Corporate Consulting Services in Kuwait: An Overview of Think Tank Management Consulting

Dr. Manal Al Hasawi, Managing Partner at Think Tank Management Consulting in Kuwait, gives an overview of the corporate consulting services provided by the company, including: management consulting, strategic planning, coaching, corporate training, etc.

“We used to be extremely traditional as just an advisory in terms of the services that we offered. You would see the same structure as in any management consulting. We did the advisory part, we did the research part, and we had the training and coaching elements. Now, in terms of the advisory, I focus on strategy. A lot of the work that I do revolves around strategic design, strategy implementation, monitoring, setting up key performance indicators, working with different organizations on setting directions, working with companies who would like to shift their positions, working with companies who are going through mergers or acquisitions. Things that have to do with larger strategic shifts in an organization are what we love to focus on because it is a time of change and that is something that we do very well because we include a behavioral element as well in all of our services. We affiliated our services with different experts in psychology and organizational behavior because all of these different projects are big shift projects. If you are trying to grow or expand into a different market, if you are looking for investors or you are thinking about a merger, an acquisition, a buyout, any of that brings with it a large amount of change. Just going through with my experience, I found that it is not the project that fails, it is not because you do not have the right system, it is not because you do not have the right policy; rather, it is because the culture and the people are not on the same page as this document. A big part of what we do in our advisory is bringing in this element as well. We do a lot of coaching with our advisory, we bring in people, we try to work with different biases, we work with different cultural elements within the organization. We also do research. One of the most interesting research projects that we have done was for the industrial sector in Kuwait. We did a skill gap analysis for the sector and that has helped one of the organizations who is focusing on the industrial sector called the Kuwait Industries Union. They have about 300 plus members of industrial companies and organizations. We did this study for them because they wanted to understand how they can tailor their learning and professional development to what is actually needed in the industry. It makes me very proud to say that they have been working based off of the results of this research for the past few years. All of their learning and development has been geared towards the futuristic look of what the industrial sector should look like in Kuwait. My favorite part of everything that we do is the training and coaching. We do corporate training where the company calls you and you go out and do a specific training program. But, I always felt like that was taking power away from the learner. I can come in, stand up for three hours, give you a PowerPoint presentation on strategic planning for three days, and the learning outcome is probably going to be about 10% to 20% as you are exiting this training. It is not because you are unmotivated or because I am bad. It is because that is the reality. I took away the accountability and responsibility of your learning. So, we started doing things a bit differently. I started something called personalized learning experiences. These are much smaller, more intimate learning opportunities. I am not there as a lecturer or as a trainer; rather, I am there as a facilitator of your learning. We work through specific issues, specific projects, any specific challenges that the company is going through. So, people get this very intimate, one on one experience where they can actually walk through the different challenges that they have and reach some kind of an actionable solution. They walk out of this PLE ready to give it a try and come back to me and tell us how it works. We do C-level coaching as well, mainly for people who are in transition. We have worked with people who are going from VP to President, people who are moving from Department Head to VP, etc. I am a big person for change. I love it. I love managing it and I love working around it because that is what happens in real life. Everything looks beautiful on a piece of paper. I could come and say to just do 1, 2, 3 and then you are going to be able to execute the strategy and it is going to be perfect. But, the reality is not like that. The reality is that there are politics, there are hidden agendas, there are organizational behaviors that you have to worry about, there are some corporate level habits that we have to cut through. All of these things are what makes our interaction with our clients very different because when I walk in I truly have the desire to understand the company and the people I am working with on a very deep, philosophical, personal level that is going to help me tailor the work that we are doing for the clients. I do not have off the shelf training. I am dealing with different people and different organizations all the time. They have different needs, they have different people, it is a different culture. So, I design a training program for every single client. Even if it is the same client doing the same program again, I will do a different program for them because now they are at a different level in their skills. Everything is tailored and everything is customized. There is always this psychological element that will come with it because we want to make sure that people are comfortable there, that they understand that they have a say in what is happening around them. We spend so much time in our companies, even more so than in our homes and with our families. It is a big part of our identity and who we are. To go in and say, this is what is happening, adapt and start working, makes a lot of the larger strategy initiatives go down in flames. In the myriad of these different services, there are some common parts where it makes us different. It is my little blue ocean that I have tried to create instead of just going out and competing with a company that puts out 300 to 1,000 training programs a year. We do not do that. I am very happy with a small, more loyal relationship with my clients. Most of my clients I have had relationships with for over six or seven years and that gives us a lot of credibility and value when we are talking to new clients or talking to new people who are trying to understand more about our services”, says Dr. Manal Al Hasawi.

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