Richard Harmer, 40, is from Melbourne, Australia. He started his strategy design and leadership development business, The Holos Group, in 2008. The organisation operates in the strategy design and implementation space. At its core, our business focuses on helping organisational leaders architect business breakthrough to capitalise on new market opportunities in an increasingly complex world.
Starting the Business
Q: Where did the idea for your business come from? Where were you in your life and career?
A: In 2003 (in my early 30s) I was retrenched from a job I really did not like. I was very successful in that job and made a lot of money for my employer, but it was soulless. A few weeks after I was retrenched I got married. I then spend two weeks lying on a beach contemplating what was next for me. I knew that whatever was next had to have the following ingredients:
- Future focused – I know I do my best when I am creating what could be, not supporting what already is.
- Challenging to the status-quo – I realised that there are enough people ‘following’ in the world and waiting for others to give them permission to do anything, without me being another one of those people.
- Meaningful and life nourishing – the work I wanted to do had to nourish my soul and feel like I was doing something that was life-giving, not just money-focused or life-destroying.
- Helping others achieve their highest calling – fundamentally, I wanted to enable others (at scale!) to identify what they truly wanted in life and work, then connect them with the ideas, people and resources to achieve what they most desired – I know that doing so created a sense of freedom that most people only dream of.
- Effortless –I don’t mind working hard, but I did not want to feel like I was struggling undertaking activities that created no real value for others.
When I went through all of the things I knew how to do and the job contacts I had, I realised that I would not get any of these factors in working for somebody else. I knew then that I had to start my own business to create these conditions for myself, and to create these conditions for others to thrive too.
So, Version 1.0 of The Holos Group started. I worked at growing The Holos Group for a couple of years, then travelled overseas on an extended holiday and business trip – I needed to find inspiration for the next iteration of the business, and me.
I came back to Australia and used these same principles to help a friend grow his consulting business and take it into the US market. I also undertook PhD-level research examining the relationship between spirituality, identity development and how people make sense of themselves in an increasingly chaotic world. I finished my PhD in 2008 and The Holos Group Version 2.0 was started.
Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced when starting out?
A: Focus. Self-Belief. Agility.
In the early stages of the start-up phase of my business, the biggest challenge was remaining true to the Value Proposition I’d identified for the business. I knew my Value Proposition would expose a gap in the service offering of existing consulting firms in the strategy, leadership and change consulting space that I could capitalise on if I could remain true to the ‘why’ of why The Holos Group was born.
At the time staying true to my Value Proposition was tough for two reasons: first, Management Consulting is a crowded market that (I think) has become complacent in supporting organisations dealing with radically different business and market challenges – and many large organisations are equally complacent; and second, the Global Financial Crisis was starting to impact the confidence of organisational leaders to try something different when addressing common business problems. So, sometimes I had to take the work that was offered to me even if it was not well aligned to the work (and way of working) I wanted to do, or where I thought I could generate the greatest value for organisations.
Q: What is the one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you started the business?
A: Go faster. Bring on Business Partners earlier. Pivot my business model sooner.
For the first three years of The Holos Group Version 2.0 the business and its Value Proposition was me, which definitely impacts how fast a business can grow.
At the end of year three of the business, I was feeling pretty burnt out as I tried to recreate the businesses revenue each year. I began to appreciate the importance of letting go of total control of the business to bring on other partners (I had been working an associate network, but could not get commitment to helping me grow the business over the longer term from this network). In the last 12-18 months since bringing on equity partners the businesses growth has accelerated significantly. We are now able to position into the market in ways that are significantly stronger than I could have imagined previously. And even more recently, the business had started to focus some time and energy on online delivery of consulting and learning services (in an industry that traditionally operates face-to-face). Early signs of this approach indicate that this was a great decision the businesses next phase of growth.
Q: What would you consider your first big success in the business?
A: The success I have been most proud of was when The Holos Group won a piece of work to support an organisation’s senior leadership design a new strategy and I was not involved in winning the project. This was a significant success for three key reasons. First, the project was won by my business partners and not me (which indicated to me that the Value Proposition of The Holos Group was now a business not an individual. Second, it delivered value to a client in ways that I had been unable to do so previously. Finally, it was a project that has the potential to fundamentally change the way a key service delivered in Australia is delivered in the future.
Q: What is the toughest thing about getting to the top / staying on top in your industry specifically?
A: The Management Consulting industry is under significant disruption at present with the Intellectual Property ‘black box’ of many consulting firms no longer being a point of differentiation – the Internet has driven a democratisation of knowledge and clients now expect (and deserve) greater service transparency, as well a increased value for money. I see these as significant opportunities for smaller, savvy and nimble consulting firms to overcome larger consulting firms by playing a new value-based approach to consulting. This, plus the utilisation of the web to deliver outstanding learning content in ways that continue to erode the power struggle within our industry.
The Future
Q: Where do you see your industry heading in the next 5 years?
A: As I mentioned, Management Consulting is on the cusp of significant disruption. Any advice-based firm not willing to accept that the very foundation for how they deliver value to clients (and how they will be paid for the value they deliver) is going to radically change will cease to exist in our industry in the next 5 years. The significant drivers as I see it are:
- The democratisation of knowledge – consulting firms will not be able to charge for information that clients can readily find on the Internet. Being an expert will not be the same point of difference going forward, but helping organisations tap into the latent expertise within their organisation will be.
- The commoditization of “big data” – smaller firms (including mine) are typically locked out of resource-intensive service offerings, but setting up strategic partnerships with institutions that are able to analyse data quickly is increasingly possible. This means that The Holos Group can compete in this space in the market without having to bring this expertise inhouse like the larger players.
- Everything online – nearly everything that used to be provided face-to-face with a client or organisation can be delivered effectively online, which means that building the capability of employees at all levels just got significantly cheaper for organisations.
- From functional structures to project-driven work environments – the knowledge economy means that organisations and employees will work in project-driven environments more and more, which required a different skill set that most traditional consulting firms provide. This is a massive opportunity for my Firm. We have been working in self-organising team formats with distributed decision-making structures since our commencement and have strong experience and practices in this field.
Q: What do you plan on doing / changing in order to keep growing in this time period?
A: The key pillars of our strategy include:
- Building the individual thought leadership brand of each Partner in the online space and actively creating new revenue streams by leveraging existing products/services through online channels.
- Accelerating our self-organising team structures more, to enable even quicker decision making, and leveraging these ways of working into selected international partnerships that make us look bigger to the market, but keep our small and nimble approaches internally.
- Getting online and leveraging the last 10 years worth of content we have created again through the delivery of just-in-time and application-ready learning modules to leaders at the front line of organisational performance.
- The client experience is key for us too – we have designed and validated a customer advocacy model and assessment for how knowledge-based firms (law, accounting, engineering, etc) can create more engaging and more profitable experiences for clients. This is critical when customer loyalty is in decline in many industries.
Q: What does ultimate success look like to you? How will you know when you’ve achieved it?
A: Internally for The Holos Group team, success is a vibrant business that maintains and enhances its relevance in markets that the partners of the business care about – with the key measure of success for this being strong revenue growth and delivering value to clients in ways that we enjoy. Also, when each person who is a part of The Holos Group can say openly that:
- we are creating the future they want;
- we are challenging the status quo enough to create new opportunities for others;
- we are doing work that is meaningful and life nourishing;
- we are helping others to achieve their highest calling;
- and we are working hard and generating great value without ‘efforting’.
The key focus for us is changing the game of business in ways that improve the quality of corporate life for people. The two key measures of our success for this focus include:
- a commercially viable and socially responsible business; and
- when people wake up in the morning and think about their day ahead they say, “I cant wait to go to work today to do awesome work that makes a difference to people, and to work with friends and colleagues I love being with.”
Wouldn’t that be great?
Q: What do you think will be the biggest challenge facing entrepreneurs in the near future?
A: Maintaining relevance in a global marketplace that is accelerating in terms of complexity and sophistication, and engaging with clients who have greater expectations of quality and value. Related to this is naming the problem you solve for others in ways that no one else can, and in ways that engage others.
Q: What one piece of advice would you give to someone just starting out in your industry and wanting to make it to the top?
A: Starting and growing a business means working hard, but does not need to be hard work. The key is finding what you truly care about that will positively impact others and then doing it – a purpose-focused career will lead to a money-filled life, not the other way around. Also, finding others who share similar passions to you and enabling them to succeed with you is critical – partnerships and collaborations have been a cornerstone to my businesses success and without them I would have failed many a time.