Matter Solutions
We facilitate teams through collaborative decision-making and solution design.
We don’t have the answers. You and your colleagues do.
We design and deliver powerful events in which a variety of views and experiences create a single ‘best’ solution, along with the cohesion and focus to get the solution implemented. Quickly. Clients tell us that they accomplish in 3 days what would normally take at 3-6 months.
Our clients call on us when they need a rigorous collaborative process to pull together a tangle of people, ideas, interests, and experiences, to create consensus and a way forward. We respond by creating an intensely-facilitated ‘moment’ (usually lasting 1-4 days) in which participants themselves create the tools, the common language, the clarity of vision, and the necessary sense of urgency to build a shared way forward. Having designed the solution themselves, commitment and action are almost automatic.
Often, months or years after a Matter Solutions event, participants tell us that it represented one of the most important moments of their career.
Services
Solution Design Events: DesignShops®
You think of holding a workshop when you face a decision or need a solution and:
- a large number of people are involved,
- the decision or solution is not obvious,
- you want to create a milestone or signal a major change in the life of your project or your enterprise,
- you are in a hurry.
Matter designs and delivers outstanding events for large groups facing unusual, complex challenges. Some examples include M&A, change of strategic direction, a major product launch or delay, or down-sizing.
Events usually last from 2 to 4 days and involve between 25 and 100 participants. These participants typically fall into three categories:
People who decide: Explicit decision-makers
People who know: Executives, line workers, customers, suppliers – understand the variables that make change feasible and that make it difficult. We believe that as wide a cross-section of vantage points as possible needs to be involved in decision making and solution design.
People who implement: A dedicated team usually takes ownership of decisions and solution elements and ensures that these are implemented. This group might include consultants or other third parties.
Not all events are the same. Some of Matter’s facilitated events represent one of the most important moments in the life of a company or a team. Other events – equally successful – help teams achieve a remarkable quality and quantity of work in a very short time without necessarily re-visiting fundamental business assumptions.
Preparation and Follow-up
Prior to any event, Matter invests a significant amount of time working with a small client sponsor team. Together they develop and document a detailed understanding of desired outcomes and assemble the inputs necessary to achieve them. These teams frequently remain intact following the event and Matter is asked to coach them on an on-going basis.
Facilitated Solutions
Sometimes you achieve the best solutions using less intensive but more extensive methods than brief workshops. Your project requires different people at different times, yet to need to maintain continuity, intent, and focus. You have most of the resources and expertise needed to ensure success, but the process itself needs facilitation to ensure the best use and most focused involvement of your people. Matter supports on-going projects, particularly those without a stable work team, through brief, on-the-fly workshops and continuous management of the process of idea development, solution design, and documentation. Matter also builds dynamic environments to convey a physical manifestation of the work as it proceeds and the emergence of agreed solutions and decisions.
Services For Consulting Firms
Some of Matter’s engagements consist of un-branded events and projects conducted in collaboration with or on behalf of other consultants and consulting firms.
- Facilitated proposal development (with or without final client involvement)
- Repairing projects at risk of failure
- Internal sessions: strategy, alignment, etc.
- Alignment of consortia
Acceleration of projects
Clients & Case Studies
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Terna →
Issue
Terna had to establish a multi-year strategy to prioritise and phas...
← ReadTerna
Issue
Terna had to establish a multi-year strategy to prioritise and phase major investments to assure service continuity following a devastating country-wide black-out.
Approach
Having successfully employed Matter’s methods a year earlier in the context of a major merger, Terna asked for help to align 45 individuals from several departments to assess strategic alternatives for maintaining service continuity in extreme circumstances (e.g., disasters) as well as addressing related management challenges. Matter led an extensive preparation phase which included numerous interviews with Terna executives as well as re-surfacing relevant studies undertaken in prior years. Together with a facilitation team of 11 people, Matter facilitated the work of 45 people through three intense days of work at a specially-built center in Milan.
Results
As a result of three days of collaborative work (and extensive prior preparation), Terna developed four major project blueprints together with a detailed model for the governance and effective management of these and future high-impact projects.
"The results were well beyond my expectations. We had interesting ideas and controversial discussions. In fact, many of these issues are controversial. The work done is outstanding."- Director of Systems & Technologies
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A major European bank with assets exceeding €800 billion (B) →
Issue
The bank needed to rationalize the operations shared by five similar, but not identical leasing and financing...
← ReadA major European bank with assets exceeding €800 billion (B)
Issue
The bank needed to rationalize the operations shared by five similar, but not identical leasing and financing businesses. This involved defining a new operating model whereby customer-facing activities would remain highly customized but where back-office operations would be made more efficient through the sharing of processes and infrastructure. Although several of these businesses had once been unified, they had developed unique cultures and business practices, not to mention mutual suspicion, over the intervening years.
Approach
Following several weeks of detailed preparation, we built a large facilitation environment to host 72 people from all five businesses for three days. The participants learned about the capabilities and limitations of each others’ businesses and set out to define potential operating models. These possible candidates were subjected to stress tests and mapped to the existing front office expectations. A new model and a detailed transition was defined.
Results
Having collectively built a new operating model and assessed the costs and benefits for each of the businesses, four of the operations agreed to launch the shared operations activity. The leader of the new business told Matter than even had he believed a solution would have been possible, it would have taken many months to achieve. Instead, an outstanding solution was found, the implementation was designed and launched, and the businesses developed genuine enthusiasm for the new business, all within three days.
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A major European bank with assets exceeding €800 billion (A) →
Issue
The corporate division of this bank merged its high- and mid-value customer operations as part of a reorganiz...
← ReadA major European bank with assets exceeding €800 billion (A)
Issue
The corporate division of this bank merged its high- and mid-value customer operations as part of a reorganization by asset-class. The bank had less than two months to develop an operating model for this new banking entity, re-assign customer portfolios, and design the transition plan. Bankers from around the nation needed to be involved in the detailed design decisions to ensure the success of the new entity.
Approach
Matter worked with a small Sponsor Team from within the bank to define the specific issues that required resolution and to co-design an intensive three-day DesignShop for 78 executives from across the bank. Following three intense weeks of interviews, data collection, and other preparation, Matter and its facilitation team guided this diverse group to a shared vision and detailed design of a newly-merged operation.
Results
The key design decisions for the new operation were taken, shared, and documented during the three-day workshop. A six-month transition plan was pad out and began work immediately following the event. Matter facilitated a follow-up event 14 weeks later to accelerate one of the workstreams.
- Banca Fineco
- European Central Bank
- University of Bologna
- World Food Programme (United Nations)
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STMicroelectronics - one of the world’s leading manufacturers of semiconductors. →
Issue
Unlike many of its competitors, STMicroelectronics owns its own wafer-making fabrication plants. In addition, it has more customers and more individual products than its major competitors. As a consequence of this complexity, stre...
← ReadSTMicroelectronics - one of the world’s leading manufacturers of semiconductors.
Issue
Unlike many of its competitors, STMicroelectronics owns its own wafer-making fabrication plants. In addition, it has more customers and more individual products than its major competitors. As a consequence of this complexity, streamlining the supply chain, including reducing cycle time, has become a key priority and may offer an important element of competitive advantage.
Management sought to align all key functions around a new vision for the supply chain and to collaboratively build an action plan to ensure measured transformation over the subsequent months and years.
Approach
Fifty senior managers from each relevant function spent two days at a Matter Solutions DesignShop in Geneva. They built potential models of a successful ST supply chain, selected key elements of the strongest models, and developed a work plan to ensure that this new approach will generate efficiencies, cycle-time reduction, and greater customer satisfaction. Several months of preparation ensured that the necessary building blocks were in place to ensure a successful DesignShop and to subsequently launch a transformational change process.
Results
The results of the DesignShop were extremely persuasive and coherent. Most of all, the convergence of senior management thinking on supply chain vastly increases the chances of a quick and effective implementation of the selected model. ST’s leadership is currently driving the agreed model and supervising the changes to business processes, to systems, and to organization and skills necessary for the success of the to-be supply chain.