Competitive Advantage Accelerator
Professional service firms and industry leading organisations cannot build a competitive advantage with expert knowledge alone. Instead, they need a set of four interrelated components: expertise, service, reputation and relationships. Individually, these components form the basis of a strong competitive position in the marketplace, but these four components in isolation cannot produce sustainable success. It is their combination and mutual reinforcement through a set of four energising activities – bundling, communicating, partnering and learning - drive and sustain a competitive advantage. Professor Michael Smets and Professor Emeritus Tim Morris from Oxford University's Saïd Business School conducted over 20 years of research to identify these key elements to creating a sustainable commercial competitive advantage.
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator benchmarks all elements against leaders from elite global professional service firms to provide high value insights on areas that are accelerating or slowing your competitive advantage. Leading global organisations and professional service firms are currently using the individual and organisational insights to accelerate their competitive advantage.
What access to the Competitive
Advantage Accelerator includes
Validated Diagnostic
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator measures all eight elements with relevant benchmarks to understand where behaviours are slowing, maintaining or accelerating a competitive advantage. Personalised individual reports provide advice on the results including actions to consider.
Data Analysis
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator can combine data to provide analysis and advice for teams, groups or as an organisation. It is also designed with the option to complete at additional points in time in order to measure progress and impact.
How the Competitive Advantage Accelerator is used by organisations
Professor Michael Smets and colleagues from Oxford University's Saïd Business School utilise the Competitive Advantage Accelerator for business school programmes with leading global organisations, government and purpose-based enterprises.
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator provides a means to assess the current status of individuals and groups against peer-based benchmarks, as well as the means to measure progress/impact.
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator report gives every individual personal insights that allow them to take action and proactively improve their competitive advantage. Programmes, like those at Oxford University's Saïd Business School, benefit from having a starting point for discussions, activities and the basis for measuring meaningful progress.
Professional Service Firms & Others…
The model of creating a sustainable commercial competitive advantage developed by Professor Michael Smets and Professor Emeritus Tim Morris from Oxford University's Saïd Business School, is used by leading global professional service firms and industry leading organisations
Since the recent release of the Competitive Advantage Accelerator, many of these groups now utilise the instrument to gain valuable insights on competitive advantage for their key personnel and teams from the benchmarked data and feedback..
Ask about Access
Request access to the Competitive Advantage Accelerator for your organisation
Background
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator was developed by Communication Labs in collaboration with Professor Michael Smets and Professor Emeritus Tim Morris from Oxford University's Saïd Business School. Communication Labs develops diagnostics for educational institutions and thought leaders, operationalizing research in psychology, behavioral science and expertise from proven methodology around personal and organizational development. Professor Michael Smets and Professor Emeritus Tim Morris from Oxford University's Saïd Business School are leading authorities in the area of competitive advantage and leadership in professional service firms.
Professor Michael Smets
Professor of Management
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Accredited Coaches
Tailored support from specialist professional coaches is available to help individuals to identify and imbed high impact actions. These specialist coaches can debrief the Competitive Advantage Accelerator and / or work with people on an ongoing basis to support their development. View the profiles of available accredited coaches.
Dr. Veronica Azua
Veronica is an executive coach and organisational psychologist who began her career as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist in Argentina, where she was born and raised. Her leadership development and coaching career started more than a decade ago at the London Business School working with EMBAs and MBAs in London and Dubai.
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She has worked for KPMG leading the design and delivery of leadership programmes for Partners and Directors for more than 6 years. She has also been coaching Partner and Directors in transition and maternity/paternity leavers, when returning to work. Previously, Veronica worked in the Human Capital team at Deloitte, and was a global talent manager for Burberry delivering leadership development in Europe and Asia.
Her passion for psychology led Veronica to study a doctorate, researching the impact of self-criticism on leaders at a point of transition, which she finds is often a common theme in her work with senior leaders. She has contributed to a book published in 2019 on authentic confidence, where she discusses the origins and consequences of self-doubts and the Impostor Phenomenon in the workplace. Veronica has presented her research findings several times in the past years, speaking to audiences of up to 300 people, in-person and virtually.
Catherine Law
Alongside ten years practicing as an executive coach, Catherine has over 20 years of front-line professional experience spanning both consulting and industry. A seasoned international professional, she worked for extended periods in New York, London and Zurich before relocating to Singapore in 2018.
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Through her management consulting career, Catherine advised some of the world’s leading banks on planning and executing aggressive growth strategies, addressing regulatory scrutiny and improving customer experience.
Earlier in her career, Catherine served in Citigroup’s proprietary M&A and strategy team, where she shepherded multi-billion-dollar transactions from target identification through post-merger integration, and she spearheaded innovative new market entries. Catherine enjoys helping senior executives achieve high levels of performance during periods of transition. She has brought together her business and coaching skills to design change programmes to drive organisational transformations in MNCs, and she has launched and delivered coaching offerings for professional services firms in Europe and Asia. She holds an MBA in International Management from Columbia University and a BA in International Studies from Vassar College.
Catherine is a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation and an accredited Coach Practitioner with the European Mentoring & Coaching Council. Catherine is active in professional circles as a speaker and author, sharing her insights on coaching, mindfulness in the workplace, and female leadership.
Claire Lea
Claire works with leaders and high potentials in professional service firms and corporates. A former corporate lawyer and general counsel, she understands the challenge of transitioning professional and technical expertise into excellent leadership.
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With a particular interest in helping high achievers perform with greater ease, Claire’s coaching is dynamic and transformational; it develops presence, impact and influence, it increases resilience, confidence and self-awareness and it challenges limiting beliefs such as perfectionism and impostor syndrome. As a mum of two and an advocate of work-life integration, Claire enables her clients to embrace their work, fulfil their potential and achieve success in ways that work for them, their families and their organisations.
Claire’s coaching is dynamic, collaborative and purposeful. Deeply pragmatic and solutions-focussed, Claire’s coaching is rooted in theory and best practice drawn from coaching, psychology, neuroscience and leadership theory. She uses a range of coaching methods and techniques to underpin her coaching, but her key focus is building honest coaching relationships and equal partnerships with clients. By creating a confidential, high-support and high-challenge environment which is truly independent of a client’s organisation, clients have the space to gain valuable insight, explore their blind spots, find and test their own solutions and develop key emotional intelligence capabilities such as resilience, confidence and impulse control.
Špela Trefalt
Špela is an experienced coach working with professionals who want to combine extraordinary career success with meaningful lives outside of work. Over her 10+ years of coaching, Špela has honed a focused approach to coaching that helps her clients achieve tangible improvements in very short periods of time.
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A mom with a law degree, Špela is an MBA and holds a doctorate in business from Harvard Business School. Her professional background includes higher education, human resources management, HR consulting, and anchoring TV shows.
Over the past 15+ years in academia, she has been researching how attorneys and consultants in prominent professional service firms balance work and life. She is a professor of management at Simmons University in Boston. Špela helps clients craft personalized approaches that work for them in their specific circumstances. Her coaching experience and her extensive research background enable Špela to point out possibilities that individuals may not recognise exist, and to share evidence-based strategies for setting boundaries, accomplishing goals, and feeling good about one’s choices. Špela’s clients appreciate her unwavering support of their ambitions, her deep understanding of human psychology, her focused and analytical mind, and her sense of humour.
Ian Paterson
Ian spent thirty years in Professional Services, including ten as a partner at EY, Andersen and Grant Thornton. During this time, he advised clients across a variety of sectors on M&A and fund-raising. At EY Ian led the internal coaching team and set up the coaching centre.
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Twelve years ago, Ian founded Cote Consultants to allow him to follow his passion for helping individuals grow and maximise their performance. At Cote Ian has worked with a range of leaders and teams. As an experienced coach working with a range of leaders and teams, Ian understands the unique challenges that leaders face in their demanding work environment.
His coaching services are designed to help leaders excel in their careers by developing key skills such as time management, communication, leadership, and work-life balance. Whether you are a young leader just starting out, or an experienced veteran looking to take your career to the next level, Ian's coaching services can help you achieve your goals. With personalised one-on-one coaching sessions, he will work with you to identify your strengths and weaknesses, set achievable goals, and develop strategies for success.
Technical
The Competitive Advantage Accelerator was developed using partner performance metrics from leading firms. It demystifies what is needed to create a sustainable competitive advantage as a professional and fee earner. It enables users to understand whether their behaviour is slowing, maintaining, or accelerating their competitive advantage.
A technical report on the reliability and validity of the Competitive Advantage Accelerator is available upon request.