Hi – and welcome to Pyramid CC’s first newsletter! Hopefully the first of many – I’m glad to have you along for the journey!
Unlike many newsletters I’ve read which are a dull-as-dishwater collaboration between an intern and Chat GPT, this newsletter is written directly by me – Sarah – the founder of the business.
You’ll see this newsletter written based on real experience, and yes I’m afraid any opinions expressed here are indeed my own! At least it will give you a feel for what you get here at Pyramid CC – a partner, not just a supplier, here with you for better and for worse!
Who Are Pyramid CC?
So a bit about me; I’ve been in consultancy in one form or another for about 15 years now, having started my career with West Yorkshire Police as an Intelligence Analyst before then. I’m asked a lot “what is the best thing about being a consultant?” and the answer is simply “my clients”; there is a reason we work with clients for long stretches of time – our relationships are real and we’re in it for the long-haul, not just a passing phase.
What is Pyramid CC All About?
It probably makes sense for me to explain the name of the business, and then maybe you’ll see where we’re coming from.
Many moons ago (I’m older than I look!) I was a new manager in a boutique consultancy firm, heading up a flagship project for a major retail client. Along with the rest of the leadership team, I embarked on some fantastic experiential training over a number of years, that gave us a grounding in things like change management, learning styles, motivational techniques, and much more!
I’ll probably write a future blog on personality types (Myers-Briggs is my flavour of choice), as that was literally life changing for me, so deserves a post of its own.
Anyway, one of the things that stuck in my head was Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If you’ve not seen it before, it’s depicted as a pyramid (you see where this is going re the company name, I hope), and the theory is that in order to reach the peak of the pyramid – the stage called Self-Actualisation – you need to satisfy the requirements of the foundational levels first.
The bottom level of the pyramid covers the basic human needs for survival, like food, sleep and shelter. Clearly you can’t expect your project teams to thrive if they’re starving or at risk of freezing to death.
But just one step up from the bottom of the pyramid is safety and security.
There are five levels to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and it absolutely blew me away to think that people in my team, and in fact myself also, would struggle to reach the top because we didn’t feel secure – worrying about our jobs, worrying if we were good enough, and worrying there wasn’t “enough” of anything to go around all the people in the room.
Bottom line is – you’ll find it extremely difficult to develop a high performing team and deliver successful projects together, whilst people are naturally focussed on the basic human needs towards the bottom of the pyramid, rather than being able to reach the peak where they can develop creativity, solve problems, and inspire others.
Ever since I learned this, I’ve had a completely different approach to any programme I’ve been involved in, because to this day I’ve never worked on a project that doesn’t involve people! Every person on your project team has their own personality, fears, drivers, hopes and dreams, and it’s up to us as leaders to meet them where they are.
How Does Pyramid CC Work?
It’s this approach of building a strong foundation, getting the best from your team, and adding value through a people-focused approach, that makes Pyramid CC different to other outsourced project services or consultancies out there.
We concentrate on providing outsourced project management, change management and business process analysis services for our clients, but instead of a top down “my way or the highway” approach, we engage with your business, your teams, from the shopfloor to the board room floor, to really understand your challenges and your chances to shine, to meet you where you are and deliver the business change you need together with you.
Our team are experienced in delivering all the key skills you’d expect from an outsourced project team, from project initiation and requirements gathering, through to schedule, scope and budget management, stakeholder management and engagement, and project close out activities. As we specialise in working with external business clients, we’re great at hitting the ground running, getting up to speed and delivering value quickly.
One of the things we’re especially proud of is our focus on engaging with your stakeholders from all parts of the business, especially operations. Business change affects people, and it’s getting to know the day-to-day experiences of your delivery teams that allows us to truly understand your business as a long-term partner, helping us to facilitate successful transformation programmes alongside you.
We also understand that transformation is an ongoing process – if we stand still in business, in reality we’re falling behind in the race. That being the case, our aim is to provide you with constant feedback and recommendations for continuous improvement and process quality, whether by sharing best practices with your teams, providing re-usable project templates, or our in-depth lessons learned, and recommendations reports at project close.
Who Do We Normally Work With?
We love to work with businesses who are undergoing a programme of transformation and have a small, or maybe a new team, responsible for delivery, and would benefit from temporary support from experienced project professionals who can seamlessly slot into your team to support you in successfully delivering your projects.
We generally work with clients for periods from 6 months to 2 years, however as with any project, we completely tailor this to your needs – we can even help make recommendations for the type of support which might suit your project, such as a business analyst and project manager pairing, or part time support if your project has budget constraints or longer timelines.
Our clients are from a range of industries – we particularly love to work with retail, supply chain and logistics businesses as – hand on heart – this is where my career and my expertise really lies, in understanding in detail the buying, selling and transportation processes. In reality though, our service is sector agnostic, focussed on delivering tech and data related change projects for non-tech businesses, and our team brings a range of experiences across the board.
Let’s Stay in Touch!
More than likely if you’re a Business Technology, Business Transformation, or Operations Director who is responsible for delivering projects or programmes of change, you’re the type of person we love to work with.
When you have a challenging programme of change to deliver, without the resources to deliver it, the Pyramid CC team can join as temporary resource to help you get things across the line – whether that’s to accelerate the discovery and requirements definition through a business process analyst, to manage project timelines, scope and budget through an experienced project manager, or to take care of the people side of change and help embed new ways of working successfully through a change manager – we’re here to help you.
We’d love to hear your experiences of your project or change delivery challenges, and we’ll do our best to address these in future newsletters, so looking forward to staying connected, and hope we’ll meet in real life at some point in the future!
If you’ve made it this far – as we say in the North (of England!) “it’s time for a brew”!
Thanks for reading!
