A new firm established to help public and private sector entities find solutions to their management, leadership and strategy implementation needs was officially launched yesterday and was praised by Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips as “a timely venture”.

“I think the foundation of this business is in some sense an expression of confidence in Jamaica and its future, and a recognition that there is much to be done in managing the fundamental changes that are underway in our country at this time,” Phillips told the breakfast launch of Moneague Consultants Ltd at Alhambra Inn in Kingston attended by an impressive number of the country’s top business leaders and officials from the International Monetary Fund.

Moneague Consultants comprises distinguished attorney Walter Scott, QC, chairman; Robert Drummond, managing director; James Moss Solomon, director; and Keisha Scott, director.

The company was formed early this year, and yesterday Drummond explained that it was set up as a boutique management consultant firm providing services in three areas only — change management, leadership development, and strategy implementation.

“We selected those three interrelated areas because together they represent the foundation pillars for corporate effectiveness, which is the perspective from which we do plan to add value to our clients,” Drummond said.

Many companies, he explained, commit a lot of money and valuable time of their boards and executives and staff to developing elaborate and sometimes well-defined strategic plans, but are lacking in capacity to implement those strategies.

“That’s where we come in, to help them build those capabilities, structures and processes to be effective in that regard,” Drummond said.

He said that coupled with those skills is the need to optimise the effectiveness of the mindsets, approaches and capabilities of the leaders of the organisations to drive the critical initiatives that those strategic plans require.

“So therefore, leadership development becomes a key interrelated pillar for corporate effectiveness,” said Drummond, a business strategy specialist with more than 25 years’ experience leading effective, profitable firms in financial services, hospitality and other industries in Jamaica and the United States.

“We develop customised programmes for corporate leadership teams in the private and public sectors, which are benchmarked against global best practices,” he explained, adding that “Moneague has unique skills at researching and accessing the best and most relevant international standards for adoption by local organisations.”

He argued that the realities of corporate life in Jamaica and across the world demand that organisations possess within their corporate DNA, the capacity to change, “to turn the entire ship around in response to new opportunities or major threats”.

Added Drummond: “Change management today is probably the most important element of corporate effectiveness, given the demands set by technological changes and global competition. It is the most difficult to define, to harness, and to effectively incorporate into any organisation.”

Against the background, he said that he and his partners believe that the focus on change management, in concert with leadership development and strategy implementation, will “enable Moneague Consultants to establish a unique position in the Jamaican management consultant space that will allow us to impact both private sector and public sector entities”.

He explained that while Moneague structures and designs solutions for medium and large companies with complex structures and business practices, the programmes are carried out by the entities’ own executive teams, along with specially selected change agents from across the companies.

The launch featured a testimonial from Lisa Bell, managing director of EX-IM Bank Jamaica who recommended Moneague’s services to any entity seeking to effect change.

“One of the things we got out of the exercise was an appreciation of the cutting-edge approaches to some of the problems we were dealing with,” Bell said.

“Over time, and bolstered with some other management training we were doing at the time, we really began to understand how important it was dealing with issues of emotional intelligence, understanding relationships at the lowest level, the highest level, and how that played a role in moving an organisation in the direction that you wanted it to go,” she said.

“I think the team is a well-structured and skilled team,” she added.