On international projects and in very specific human contexts, experience, mastery of the business and a sense of humour are key elements that really make the difference in bringing teams together and achieving objectives. This is what FocusTribes is sensitive to in its selection process of consultants who join the Tribe.
Marc, an independent consultant for 8 years and member of the community for 3 years, is a perfect example. He testifies here about his collaboration with FocusTribes and in particular for one of our clients, in the health sector 👇
My name is Marc and I am an engineer by training; I started working in the 1980s on the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) project in the United States. Then I realized that this type of job was not really for me and I switched to the world of logistics. I gained a lot of experience in retail and more specifically in the luxury goods sector.
The project I am currently working on was supposed to be something very simple, namely an ERP upgrade. This upgrade was also an opportunity to change the mindset of the company. The human context is very specific: a Japanese management because the head office is in Japan, French people working for Japanese people... In the end, the human impact of this project is significant because it allowed the clients to discover and learn a lot about themselves and that's where the role of the consultant is essential. We help people to solve their problems, but we do it mainly by teaching them how to do it. This teaching helps them discover how to be different, how to work differently. Always with a result orientation, i.e. that cutover has to be done by the end of the year.
FocusTribes is made up of nothing but very professional people. It's really nice to work with them. Professionals, with a lot of empathy. The founders of FocusTribes were consultants before. They know the business; they know the consultants they work with. We understand each other perfectly and we really speak the same language, we share the same values and use the same words in the same situations. That's the first aspect that I really appreciate. The second aspect that I also really appreciate is that FocusTribes only works with experienced people who are immediately operational. When we start a new assignment, we know what we have to do, we know the business, we know how to do it, so we can focus on the two most important things in a project, in my opinion: first, the Result. And then the people, the personal relationships, the human processes, that is: who the people are and what they want. We can do this because we are comfortable with the technical part of our job which is to lead a project and manage change within the organisation.
The key difference for me is that most consultancies are only motivated by one thing and we all know it: money.
In fact, for me, there are two ways of thinking: The first is to say "I'm going to make money, whatever it takes". The second way is to say "I'm going to focus on my client's business, its results and its issues and if I'm good at what I do, I'll make money and it will come easily. This second way of doing things is the FocusTribes way, the way I've always done it personally; it's much more satisfying intellectually, and much more comfortable too. But if you choose to do it the other way round, making money for your own benefit, you won't be good at it, because you'll lose sight of the most important thing: your client.