Who We Help
design and Build an Adaptable Organization
You are the expert in your life and work.
We help business owners and leaders get out of the day-to-day to really look, think and plan ahead.
what’s important to our clients
For many business owners, working in the business leaves little capacity for working on the business.
As your organization grows and matures, your responsibility increases. And with that, your priorities, stakeholders, and other demands on your time continue to expand. Finding the right balance is difficult to do on your own; the load gets heavy and it can be lonely at times.
Forge a path ahead to maximize the value of your business and your experience with:
Ability to forecast earnings and plan for investments
Improved profitability and expanded prospects for the future
Shared ownership of organizational mission, vision, values
Clear and consistent framework for informed decision making
A vision for the future, along with a roadmap to guide the way
Agility and resilience in adapting to change
Personal health improvements, a more balanced lifestyle
Smooth transitions in ownership and other key leadership roles
Esprit de Merci works with you to design, build and implement a business plan that works for you today, positions you for the future, and stays true to what got you here in the first place.
We do this by offering a unique combination of business consulting and leadership coaching.
How We Help
Think of Esprit de Merci as the architect.
A comprehensive business plan is so much more than financial projections. It starts with a strong foundation made up of a clear mission, vision, values and purpose. This foundation supports the framework to align your team members, stakeholders, systems, resources, capabilities and metrics so that you can share the best of yourselves with the market and community you serve.
As a CONSULTANT
I bring deep professional expertise in Finance, Strategic Planning and Human Resources leadership, with experience, insights and tools to help you meet your objectives.
I help great leaders and teams ask the right questions, facilitate opportunities to dive deep, offering a safe and confidential environment to think out loud and solve problems.
As a COACH
We begin any engagement with an exploratory discussion to assess your current opportunities and challenges, define the scope of our work together, identify priorities for action and establish specific desired outcomes.
Consulting:
What we do (and what we don’t)
Individuals or organizations retain consultants for their expertise. Generally, consultants diagnose problems, design solutions and sometimes participate in implementation.
Many organizations don’t have scale for in-house resources to support strategic planning and development. Even with scale, a fresh perspective makes a big difference.
We help fill in those blanks, giving you a boost to overcome what might be getting you stuck.
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Clarify short and long term objectives, understand key drivers of the business, hold periodic reviews to review results, risks and opportunities, updating as needed to adapt.
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Identify key business drivers and performance indicators, build models and reporting to measure what matters, enabling you to identify trends, simulate future outcomes, guide decision making, enable capacity planning and perform sensitivity analysis.
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Design and develop strategies for employee engagement, communications, professional development and succession planning. Clarify individual and group roles and responsibilities, review and refine internal governance tools (e.g., bylaws, employee agreements and handbooks)
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Recalibrate the business plan as needed to minimize disruption and ensure sustainability, determining what to keep / stop / start, develop communications strategies and implementation plans
You may benefit from expertise and credentialing beyond what we offer. We can also help by serving as a bridge to other business partners such as accountants, attorneys or other advisors and partners, articulating your objectives and identifying potential resources to support.
You will be able to use what we build. We work with technology platforms and solutions that work for you (e.g., Quickbooks, Excel, etc.)
Coaching:
What it is, What it’s Not and How it Works
Coaching is a process to help leaders and teams who are ready to explore and uncover personal insights and wisdom, empowering and enabling the design of a future aligned with what’s most important for you.
Leadership is exciting and rewarding. At times, it can also seem isolating or even overwhelming. Working with a coach provides the space and tools to focus on your own growth, building strength and capacity.
Coaches serve as a thought partner by posing powerful questions, sharing support without judgment, constructively framing observations and feedback with a focus towards success (e.g., what you want vs. what you don’t.)
WHAT YOU MAY EXPERIENCE IN PARTNERING WITH A COACH:
Understand individual and collective energy (i.e., how we are “showing up” and the inter-effects within a team)
Find common ground in purpose, mission and values
Leverage individual and collective strengths
Identify and move through what might be getting in the way of change and growth
Practice authentic curiosity and intuitive listening
Explore differences in perspective
Establish ways of working together
Celebrate success!
Esprit de Merci coaching engagements are designed around you and your objectives. We begin with a personal interview to assess current opportunities and challenges, define the scope, identify your priorities for action and establish specific desired outcomes.
Because learning and change take time and personal reflection, you may be asked to complete specific actions between coaching sessions that support the achievement of one’s personally prioritized goals. Additional resources may be provided in the form of relevant articles, checklists, assessments or models to support your objectives.
Being a great leader isn't necessarily about having the right answers; it is about asking the right questions.
A FEW clarifications ABOUT COACHING
Coaching isn’t about fixing something that’s “broken”. The work is future-focused, supporting and partnering to identify and implement a path forward for you and your team.
We realize there are many interpretations of what coaching may be for different circumstances.
With coaching aspects of Esprit de Merci engagements, we follow coaching standards as defined by the International Coaching Federation. A few distinctions in our definition of coaching include:
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Rather than providing specific expertise and solutions, coaching supports you in generating your own insights leveraging wisdom you already have.
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The coach may occasionally share personal experience or insight to offer perspective. Unlike mentoring, this isn’t to direct forward action. One size doesn’t fit all; you own your path.
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While we may spend some time exploring past experiences, coaching is future-focused and is not a substitute for working with qualified mental health professional.
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With traditional training, the path is generally linear with a set curriculum. Coaching is a partnership, enabling clients to lead. Each session is a chance to reset and topics don’t always go in a straight line.