How often have you told someone or have you been told to be proactive - to take problems into your own hands, take charge and stop being reactive? This sounds like good advice and often we hear people in job interviews tell us that they are proactive.

Consider the case of a company that thought it had been sued once too often. The proactive manager decided he was going to fight these law suites and stop settling out of court. They were going to stop being pushed around. To this end they increased their internal legal team so that they could take cases through to trial. Now besides the added costs of a larger legal department they also needed to spend a great deal of time and money researching these claims so that they could take them through to trial.

Now when you look at this situation systemically, at the effect the decision had on the whole company as opposed to how many cases were settled out of court, the vision was very different. The cost of fighting these cases far outweighed the small number of cases that were actually won in court. Instead of concentrating on what they were good at the company had almost become a law firm.

By identifying an enemy out there without gaining a true understanding of the whole system we can land up doing more harm than good. Too often we forget to see our company as a large integrated system instead we see our department and the role we play in that. We therefore believe my being proactive and fixing the problems within our silo we are doing a good thing. The opposite is often the case, by pushing on this side of the balloon the problem just pops up somewhere else.

Being proactive does not come from throwing resources at a problem we perceive, that is often just being reactive in disguise. Instead being truly proactive requires us to understand how we contribute to our own problems and finding a solution that takes into account the entire system and not only our silo.

Graeme Nichol

What differentiates Graeme is the depth and breadth of his experience in management. He has either been in management or has been consulting to management for over 25 years. What he has seen and experienced is an unlimited resource that his clients can tap when resolving their business and team problems.

His experience includes consulting with large practices such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, Coopers and Lybrand and Price Waterhouse; and boutique performance improvement implementation practices such as Knox D?Arcy Intl. and KrestaHague Intl. He has configured and managed complex ERP software implementations, worked in productivity and performance improvement, quality improvement, change management, strategy implementation, and managed both small and large projects. Graeme has worked in manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, communication, direct marketing, banking, beverages, consumer packaged goods, foodstuffs, and retail amongst others.

In his years of experience gained around the globe, he always found that business problems were usually either caused or solved by a team. If a team worked well together they could overcome amazing hurdles but if they were not aligned all types of hurdles appeared. He has gained extensive experience developing high performing teams. He knows what makes a team works and how to get them to function as one.

Besides management he is passionate about teaching and training. He has instructed many workshops and training sessions on various aspects of business such business planning, sales training, team building, introduction to business, conflict resolution, negotiations, general management, costing, management accounting, management reporting, developing management metrics and operations management.

When not working with his clients, Graeme?s passions are flying and sailing. His passion for teaching extends into his private life where he teaches flying and basic aerobatics. He has a small aerobatic plane which he loves to take up and throw around the sky. He has raced a 40ft yacht across the Atlantic Ocean, and competed in numerous sailing regattas, in the USA and abroad as well as cruised the East Coast of the USA with his family. Sailing is always a team event as each team member controls a small part of the boat. Team members need to be aligned and focused to achieve the results they desire.

Graeme has a BS degree in Agricultural Economics and an MBA from the University of Cape Town, RSA