Testimonials
Terry L. Lock
Senior Vice President (Retired), Boise Cascade Corporation
“In the 20+ years that I worked with Graham Covington, he consistently delivered meaningful results that created positive momentum for the organization. Graham established this track record by:
- Using well-designed questions to clarify issues and bring the topic at hand into sharp focus.
- Consistently exhibiting the intellectual capacity to assimilate, sort, and prioritize data.
- Demanding clarity in communication thereby removing uncertainty/confusion in plan execution.
- Exhibiting a willingness to take personal risk in pursuit of the right answer especially when change was required.
- Appropriate use of humor to defuse difficult situations.
- Investing high energy in support of action-oriented initiatives, always with unquestioned integrity.
- Selecting, training, and motivating individuals equipped to execute the plan required to meet goals.
Graham’s team always exhibited clear recognition of its goals, ownership of the implementation plan, an ability to successfully implement plans consistent with the organization’s values, and an ability to have fun in the process. His approach to problem resolution/performance enhancement can be applied in essentially every type of organizational environment.”
Howard M. Wall, Jr.
President, Portco Packing Corporation
“Grease Consulting has brought significant value to every project on which they have worked. What I appreciate most, along with the quality of the work itself, is the well-organized, timely, and intelligent manner in which the work has been performed.”
Terry L. Brubaker
Vice Chairman & COO, The Gladstone Companies
“The organization is always the constraint.
One of our biggest challenges is how we can best “add value” to companies in our portfolio. Acknowledging our strengths are financial, not operational, and being at a distance, we have limited insight into why companies falter or fail. But we have learned over the years to spot situations where success is elusive and management’s grasp of problems is difficult to follow. Our catch phrase is “It should not be this hard”. When it is this hard, we know the organization is constraining success – but we do not know why nor where. And we also know that more detailed financial analyses rarely identify or solve the problem.
Grease Consulting understands how to find what is not working – what is constraining success. The Grease Gearbox recognizes that all the analyses and initiatives we might launch will not overcome the “gear” that limits (or constrains) performance. By spotting this quickly, Grease focuses its remedial efforts on the weak links, reducing the gear friction. The result is speed, higher revenues, lower costs, and lasting improvement.”
Roger L. Pringle
Founder, The Pringle Company
“I have known Harry for more than 15 years and have worked with him in a variety of business situations, ranging from software to building materials. He has superb educational credentials that reflect an extraordinary intellect, and that makes him effective against almost any business challenge. He listens carefully, assesses situations quickly and accurately, and then executes, always in tandem with his client. He lives and works by his values and his integrity is beyond reproach.”
Dave Dullum
President, Gladstone Investment Corporation
“Gladstone engaged Grease to advise a number of our portfolio companies on how to enhance value creation and best practices of sales strategy and execution. Grease has advised several of our companies, most recently Alloy Die Casting (custom aluminum and zinc precision machine die-castings], Mitchell Rubber (highly engineered rubber compounding and molding of end use rubber products], and DPMS {high precision machine components for various industries including medical devices and aerospace].
The Grease Value Proposition is that value creation is a function of the seamless meshing of four “gears:” strategy, business execution planning, internal effectiveness, and sales execution. Grease conducts a “Friction Audit” to identify and remedy where the value creation system is breaking down.
- With Alloy Die Casting, the challenge was to develop a High Level Sales Plan, and recommend improvements to the company’s internal effectiveness so as to remove impediments to sales execution.
- At Mitchell Rubber, Grease provided templates for Comprehensive Strategy, Business Planning Execution, Internal Effectiveness, and Safes Execution focused on doubling the company’s revenues.
- At DPMS, Grease encountered a company with both internal process shortcomings and the absence of a cohesive go-to market customer strategy. Grease made recommendations as to how to best remove these points of friction and create value.
My experience working with Grease is that its principals are high-energy, engaging, skilled, persistent, and non-confrontational. The Grease team represents a broad swath of capabilities from strategy to sales, all grounded on an uncompromising bias for action to improve execution, increase speed, enhance competitive advantage and create value.”
Jenn Wall
President, The Racquet Club of Portland
“Grease Consulting LLC played a pivotal role in the hiring process for the new General Manager of The Racquet Club of Portland this past summer. Grease was asked to be part of the Search Committee at the club given the firm’s extensive experience in Human Resources and interview practices that are best in class. Grease educated the Search Committee to ensure we focused on a few key qualities during our extensive search to help narrow the pool of eligible candidates down to a core group. This focus helped the process to run with great efficiency and ensured we were assessing each candidate objectively. Beyond that Grease educated the group on the importance of asking each candidate the same open-ended questions to see truly how they dealt with ambiguity and to judge their integrity and honesty. Our search and interview process were run very smoothly and efficiently and focused on consistency. This yielded a great result – hiring of the best candidate in our pool. We would recommend Grease Consulting LLC to anyone. Top notch expertise and service.”
Our Client Strategy
We focus our business advice on selected drivers in the business value-creation continuum where improvement offers large value gains.
We observe that all companies seek a competitive edge. Such an edge leads to incremental sales and value creation because it compels customers to acknowledge that doing business with Grease clients enables them to make more money than doing business with their competitors.
Grease Consulting was formed to help our clients make this case again and again as part of their value proposition…