Interview With Andrea Simon, Principal, And Founder At Simon Associates Management Consultants

Listen to this article

Below is our recent interview with Andrea Simon, principal, and founder at Simon Associates Management Consultants:

Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to your company?

A: At Simon Associates Management Consultants (SAMC), we help our clients seeking new ways to thrive in these changing times. Offering a full array of idea generation, innovation, and change support, we show companies and their teams how to respond to new economic situations, shifting customer demands, and the need for growth. SAMC applies the concepts, methods, and tools of anthropology to help clients “see, feel and think” in new ways to adapt to changes in the environments in which they operate. All too often, these companies stall out trying to stay true to their mission and models only to find that they are losing relevance. Our job is to help them embrace change.

SAMC executives are trained practitioners in Blue Ocean Strategy and utilize these concepts and techniques to develop new strategies, open new markets, and create demand.

In today’s business environment, long-held certainties about organizing your business are being re-evaluated, if not wholly revamped. Corporate cultures are a hot topic. Companies want to “change their culture.” Culture change is a core part of our business.

Delving deeper into leadership has caused us to look at human development. As certified coaches, we have developed both synchronous and asynchronous programs offered on both group and individual basis.

Q: Any highlights on your recent announcement?

A: Today, a sizable growth area of our engagements focuses on leadership training and human development. We have established “leadership academies “for our clients across multi categories. As trained anthropologists, our background in this area has made us exceptionally agile and skilled in helping people maximize their leadership potential.

Recommended: An Interview With Kim Strunk, Founder & Chief Of Clinical Strategy At Hopebridge Autism Therapy Centers

Q: Can you give us more insights into your offering?

A: These are the areas of focus for Simon Associates Management Consultants:

1. A Strong Focus on Culture Change: With the advent of modern technologies and the pandemic, hybrid workplaces have begun to thrive. Long-held certainties about how to organize a business are being questioned. Organizations understand that communications are different, Isolation is more relevant, and social cues are quite different. This challenges how organizations are structured and managed. Now is the time for a review of an organization’s culture. At SAMC, we use two instruments that allow us to define what the culture is today and what it would like to be tomorrow. The second instrument helps the organization get to where it would like to go.
2. Leadership must Lead: Transformation in an organization requires excellent leadership. Many of our clients primary concern is the need to backstop the next generation of leaders. The need to build the leadership team becomes acute because internal resources do not allow for traditional training programs. In effect, at Simon Associates, we step into this gap. While our “leadership academies” work well, we find that they are most effective when combined with one-on-one coaching. We offer this combination to all our clients.
3. Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS): As trained Blue Ocean Strategists, we have conducted over 500 workshops, speaking engagements, and client projects and retainers supporting strategic redesign using the BOS model. Our approach builds on the BOS platform but is tailored to each client’s needs. Highly visualize in its design, BOS lends itself to an anthropological method of exploring and observational research. We work with our clients to help them find unmet needs and identify non-users so they can create new markets, not just compete in existing ones.

Q: What can we expect from your company in next six months? What are your plans?

A: We continue to expand our offerings in human development, including leadership training and our unique offerings on “rethinking women.” We have found these areas to be needed by our clients, and we will continue to market accordingly. As the post-pandemic business environment continues to mature, the need for culture change expands. Our clients and prospects are reinventing their cultures while learning what a culture is and its role in everyday activities. Add new technologies and a revamped workforce to the challenges of hybrid work environments, and you can appreciate the problems confronting businesses today. Our job is to stay ahead of their problems with innovative solutions and to help them bridge the past and the future.

Recommended: Global Provider Of Rail Solutions Hitachi Rail Provides Turnkey Transport Solutions

Q: What is the best thing about your company that people might not know?

A: The best thing is that we are fun to work with. Clients stay with us for years as we help them sustain their growth and continue to adapt. Our team gets pleasure out of helping others achieve success. As you will see in the books I have written, clients often come to us in pain. Challenged by these changes, we help them see the possibilities and make them happen. As we work together, they become colleagues, and our job is to find new paths for their success.

Speaking of books, I am an award-winning author. My first book, On the Brink: A fresh lens to take your business to new heights, was all about the work SAMC has done applying anthropology to the challenges of stuck or stalled companies. On the Brink won the 2017 Axiom Bronze Best Business Book Award.

My second book, Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business, published in 2021, recently won the 2022 Axiom Bronze Business Award. Rethink closely ties to the work we are currently doing in the human development, leadership, and “Rethinking Women” areas.

I am working on a related new book, but you will have to wait until we are closer to our publication date before I can talk about it.

I am also a highly successful podcaster. On the Brink with Andi Simon has posted over 300 podcasts and is among the top 5% of global podcasts as ranked by Listennotes.