We aspire to work only on the highest value added portions of a client’s issues

Thus, our projects will typically take 3 to 20 days of our personal time, not 3 to 6 months of junior analysts' time. We do not seek to do any part of a project that the client organization can do on its own.

The client must always be able to trust that we are absolutely professional and objective

We can and will “call it as we see it” every time. We will state our views respectfully and professionally, but we will not refrain from providing difficult or unwelcome views just because those views might make client managers less likely to want to work with us in the future. If necessary to create an atmosphere of complete objectivity, we are willing to recuse ourselves ahead of time from any follow-on work that may result from a particular project.

The client must always be able to trust that we will provide the most rigorous thought process, one that combines the very best of consulting expertise with real world executive experience and academic research

All of our high value added work will be carried out by our principals (Kevin, Shawn, and Edward). We will not create a firm that leverages junior people by asking them to make guesses at judgments only senior people can make. We will utilize state of the art techniques, and explicitly check the literature to understand how our views fit with academic and empirical research.

We will not seek to “continuously” serve a client

We do not need to press for more work, or to suggest expansions of projects. We will suggest a project to a client only when we would personally choose to retain ourselves if we were in the client's situation.

Generating New Ideas
Integrated Agenda and Counseling
Strategy Projects
     Structuring the Approach
     Synthesizing Integrated Strategy
     Stress Testing Strategies
     Corporate Strategy

Generating New Ideas

Everyone from the CEO to the front line manager needs to produce a constant stream of good ideas—but traditional brainstorming simply doesn’t work very well. To remedy this situation, Kevin and Shawn Coyne have created a new approach, based on work begun over 10 years ago when Kevin led McKinsey’s worldwide strategy practice, called "Brainsteering" (for more information on their new book, Brainsteering: A Better Approach To Breakthrough Ideas, click here or go to www.brainsteering.com). Using this approach, we can lead client executives and/or teams to much higher levels of creativity and effectiveness over the course of just a few days—and unlike the output of traditional brainstorming sessions, the ideas resulting from a Brainsteering exercise balance creativity with hard, real-world insight to dramatically increase their odds of success.

Integrated Agenda and Counseling

For the CEO, COO, or Board of Directors, we can help pull together all of the facets that affect the direction of a company into a single, integrated agenda for the future success of the company. This agenda can involve strategy, finance, operations, organizational development, governance, and stakeholder considerations. The process usually takes between 5 and 20 days, depending on the complexity of the company and the degree to which there is a clear set of objectives ahead of time.

Strategy Projects

Structuring the Approach

Companies conducting their own strategy work often miss a number of the most important issues, or structure the work in ways that inevitably lead to missed insights or biased and unimaginative recommendations. As the creator of many of McKinsey & Company's strategy frameworks and approaches, Kevin Coyne can work with strategy teams over a 3- to 5-day period to identify the critical issues, point out the unspoken assumptions the team is making, and structure the analysis to ensure a thorough and insightful investigation.

Synthesizing Integrated Strategy

Clients often have staff people who can conduct studies and analysis and executives who can provide experience and insight. However, there is a special expertise required to take these disparate “piece parts” and synthesizing them into a coherent, integrated strategy that provides the right level of guidance, forces choices and tradeoffs among reasonable alternatives, and still meets the acid test of competition. In most cases, The Coyne Partnership can (in three to eight days) absorb the facts and points of view, and craft them into a coherent strategy that is understandable to its multiple constituents. Along the way, the process exposes any inconsistencies and/or gaps in thought that the client must address.

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Stress Testing Strategies

Just how strong is a proposed strategy? When there is much at stake, CEOs and Boards need an objective, expert mechanism for testing the likely success of a strategy, whether that strategy was developed internally or by an outside consultant. In addition, there may well be process reasons or time constraints such that the review is best done by a third party. The Coyne Partnership is uniquely qualified by our expertise and our principles (including our willingness to recuse ourselves from follow-on work) to conduct that test, which usually takes about a week. We have an explicit methodology for determining whether all of the right issues have been addressed, whether the strategy is coherent and complete, and whether it will indeed change the competitive balance.

 

Corporate Strategy

Corporate strategy (i.e., the strategy for the company as a whole, rather than for any one business within the company) is one of the toughest challenges for CEOs and Boards. Many companies do it poorly, and much of the guidance from investment bankers, consultants, and academics is conflicting and unclear. The Coyne Partnership has a clear framework for creating corporate strategies, centered on identifying the core economic logic of the client’s corporation and its consequences for the portfolio composition and configuration. This same logic also guides the roles of (and limitations on) the corporate center. Our process is structured as a series of in depth discussion with the CEO and other key decision makers (i.e., Board members and/or top executives) and involves 10 to 20 consulting days spread over one to three months.

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