Thought Meetings Featured in Gazelle’s Newsletter

by

Blackboard-with-hand-and-speech-bubble

As someone who has followed Verne Harnish’s newsletter for years it was very exciting to be included in one of them. After talking with Thought Ensemble CEO and co-founder Jim Smelley, Verne wrote a piece about our internal Thought meetings in his weekly “Growth Guy” column. These Thought meetings are a core part of who we are as a company and are something that we truly value and enjoy, so it was a great distinction to be able to share this with a person of such great acumen as Verne. Here’s what was featured:

Strategy Think Time — monthly “Thought” meetings have helped propel Denver-based Thought Ensemble, a technology strategy consultancy, to more than double its size last year, and to double again this year with $6 million in revenue and 24 employees ($250k/employee — impressive). Notes Jim Smelley, co-founder and CEO:

One of our key differentiators is our Thoughts: new and innovative ideas to solve our clients’ complex technical problems. We have found that this is heavily dependent on giving ourselves and our teams the time to think through and explore client issues. To encourage this we conduct monthly Thought meetings.

‘Thought’ was initially an agenda item for a broader company meeting. “We encouraged team members to bring tough client challenges to our ensemble for discussion, however, we found that while the intent was good (and we had sporadically good results), we ended up rushing through the thought topic – and we were not very thoughtful,” explains Jim.

Two-Hour Monthly (Single) Strategy Discussion — Jim continues, “We have since re-structured the Thought meeting to be a dedicated time that takes place monthly. We focus on a single topic each month and send pre-read materials and questions before each meeting. The questions and responses are used to drive a two hour discussion on a single topic. During the meeting team members sign up to write related blog posts which are then posted as thought leadership on our company blog.

Strategy “Cerebrations” — Each month, we also award “Cerebrations” for the best blogs or whitepapers from the month. (We know it’s a cheesy title, but hey, we’re consultants. Isn’t that requited?)” Concludes Jim, “our last Thought Meeting focused on technology innovation. We conducted a lively conversation and debate and then set out to produce Thought pieces. It’s working. Our small company wrote dozens of articles read by thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of people.”

 

READ MORE

The Magic of Mortals

The Magic of Mortals

Daily we wake up to new developments in automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML). Across sectors and industries, automated solutions prove highly successful in surpassing the capacity of the human brain for certain tasks, improving...

read more
Leveling Up: How to Hone Your Skills at Home

Leveling Up: How to Hone Your Skills at Home

Leaders have been trying to crack the code on talent development for years. Recent studies have shown, however, that strength-focused leadership [read: intentionally elevating the qualities that already come naturally to us] is the clear winner for developing talent...

read more
Fake Case Study: Jack of all trades vs. Master of One

Fake Case Study: Jack of all trades vs. Master of One

  Listen to any earnings call or executive presentation and you will likely hear the terms “top line” and “bottom line.” These are words used to describe a business’s performance. According to Investopedia, the words are defined as follows: Top line refers to the...

read more
Your Personality Is Showing

Your Personality Is Showing

There I was, minding my own business one evening, digging into my organization's SEO performance (as one does), when I came across something interesting. Search terms related to "MBTI" — or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, developed by Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel...

read more
Lessons From a Change Manager Who Hates Change

Lessons From a Change Manager Who Hates Change

Hello. My name is Monique, and I’m a change manager who hates change.   After years of receiving “consulting therapy” from various mentors, I am now able to say these words out loud and proudly. But for a long time, it felt more like an admission of guilt. I mean, who...

read more
Creativity as a Cure

Creativity as a Cure

The topic of creative solutioning has been front and center these days as we talk more and more about organizational adaptability in the face of dynamic and uncertain times. For example, I recently read about a project that got me thinking about specific priorities...

read more
Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company — Why Now?

Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company — Why Now?

Big news over here as we close out the year - we have been acquired by Pariveda, a 750-person consulting firm in 12 markets across North America! We are now “Thought Ensemble, a Pariveda Company” and I’ll be serving as the Managing Vice President continuing to lead...

read more
Thought Ensemble Joins Pariveda Solutions!

Thought Ensemble Joins Pariveda Solutions!

Dallas, December 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pariveda, a leader specializing in solving complex technology and business problems, announces the acquisition of Thought Ensemble. With the addition of Thought Ensemble, Pariveda now provides holistic business strategy,...

read more
Thoughts on Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act

Thoughts on Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act

It was about a year ago that we first started hearing about Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (SB19-085) and I knew it was going to be national news. We’d just gotten past the “Rocky Mountain High” jokes, and our lovely state was trying to break new ground...

read more