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.
