ADVISOR ADVANTAGE COMPANY​

Assuring technology investment returns

for your company!

What is the Team for the Time?

Every technology company from start-up to Goliath has their own Team for the Time - even you!  You chose these people at certain times in your company history that demanded certain skills, inter-personal talent, leadership, and experience and you expect more from them every day - regardless of the challenge!    

That's the expectation that every company has and how you move through the critical challenges to support them is where they will develop strong opinions of your company's culture, character, and leadership.  And of you!

One of our primary goals is to ensure that your Team for the Time is a bit stronger and smarter when we leave...it's in our DNA to help and encourage those around us.

Why do we focus on the negativity of the challenge above?  Nothing positive needs help!

Quite simple, we've learned that some challenges are beyond the existing capabilities of the chose Team for the Time and the symptoms that reveal themselves up into leadership are just that - the symptoms not the challenges.  The gap between the current operational capability of the Team and success is where we can help.  They are still your Team for the Time and how you lead them through overcoming the challenge matters.

Why outside expertise rather than doing it yourself?  If you had the time you wouldn't!

In our experience, most operational executives from start-up to Goliath are performing many roles or functions in their capacity and while you/they might have the knowledge, skill, and leadership to help, you don't have the required time or what limited time you have may just not be enough to close-the-gap and meet upcoming deadlines.  Most importantly, you have leaders below you that you expect will drive through these gap challenges but like you they are wearing many hats.

Lastly, we believe that you are already involved in many of the operational challenges with your Team and our involvement should be seen as an extension of you.  If you could clone yourself...you likely wouldn't need us!

How can the Advisor Advantage Company possibly know how to help my Team?  Why not us!

Our partners have been providing this type of in-organizational hands-on help and leadership for many years and across many technology firms where the challenge your team faces is known to us, has been solved by us, and has resulted in a lessons-learned improvement afterward to ensure greater on-going operational performance.  Our approach is to both guide the team through the challenge and administer to the process or technology changes that must become systemic.

How would I, as the responsible operational executive, be involved?  You are involved!

In our view, the Team for the Time includes the leadership and you must be adequately informed, involved, and present to assure longer-term ownership of the final solution closing-the-gap for the team.  If you delegate to a leader below you, which may be the case,  then that visible delegation is a starting point for our work along with your visible and vocal involvement and endorsement of the solution at closure.  So even when you don't have the time, AAC will ensure that you know the gap, the solution, the on-going owners, and have a visible hand in applauding your Team for the Time's achievement to overcome the challenge.

Lastly, along the way our style is to keep you personally informed so that you know progress and can acknowledge the steps toward closure with your team.

How will I know the progress? Communication is the key!

Every AAC engagement is managed professionally by the partner involved and will report to you at least, bi-weekly, in writing to ensure you know the progress against our 3-Step Service.  We also know that this formality needs to be supported by casual interaction with you so that at the time of key events in our service you can reach out to your Team leader or the entire Team to voice your encouragement on their progress.  We are there to help you drive the leadership culture where your role as the leader is the focal point, not ours.

How will I know that my Team owns this when we finish?  We guide...they  will want to own it!

Every project has a beginning and end at the Advisor Advantage Company.  At the beginning you will work with us to identify and name your leader-contact for us and at the conclusion that leader-contact will provide an overview of the solution, the changes made to the operational processes and or technologies, and the checkpoints in the process to ensure the new way is the only way.  Prior to that presentation, if you desire, the partner will review the above with you offline to prepare you for the presentation and suggest specific people that should be spotlighted in the solution and on-going management of the new operational solution.  Again, we want the ownership and responsibility for the on-going operation to be in the hands of your Team for the Time.  That's the only way it works in our experience.

What if my Team has questions after AAC leaves?  We'll be here!

For a period of 60-days after we finish the engagement we remain available for periodic calls and or emails from your team if they have questions or want to discuss something surrounding the solution.  We believe that this provides a bit of a safety-net for them and you, while we are confident that this will be seldom used.

Driving Through Challenges

Your Team for the Time faces challenges as you grow and the common expectation is they will overcome the challenge or gap and move on.  When symptoms appear such as late product delivery, poor quality, long implementations, lack of key functionality, or any combination of these suffice to say the challenge is ahead of them.  

Often your best people are working with such velocity, vigor, and drive that decisions from the last project culminate in a gap so wide that only time and effort will resolve it.  That time and effort isn't in your operational plan nor is it expected by the company projections for growth.  That is where the challenge and the help of the Advisor Advantage Company intersect to you drive through the challenges and regain speed to your next deadline.

At the executive, Board, or investor level the visibility to this is often missed sales, revenue, or profit targets in a specific quarter review.  The executive team reporting the results will always talk to the challenges and how they will be overcome by the next review.  When that doesn't happen things get tighter and sometimes much hotter internally.

AAC provides the relief valve for you to pull when you need someone to engage quickly, work through the challenge and its solution and meet the next quarterly review with an improved report.  Our experience is to put a short-term and focused 3-Step Service in place with a 90-day window so that time-to-value is truly "weighted" in finding the solution.  

Simply said, we believe that in 90-days or less most operational challenges can be tackled and mastered rather than laboring through it for the next 6 to 12 months.  A period of time that likely won't sit well with you or anyone above you!