Gilded Knight: Building The Right Team For You

Over the last couple of years, it is no secret that building the right team has become more complex. Organizations are increasingly more dispersed, virtual, and project-driven. The days of full-scale, week-long team retreats are dwindling and regular in-person touchpoints are often limited. We are pushed to reimagine the process of forming, storming, and norming teams in order to reach a high-performance state. As much as this applies to our clients, this also applies to the way we operate at Gilded Knight Consulting. We believe flexibility, diversity, and effective collaboration are key to each engagement and produce the conditions for project success.

The beauty of the current makeup of Gilded Knight is that we have an Extended Family: a boutique of small to mid-size businesses and independent practitioners that provide a range of skills and talent to our clients. Members of our Extended Family have collaborated with us for years. Not only do we have a strong relationship, but we also have a shared mindset and passion to create meaningful change. When we work on a project, we look to our Extended Family to assess the ideal talent to leverage in our network, and the best path forward. We are thoughtful about taking a systematic approach to analyzing a client’s needs and ensuring we bring the right people to the table. This approach has been core to how we function and helps our clients reach their full potential in an intentional way.

This is not necessarily new – especially from a consulting standpoint. What sets us apart from large consulting firms is the potential to deliver more impactful results for our clients and create a scalable, remote-friendly, and creative operation at a minimal cost and shorter ramp-up.

Four Benefits of Our Extended Family Approach:

Range of Skill Sets and Expertise – Our Extended Family has a range of experiences and expertise that flesh out our capacity to provide a wealth of services. For each client or prospective client, we assemble a unique team that can bring valuable and creative insight to a solution and strategically execute the work. We are committed to only taking on opportunities where we feel best positioned to meet our client’s needs.

A Team You Can Count On – When we establish our teams, these are not just people who are loosely linked via their strengths and weaknesses. These are people who have been on teams together, have delivered high-quality work together, and have established working rhythms that are ideal for each other. Part of the reason why we use the term Extended Family is due to the deep familiarity present, and the resulting shared mindset and shared understanding. There’s a relationship and track record, in addition to a genuine desire for mutual success.

Our Extended Family Works With Us, Not For Us – With a less hierarchal approach to collaboration, our company always has third-party close observers to give direct and constructive feedback and provide us with a greater sense of accountability. These temperature checks help shine a light on potential blindspots and allow us to remain in a continuous cycle of improvement.

Agile & Flexible Entity – There’s real value and excitement in a team that is extremely agile, lightweight, and flexible. Our Extended Family can be retooled and refined as necessary to fit the needs of the client. Since we have a long track record with one another and a supreme working relationship, we already have an incredibly deep trust factor. This reduces time spent on “forming, norming, and storming” and cuts straight to addressing the goals for the client.

One of the most exciting aspects of the Gilded Knight Extended Family is that they are phenomenal leaders and practitioners in their own right – who are literally and figuratively trying to change the world. When partnering with social impact organizations, we make sure to build the best-positioned team from our family to reach their goals. With each point of collaboration, it is a privilege to introduce our clients to extraordinary talent, work on transformative projects, and contribute to impacting lives and communities together. Stay tuned to learn more about this amazing group as we are eager to spotlight some members of our Extended Family in the coming weeks!