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Michael Princey
The World’s First Billion Dollar Consultant
When I was 3 years old, mom migrated permanently to the States. At the
time we were living with my father’s family. They were from a different ilk
than mom. They were easy going and fun loving people.
She was concerned about that when she was leaving. She didn’t want me to
think life was all fun to the point where I would be misdirected. She
wanted me to grow up with strict discipline, so she had me board with one
of her aunts, a strict disciplinarian. That was a way for her to have me
brought up under the principled British customs as she had been.
My grandaunt was a very strong personality. She was the principal of the
local all-age school and the most prominent person in the community.
This was in a rural district. To expose me to city life, mom had me spend
summers with another of her aunts in the capital city of Kingston. This
grandaunt, Aunt Harriot, was also a teacher.
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The infant school scenario did not work out well, however. I just became a
big problem for that infant school teacher. I refused to participate in the
school activities. I didn’t listen to her at all. I just wasn’t interested. I
didn’t want to be there.
So finally, after two weeks they pulled me out. I guess this was the
beginning of my lifelong career bucking trends.
My grandaunt was left with quite a dilemma. There were no other infant
schools around. I think her plan was to home-school me until I was of age
to enter the all-age school. She was a busy headmistress though, so time
was a problem.
While she was trying to figure out her options she arranged to have me
"sit-in" on the first grade class of her all-age school. The first grade
teacher, Miss Carnegie, was from out of town and boarded with us as well.
The idea was for me to sit quietly where someone could keep an eye on me.
I went on to become the youngest person in Jamaica to sit and pass the JSC
exams (Jamaica School Certificate Examination) the national
pre-secondary certification exams in place at that time. I earned two
certifications on my initial sitting in English and Religious Education.
The funniest thing occurred at that time too. The infant school teacher
that I was such a problem to, she too sat English in the same batch with me
and she failed. She was probably in her 30’s or so at the time. I wasn’t quite
10 yet. So you see after all, she had no business teaching me.
The rules at the time did not permit me to enter into the tertiary system
though. I think they required a certain level of maturity. I instead had to
enroll at a secondary institution which allowed me to take advance math
and science courses at a neighboring teacher's college.
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Studying in America
While still studying at WIC I opted to join mom in the US. There I got
into Science Academy where I was formally introduced to computer
science.
Even though I was a business major I spent many hours in the computer
lab. I coded virtually every business problem I could find. I even got the
comp. science teacher to leave her keys to the lab with the security, so I
could get in there off hours.
The head of the comp. science department was amazed at the programs I
came up with and how quickly. He thought I should seek commercial
outlet. He also placed his money where is mouth was and he told a GE
recruiter about me. The recruiter called me in and the rest is history.
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I went to GE during the Jack Welch era when the company was
undergoing massive restructuring. I went straight into the FMP
(Financial Management Program) program.
I could have gone on their CAS (Corporate Audit Staff) but I hadn’t made a
commitment to become a full fledged financial manager, which is what I
understood CAS to be about.
I just wanted the best general management training that would translate
across a number of industries and finance is the core of that.
The FMP is a rigorous two year MBA style program (referred to by some
as a Masters in GE-ology due to the company’s preference for trainees
with superior academic achievement and less than 1 year external
employment.
At the time they had no way to facilitate entry into the second half of the
program, so they officially restructured the Information Systems
Management Program into two parts to facilitate direct entry into the
second half by advanced participants.
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The second year of the program was renamed the ISLC (Information
Systems Leadership Curriculum). So I did the ISLC and thereafter entered
"normal" work life at GE.
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The consulting years
Although I had been consulting unofficially for some time, I was not yet
officially a part of GE’s consulting group. As word of my expertise spread
however, I ultimately got recruited into the company's elite internal
consulting unit.
I was at the time still in my early twenties and the youngest consultant on
staff. My extensive training in finance, management and technology
became an instant asset that the consulting group relied on heavily.
A master consultant
After a decade of large corporate experience, I decided it was time to
further develop my entrepreneurial aspirations. I tendered my resignation
in pursuit of this ambition but I was asked by the company to reconsider.
Being a master consultant changed the mix of projects that I would get
involved in. It would be far too expensive to call me for every little thing
so I would be called mostly on the big problems. I would often be called on
to deal with the group's most challenging encounters. Those situations
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that proved difficult even for seasoned experts.
This is precisely what I needed as I was easily bored with the petty
problems back then. Furthermore, the greatest challenges have within
them the greatest opportunities. With this move I truly became a
full-fledged corporate performance engineer.
It was during this period that I was called upon to formulate a solution to
one of Chairman Welch’s edicts (to substantially lower the cost of
meetings at GE without reducing the number of meetings or the
effectiveness of the meetings).
The group responsible for the follow through on this mandate had initially
experimented with virtual meeting technology as a possible solution.
When it became clear that virtual meetings didn't reproduce the dynamics
of face to face meetings, I was handed the challenge.
Meetings are a huge cost in the corporate world. Some estimates suggest
that it is the second largest controllable cost the corporation faces.
Most people who are trouble-shooting companies skip this process and by
so doing miss the opportunities to find really innovative solutions. Even
though I had over 10 year’s corporate experience, I started the process by
asking some basic, even seemingly silly questions.
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Questions such as, how does a meeting come about? Who calls a meeting?
How are the attendees chosen? I start out with very basic questions like
those. Again I go into the process mapping method in greater detail in the
case study on this corporate performance engineering project.
The discoveries I made were profound. I found out that the biggest cost in
meetings were the business air travel component which is probably not
much of a surprise. My “map” of the process however brought to life the
fact that this only occurred because people are brought to meetings and
not the other way around. The meetings are not brought to the people.
What do I mean by that?
If you are the host of a meeting, you’ll invite all the attendees you need to.
If that means that 10 people will come from California and 6 from Nevada,
so be it. Even if only 4 of the attendees are coming from your location in
Fairfield, Connecticut the meeting is going to be held on the East Coast in
Fairfield, Connecticut because you are the meeting’s host.
If we could find a way to make it just as easy to have the meeting in the
most cost-effective location, which in this case would be somewhere on the
West Coast we could have 4 people travelling by air instead of 16 and
substantially reduce the cost of executing the meeting.
This is the kind of insight that you gain from this brand of corporate
performance engineering. It gives the opportunity to hit huge home runs.
So instead of throwing technology at the problem, we first figure out if
there is a better, more cost-effective approach.
In this case, we also realized that in order to assess other potential meeting
sites the users would need data on the facilities available. We got the major
hotel chains to provide that information. We also got the airlines to
provide data which we used to calculate an average cost per mile for travel.
It also calculated the cost savings that would be realized relative to the
default location for each one. This is the highest and best use of technology
in business.
Often times, there wasn’t much of a difference between the best place to
host the meeting from a cost perspective and the second or third best. The
lowest cost location may be Compton, California and the second lowest
may be a picturesque suburb close to Compton. Maybe Compton is not the
best choice when a less crowded suburb won’t add much cost.
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This allows the user to make an informed decision on the best compromise
while still maximizing cost savings. It was an instant hit. It far surpassed
the savings goal set by Chairman Welch and became widely adopted, not
just at GE but throughout the Fortune 500.
The amazing thing about Site Factor Analysis™ is that it allowed the user
to make an informed decision they never even considered before, in a
hundred plus years of the modern corporation.
Applied research
Now at the height of my consulting career, I became convinced that the
standard tools of corporate consulting (acumen in finance, technology and
management) had taken me as far as they could. I remained convinced that
much more performance could be extracted from the corporate world's
most under-utilized asset, their people.
Even when the effort of the employee is at a hundred percent, the yield is
likely to be substantially lower (usually below 30%) because of specific
gaps in knowledge that aren’t traditionally addressed.
After reviewing the programs and faculty of the top Ivy League
institutions, I settled on the Harvard based curriculum. Here again I
would have to buck the trend of the day.
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to do a locally supervised, student centered needs pedagogy based entirely
upon the Harvard curriculum.
It was overall a more expensive route but it was the best approach for what
I wanted to accomplish.
This would give me even more powerful levers to drive corporate and
institutional productivity.
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I had also developed a niche in private consulting: consulting to an elite
group of high net worth individuals who aspire to leverage part of their
wealth into creating lasting enterprises.
Did I abandon my Fortune 500 roots? Not quite. Since the dawn of the
recent global economic downturn in 2006, I have extended my availability
to select corporate and governmental clients.
Far stronger balance sheets would emerge and there would be less of a
need for the “creative” accounting practices designed to give the façade of
performance that we’ve seen at the heart of some of the financial crisis.
Recent activities
I have recently created the Billion Dollar Consultant network to draw
attention to the efficacy of the methods I learnt in the greatest corporate
re-engineering exercise in history, Jack Welch’s GE.
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performance. If maximizing productivity is the goal, it is
imperative that they understand this area.
The great thing is that all three of these areas, the knowledge gap, the
technology trap and the “disconnects” are addressable.
Here is a mini case study of how one area alone could dramatically improve
productive output. You can extrapolate what addressing the areas
collectively would contribute to your organization.
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output. That is the output they would have realized if they knew what the
top 20 percent knows and did what they did.
Notice the re-classification. There is no assumption that they are “bad” salespeople.
There is simply a knowledge gap which leads to a performance gap.
We’ve found a little used set of learning tools being pioneered by Harvard
extremely effective at closing the knowledge gap.
In this example, a company with a 100 person sales force that successfully
closes the performance gap could potentially increase productive output
beyond 1,500 percent on aggregate for those performing way below the
top performers.
That is a 30% percent increase per person x 50 as the gap between the top and
bottom performers are systematically closed. I’ve have found this wholly achievable.
Even with a 30% increase those formerly in the bottom 50 would still only
be contributing at 50 percent of their productive potential with further
room for improvement.
The bottom line is there is no reason to lose this productivity. There are
known methods to close the performance gaps which more people should
incorporate into their consulting practices.
The smartest companies are deploying this knowledge with great effect.
In time to come, more companies will have to wise up or be put out of
business.
When not busy implementing what his adherents call his billion dollar brand of
corporate performance engineering he makes available time to lecture, speak and
mentor others in the areas of business development in competitive global markets
and corporate performance engineering.
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