Here at Actionable, we work with some of the smartest (and nicest) consultants and coaches in the business. These Actionable Consultant Partners (the ACP) use our platform to deepen their client impact, provide sustained and measurable learning to their clients, and scale their businesses without working longer/harder hours each day. We want to improve the world of work for everyone, and the partners in our network help us do that.
The market for consultants and coaches is shifting. The research shows what you probably know intuitively by now: organizations are struggling to thrive in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous landscape. Leaders are concerned about agility, emerging technology, and creating effective cultures—all under the looming concerns of automation and market disruption.
We see learning as an effective and potent solution to many of these issues—and the data bears that out. Organizations with a high impact learning culture are better equipped to handle complex challenges.
However, the work of creating a learning culture in your client organizations is much more complicated than delivering front of room training, or gathering executives for a once-a-year offsite. For learning to be truly embedded in culture, new skills need to be practiced, and new concepts need to be applied within the context of daily work activities, through every level of the org chart.
Our platform, Actionable Conversations, offers one solution to embed learning within organizations effectively. Here’s what a few members of our network have to say about how Actionable can support and augment more traditional forms of training.
How do you position your services to your clients? In a world of increasing complexity, consultants and coaches need to be positioning their offerings to address real-time challenges and opportunities.
Sometimes this positioning can be tricky. Clients often want something that’s done to them, or for them, but rarely are they ready to think about doing the hard work of learning themselves. We know that classroom style training alone isn’t sufficient for creating the conditions required for organizations to thrive in a VUCA landscape—but if your clients are used to classroom style delivery, they may be resistant to new tools and processes.
Here’s how some of our Consultant Partners position Actionable for their clients. They aren’t pitching one-size fits all solutions—instead they focus on the impact their clients want to see, and creating plans that address those unique needs. There is often a gap between learning and doing, and between intention and action. By bridging those gaps, the consultants in our network are able to deepen client impact, and get results.
At Actionable, we talk a lot about the pitfalls of the “sales treadmill”—that process of pitching, procuring, and delivering services is a backbreaking cycle that can never end. For the most successful, in demand consultants and coaches, that means trading time for dollars, spending valuable time on the road to client engagements, and being too busy pitching or delivering services to work on their business development goals.
How do you stand out in a crowded market, without running yourself ragged by working longer and harder? A few consultants in our network share their thoughts on the commercial impact of Actionable on their business. By providing a platform that sustains and measures learning beyond the classroom, they are able to scale their businesses, without working even more hours.
When you make a decision for your business, whether it’s to pursue a new certification, expand into a new market, adopt a new diagnostic tool, or to join a network, it can be hard to know in the moment if you’ve made the right decision. Sure, it sounds great, but will it help you grow your business, get results for your clients, or make the daily grind of business operations a bit more fun? The hard truth is—you can’t know until you’re in it, and that means that any decision you make will be a bit of a gamble.
Only you can know what’s right for your business. Here are a few of our consultants talking about how they knew that Actionable was the right fit for them. Regardless of the kinds of decisions you need to make for your business, their certainty and confidence provides a great model for the decision making process. When you find that thing that aligns with your objectives as a business owner, are you willing to jump on board?
We’re not a fit for everyone, and that’s ok. These are complex times, and there is not one single solution that will solve the challenges that you’re facing as a business owner, or that your clients are facing as organizations. At Actionable, we’re on a mission to improve the world of work—we hope that you’ll join us. Here’s to your continued success!
How do you position your offerings to your clients? How do you embed learning in the cultures of your client organizations? How do you approach business growth? Let’s keep the conversation going on LinkedIn.
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