
Guide with a shared language of success
Kookaburras differentiate territory with their call. One kookaburra will start a low chuckle and soon their whole flock is in chorus, laughter ringing across the landscape. It's an extraordinary experience.
How well does your organisation's language reflect a differentiated strategy? Guide is process to capture your organisation's cultural decision making mechanisms and align it with a competitive strategy that makes economic sense. The secret is how to join the dots - what feels right matches what is right.
Functionally, we connect competitive strategy to marketing, organisational behaviour and business model lever sensitivity.
Subjectively, the organisation will take on a shared vocabulary that embodies a truly differentiated strategy. Decisions across the organisation are more rapid, independent, and yet more aligned - it's an extraordinary experience.
Adapt before it hurts
The platypus is a master of adaptation. To survive in this rapidly changing world you must also master adaptation.
The second pillar builds organisational capacity to sense disruptive changes and adapt in a strategically thoughtful direction.
We begin with a "thin-slice" of your organisation that follows decision-making boundaries while capturing the entire power hierarchy. This cohort receives coaching on the Adapt feedback loop, honing their skills to:
Raise and confront brutal truths while holding an unwavering belief they will prevail
Detect the frequency and nature of changes to their circumstances
Make faster, more accurate decisions and back it up with effective resource allocation
Once the initial cohort starts to shift identity - we are adaptive - they become a seed for propagating adaptive characteristics to the wider organisation.
At this point you'll begin to notice a high-trust, truth-seeking paradigm taking hold across the organisation.
Unearth root causes
Echidnas are prolific diggers. Their holes collect seeds and water, kick-starting rejuvenation. They're powerful ecosystem engineers.
By now the organisation is moving in a coherent direction, guided by deliberate alignment between emotional and strategic thinking. The organisation has seeded adaptation by learning to detect and adapt to changes in circumstance.
Phase three compounds on these results. Led by middle managers, it's time to unearth and address root causes of gaps in value generation across the organisation. World-class business school thinking is distilled into a diagnosis and treatment plan covering multiple disciplines - less throwing mud against a wall to see what sticks, more thoughtful and surgical action to genuinely solve root causes.
Unearth is a structured process to end recurrent issues and kick-start rejuvenation across your organisation.
Amplify with powerful incentives
Australian magpies collect shiny objects, they even share knowledge of fruitful encounters with each other. They're highly motivated by incentives.
If incentives were put in place any earlier you're likely to have amplified the wrong behaviour, creating more friction & unintended consequences. The first three stages systematically dealt with friction across your organisation. Now is the time to ramp-up the motivation.
In this final stage all elements come together. Sensitive levers in the business model are tied to accounting practices. Economic profit (above investor expectations and within risk tolerances) is broken down by decision areas and efficient use of capital is rewarded. Financial model flexibility is matched with the domain dynamics uncovered in the now mature practices from the Adapt principles.
The stage 4 outcome is that everyone - from the C-Suite to the shop floor - should know how their work contributes to value, what their decision areas are and how they're rewarded for making great decisions.