We have created Kinsmark Consulting Group to provide a complex, professional and effective approach to our customers’ needs in growth management sphere.

Those of us who met new century being a middle aged person can remember a maximum discussion that started among consulting services providers at the end of 90’s. Its main idea was that consulting had perished, ineffective advice is of no value anymore, “assistant managers” have to offer new work methods, new values for overcoming the crisis. At that time we knew nothing about continuous improvement and we did not understand that it is impossible to improve a company from outside. Time passed by and life gave a reply to the question that was not asked on that days.Kaizen and improvement have come to replace consulting.

 

We had luck not only to live in global changes time, but go together with the country its way of generation of the interest to management sciences from underground press “from there” to MBA programs in our higher education institutions. We have witnessed many extraordinary phenomena: "Reengineering the Corporation" by Hammer and Champy becoming a vogue, professor Jeffrey Pfeffer’s statement that "business school is all about talking, not doing", Senge’s “penitence in his second book after the first, Rozenzweig’s revelation of Collins’s ideavirus etc.

 

And we were not just casual observers. We were involved in real business-processes of real enterprises, we held leading positions, rooted innovations, failing forward to conceptual potential we are having at our disposal now. Those of us who has devoted their lives to academical studies managed not only to find out about the latest achievements of scientific management, but going deep into it could gain recognition worldwide.

 

Our mission today is also to compose an adequate reply to socioeconomic challenge Russia has set when chose an innovative way of its development.

Strategy: establishing a new market.

We think that in modern Russia there is neither supply, no demand for business improvement on a permanent basis. There are many talks about:

- what way of development is better/more correct;

 

- what is better: Lean Production or bulk production;

 

- which theory of HR management is more congenial to Russia: Х or Y;

 

- is it possible to improve management by consulting managers;

 

- is it worth for business leaders to implement Deming's 14 points or it is just a new foreign amusement;

 

- is it possible to implement kaizen in such a way as to study just a little and not long;

 

- is it somehow possible to develop business without developing the organization;

 

- whom to learn organizational behavior from: psychologists or economists;

- how to deceive nature and learn to be a leader without being it;

 

- how to adopt world economic progress’s best methods and ideas keeping survivals of serfdom;

 

- how to make Russia a better place without changing themselves.

 

We think our strategic objective is to contribute in maturation of supply and demand.

 

Tactics:

 

- start of a unique complex-product;

 

- attraction of partners, uniting progressive thinking people, aimed at practice and profound knowledge;

 

- leadership, developing of the most effective products to a higher level.

 

Our Customer is a company that wants to develop but cannot hire an expensive professional to a position of an Organisation Development Director for a score of reasons. But top-management is ready:

 

- to gain necessary knowledge;

 

- to build a team together with a professional;

 

- to grow with our participation an Improvement functionality inside the company to pass it later on to a professional manager's hands;

 

- to make changes in fact, not in word.

 

A company has at its disposal a budget consisting of two parts: certain amounts for a salary of a development specialist (if such a specialist would be hired for a full-time employment) and an amount for implementation of development projects (e.g. organization design, restructuring, adjustment, quality management system arrangement, marketing arrangement, sales system development, change of a business model for a web-oriented one etc.). This budget is a starting point in our financial agreements with our Customer.

 

Depending on their expectations level and resources a Customer company can find one professional among us and confine itself to his services or it can invite an entire team. The second variant is highly effective while solving anti-crisis tasks. A precedent of inviting a whole consulting on a position of a top-manager was created in 1999. This experience was described in the article “A consulting team instead a CEO” in newspaper “Mir deneg” (russian - “Money world”) (Author Igor Kurnygin, № 25, 31.01.2000).

 

Development problems of companies lie on junction of such spheres as “people”, “processes”, “information technologies”. There are still few professionals on the labour market who could successfully work with these work objects and satisfy an incipient demand for developing solutions in the age of changes. Tom Peters warns: “Change or die”. Yes, but how? How can a company start to develop if it has never had either such experience or a corporate culture directed to development? Who will help it to implement development projects, who will teach to do it all by itself? Where can a company get an applicable, rather than a dilute consulting help and knowledge of how can stuff live and grow up together?

 

We are ready to give answers to heads and top-managers of sales and production enterprises, holding companies, higher education institutions, service rendering enterprises.

 

 

Our product/service is Guiding of Enterprise Growth Processes.

 

GUIDING - we work in the market of SbA* services and managerial consulting.

 

ENTERPRISE - our customers are business organizations and people who set these organizations up.

 

GROWTH - our activities in a customer’s company represent a complex of business as well as organization development tasks; adjustment, optimization, complication, extension, consolidation, getting cleverer, growing-up, continuous improvement, Improvement.

 

PROCESSES - we acknowledge systematic approach to a business organization in our work.

 

* SbA - support by action.

 

People who render such services could be called consultants (orig. from “consult”; it is not about us), begleiters (orig. Germ. “Begleiter” – companion, escort) and improvers (orig. from “improve”). All these words suppose basically different subject matter of relationships with a customer. First refers to some conversational genre, second means partial participation, third implies “full immersion” into Customer’s business, actually it means working in some certain segment instead of a Customer with the following assignment of the cultivated functionality for life-time use.This third one is sometimes called interim, which cannot be applied in our case even if we mean a start-up or a prompt solution of a certain problem. Interims often confuse their customers because, while they are actually temporary workers, they are not going to spend themselves on sometimes hard interaction with a Customer. Our point may not be irreproachable from the point of view of a balance between expenses and profit but we stay with our Customers as long as they want it and as they a ready to change, to work and to study.

 

Our product strategy is to “give a Customer a fishing rod rather than fish”. A number of our principles of relationships with Customers can be described as “Do it together with me”. After we leave a Client’s company its staff as well as top-managers can create and improve Statements and work manuals, project business-models and structures, describe business-processes, make terms of reference for automatization, segment clients, supervise dealers, fulfill marketing activity, make eventive reports by clicking a couple of buttons, work out competence models, form harmonious teams, keep strategy up to date, eliminate muda, manage sales, optimize stock – in sum they can do certain things necessary for a business not only to survive but also to grow.

 

And while these things are happening, a system of a harmonious and integral development of the company (both business and organization) is being build, gradually, from adjustment to kaizen. Strengthening of significancy, substance and influence of the general management is a key condition to guarantee irreversibility of positive changes in organization culture. We have worked out a complex of educational-practical products for leaders to solve this task.

 

 

Key competences::

 

Business:

- business modeling;

- audit, building and developing of a purchase system;

- building of an enterprise finance management system;

- business-processing;

- processes statistical control;

- corporative entrepreneurship.

 

Organization:

- organization structure;

- activity regulation;

- team puzzle-designing;

- organizational behavior;

- audit, elaboration and development of wage system;

- behavioral economics and human resource management;

- PDCA cycle;

- TQM.

 

Improvement:

- change management;

- 5S;

- self-management and leadership;

- formalization and elaboration of business-tasks;

- partnership and integration;

- audit and development of Quality Management System.

 

 

Our competitive advantages

We use the word “consulting” on our site mostly out of respect for the existing practice to call “consulting” both what specialists of conversational genre do and work of those professionals who practices support by action (SbA).  The root “consult” means consultancy. This sphere is comprehensible for us but not as attractive as SbA. Participation and co-creation as a close-knit team together with a Customer both produce a better effect on an enterprise and give much more pleasure. Fine words butter no parsnips, as is well known.

 

Not too long ago top-managers could not tell a consultant from a begleiter or improver while searching for optimal form of services. Last two words are still seldom used because the word “consulting” has firmly stuck in managers’ minds. However, many a man have learned to distinguish specialists of our professional guild and easily consume different forms of their services. Basically, difference between players in this market is based on how deep they immerge into Customer’s company. While a consultant is an analyst or a speaker working on a short-term contract basis, specialists who deal with development (of organization or business) can conclude a labour agreement with a Customer for a year or longer, as if a company hires a professional practitioner from a labour market.

 

What is characteristic for Kinsmark Group members?

1. Real experience in real sector.

 

- leading specialists work in this sphere since 1995;

- none of our field colleagues is a “chairborne specialist”. The major part of our working time we spend at Customers’ companies floor and we are dedicated to current projects with deep immersion;

- each of us loves what he/she does and has come to this business not accidentally.

 

 

2. Personal management experience

 

- many of our specialists are practicing managers, have their own businesses, are members of executive boards in another companies, took part in establishing companies as practician, not as advisers;

 

- we have managed to define a border between a professional management as handicraft and a management as art, we are practical people weirded to success – it is easy for us to understand top-managers and owners of companies.

3. Proved innovation and leadership

- we established first Russian electronic journal “Change Management in Company” in 2001;

- we founded first professional community of managers interested in development and “alternative management” (as it would be called later) in 2003;

- we became founders of Improvement as professional activity, published first Russian book on-topic in 2007;

- A customer may not know the modern innovations trends; we pursue a preemptive tactic and endeavor not only to learn about but also to try the best of them. We made comprehensible for practicing managers:

 

- "portfolio worker" concept by Charles Handy,

- KAM-technology by Peter Cheverton,

- management philosophy of William Deming,

- behavioral economics by Paco Underhill (first mention in our journal)

- scenario forecasting methodology, CRM technology and many other things.

4. Independence of

- views: scrupulousness, critical and pragmatic views on value of different theories and management methods;

- resourses: if we lack people to fulfill a projects we know exactly what partners we can address and who will work with us;

- choise: we do not sell any software; we do not offer any administrative methodology implemented in a software product; we are not engaged by any software-developing company. Among many IT products we select exactly what our customer needs.

5. Orientation on action and definiteness, not on talking.

- we do not advise, we give our customer the information he/she needs to make an independent decision;

- we avoid talking in favour of participating in our customer business’s future development and responsibility for joint efforts results;

- among us there are former and currently working software engineers, we have an experience of working for business software development companies, thus we know the common shortages to avoid them. We have gone through self-identification processes and we are not a software implementing company. Kinsmark is an SbA-consulting company.

 

6. Academic knowledge. During nine years that Kinsmark exists we have established contacts with remarkable people. They are professionals in consecutive areas. They have done us proud to share with us tribune at conferences and seminars, they opened for us many important issues that helped us to understand development processes physics. Today we are proud of cooperation with them and we intend to extend the experience.

 

- Processes statistical control and Lean - Vladimir Shper (Moscow)

- 6-Sigma, kaizen and Deming philosophy - Yury Adler (Moscow)

- Quality Management System - Pyotr Kalita (Kiev)

 

One of the key values of our activities is measured in KG (K(insmark) G(roup)):

 

1 KG = 1 complex projects fulfilled together with our partners.

 

 

7. Creativity

 

- if a standard approach does not work we will find a non standard one;

- if there is no creative work in the work we cannot give it a high mark;

- we treat our work very seriously and rather jestingly ourselves. We think humour is obligatory for good work. This is why many of our texts are written in two languages: a business-like and not a very business-like one

- we really try hard to protect ourselves from a permanent mischief of consulting companies that "fall ill" with the same “problems” as their Customers. There must not be “ill shod shoemakers” in our business.