A Nod to the Past and a Look Toward the Future

At Koliso, we are all about practicing what we preach. For clients, that has included promoting these three steps.

1. Be purposeful. As many of our clients have heard us say before, people don’t learn from experience, they learn from reflecting on experience.
2. Promote engagement. People will support what they create. Involving people so that they have an opportunity to shape the future is one of the most effective ways to foster support and innovation.
3. Motivate toward worthwhile goals. The most powerful motivator is knowing your progress and why that progress is important.

Since we’re so passionate about seeing these steps within our clients, we thought it only fair to structure our reflection of the past year by how these steps have led us through 2011 and into 2012.

Koliso’s Purpose in 2011: Successful Partnerships, Lasting Value and Renewed Focus

Let us first say we are very pleased with the extended relationships we have built with many of our clients. We have great clients!

In 2011, we rebranded and are now Koliso with the tagline, “The Psychology of Business.” The new focus has resonated with our clients and community. We have spoken at professional conferences and corporate retreats on topics ranging from business development to ethical influence and from team building to ensuring executive accountability. Since only last year we have grown 42 percent and developed strong lasting relationships with clients that has resulted in 83 percent of our work being from returning clientele.

We are proud to have built such long lasting relationships with clients through products they have found both enduring and significant.

How We Engaged: New Industries and New Services

Koliso engaged with many different sectors in 2011.

We added six new clients in both the public and private sectors ranging from city government to state government and from entrepreneurial manufacturing to Fortune 500 financial institutions. We continued to specialize in legal, financial, insurance, med-tech and high-tech manufacturing. Most of our clients were executives and management teams, largely ranging from the director to C-suite and CEO level.

We extended our offerings with clients and worked on a number of new project areas, always focusing on the psychology of business and how it can add value. Some of our interesting projects included:

1. Helping a 3,000-employee organization reset its ERP project team, that included resetting its executive committee, project governance and strategic objectives.
2. Individual coaching and business development for newly appointed partners in a large legal firm, and similar work for two entrepreneur partners in a midsize high technology professional service practice.
3. Introducing a culture of performance accountability into a public sector government department.
4. Developing high performing executive leadership teams in five organizations: two in the not-for-profit sector, two in professional services and one in manufacturing.

Worthwhile Goals Ahead: New Perspectives

2012 began with new clients and new kinds of work.

For established clients, this new work meant new perspective—that by leveraging our knowledge of their business, they are better able to grow and take advantage of previously unknown opportunities.

One example is our participation in our clients’ interview processes while hiring new staff. By knowing our clients’ needs through previous projects we are able to combine insider knowledge of a company with an outside perspective and our longstanding experience in human relations.

We also became involved in business development with our clients. By helping them see business opportunities, Koliso has helped planned account and industry strategies that have led to new projects in customer management and client engagement.

Lastly, we have found we are developing new niches with entrepreneurs, professional service providers, high-value retailers and arts organizations. We are looking forward to growing these areas through 2012.

We have returned many times to the theme that the soft stuff is the hard stuff, and we have worked hard to help our clients realize significant improvements in time, money and well being from our work together.

We have been lucky enough to have opportunities to give back to a number of not-for-profit organizations through pro bono work, time and expertise on all their projects.

Our big commitment for 2012 is that this is the year of demonstrated value for our clients and community. The common theme in all our work has been translating the psychology of business into engagement and leadership strategies that deliver value.

Our growth and success last year came entirely through exceeding our clients’ expectations and delivering results beyond what they might have thought possible. With thanks and due respect to our wonderful clients and colleagues we intend to continue that trend in 2012.