How do you measure your Relevance?

Relevance is defined in terms of pertinent to matter at hand, appropriateness to the users needs and capable of making a difference in decision making. Staying relevant is indeed best assurance for guaranteeing survival. Need for sustaining relevance and threats to relevance are obvious, especially when pointed out. But still we see irrelevance eating out organizations, brands, technologies, products and experts all around. And in most of the cases, although the movement to irrelevance has been gradual, its realization has been sudden and often too late.


Measuring relevance of regular basis and picking signals early may help. So how do you measure relevance rightly, even if not necessarily quantitatively accurately? Financial Performance, present customer satisfaction index or order pipeline may not be right meausres. 

Here are some initial thoughts around measuring relevance as a Consultant:

Type of Engagements: Advance booking of your time beyond present engagement is not sufficient to construe sustained relevance but business. Are you getting engagements with enhanced complexity, seeking greater innovation and creativity and by more demanding customers? Or order book is full by customers seeking similar advice and efficient reliable solution in their quest to catch-up fast.

Type of Competition: Consultant is known by the “Competition” he is is compared with. Often the early indication of loss or shift in uniqueness of position comes from change in the type and number of competitors one has.

Type of Praise: Who is praising you and for what? Most sought after praise comes from competition (in disguised form), and at the same time praise that is easiest to come by but with least business benefit (however most endearing) is from your own team.

What are other measures of Relevance that you believe help?

Welcome to Sustaining Relevance

Today, in this world of globalization and interconnectivity, the business environment has become extremely dynamic and the long held business paradigms have been questioned.

Signs suggest that the economic scenario is turning around but in reality, the uncertainity and complexity is increasing for the organizations.This has resulted in many new challenges for the organizations with the need for "Agility" and "Redefination" becoming more relevant than ever before.

The challenge of "Sustaining Relevance" is ubiquitous and is spread across all key dimensions of business including brand, competition organizations, technology, institutions, laws, employer and employee. in this dynamic world has become a top priority for businesses.

This challenge is even more pronounced in the Consulting sphere.Inspite of being exteremly pogressive in nature, consulting advices are  more ephemeral than other aspects of business like brands and get obsolete much faster.

Welcome to Sustaining Relevance. Through this blog, I am looking forward to interact with you for sharing thoughts and ideas about the relevance of advice, counter trends and the dimensions that can question the relevance of organizations in the future.

Some of the other thoughts that I plan to cover in my upcoming posts include :

1. Lessons learnt from my past experiences
2. My personal views on the emerging trends in today's environment
3. Discuss about some explored fronts in management consulting. Talk about my favorite books and thought leadership papers
4. Change Management - Its evolution, importance, benefits and future

Please provide suggestions (as comments) on any other topics that I can cover in my blog.

Thanks for Visiting.