News

A streetwise approach to strategy

Thursday 21st October 2010

Kensington Consultancy Group teams up with Leap Confronting Conflict’s young people to produce radical new workshop

Why is it that so many high quality and well researched recommendations never end up being actioned? Why are so many consultants frustrated and so much time and clients’ money wasted in turning good strategy into action? Perhaps one possible reason could be conflict that all too often exists either openly or is lurking beneath the surface.

In many industry sectors the leading players depend on the street as the creative driver of new and innovative ideas. Look at music, fashion, film, mobile technology and many others. So in a radical departure from the classic strategy implementation Kensington Consultancy Group employed a group of young people trained by Leap Confronting Conflict the UK’s leading social enterprise in the youth and conflict space to deliver a workshop for business leaders on resolving conflict.

Prior to the event which was held at leading private equity firm 3i, Kensington Consultancy Group conducted research amongst its pool of over 220 freelance consultants to understand the nature and impact of conflict on consulting effectiveness. Some 80 per cent of those participating in the survey had worked on a consulting project where conflict had had a significant negative impact on its outcome. The consequences in these situations were strategies were only partially implemented or not implemented at all (81%), slower implementation timescales (80%) and changes or reorganisations not taking place or diluted (68%). The bottom line is also heavily impacted, with poorer financial results achieved in 61% of cases.

So what can we learn from the street? To answer this question Kensington turned to Leap Confronting Conflict, a social enterprise which is achieving impressive reductions in youth offending, violence and anti social behaviour across the UK.
The workshop was led by a team of young trainers from Leap who deliver workshops and training to young people across the country in some of the most challenging environments. By demonstrating the techniques used to help young people understand the causes and consequences of the conflict through a series of highly participative exercises, the business leaders found many parallels to the business world. Through the workshop business leaders were able to reflect on their need to develop their own conflict resolution skills.
As one very senior delegate put it

“Not only was this fun, it really made me stop and think. The young people were inspiring and energising. This has made me think about the way we run strategy away days”

Samson Osinnowo, who led the workshop with Alex McKell, Ben Peterson and Sophia Hussain, said “People got into it much quicker than we thought. Although the way that people express themselves and the actual consequences may be different, so many of the issues and behaviours were the same. We have shown the Leap’s young leaders can really make a difference in business as well as in communities”
Leap’s Chairman Patrick Dunne added:

“To see our young people deliver something of such high quality and genuine value to business was tremendous. These workshops provide a terrific development opportunity for everyone involved, enhance the CVs and employability of our young people and provide good income to help us transform the lives of other young people. We would love to do more of them.”

Kensington Consultancy Group’s co-founder Sarah Thrift commented:

“The importance of finding solutions to reduce the impact that conflict has on the effectiveness of consultancy and business performance has been underlined by our recent survey results.
We love Leap’s approach and believe that their powerful techniques – that make such a big difference to young people – can also be applied in business. With 61% of consultants saying that poor financial results have resulted from conflict, we simply don’t think it is something that business can afford to ignore.”

And Dr Barbara Weiss, co-founder of Kensington Consultancy Group concluded:

“We have known Leap for while and have been incredibly inspired by the power of their techniques and the difference they have made to so many young people. This made us think why can’t this experience be applied to business.
Looking at the success of tonight, it is clear that not only has it been incredibly fun but it has also made us and many others here think more creatively about how we can improve the way we work. This is one of the reasons why we originally set up Kensington.”