What if…
Decision makers truly understood their IT environment.
The IT organization’s knowledge and capabilities were utilized to improve the customer experience.
Our best technology minds were working on new products to drive growth and revenue.
IT was brought in early to design the best business systems and processes.
The relationship between Information Technology and The Business must change
Our mission is to create new partnerships between IT and other functions that unwind the barriers and embolden IT to contribute at new levels and with greater impact.
The role of IT reinvented
The world is exploding with technology, information and smart products.
Yet, IT organizations are at a crossroad.
Some will become visionary and innovative organizations that drive significant impact and feel valued. Some will be relegated to cost centers with decreasing budgets and loss of control…how do you impact the outcome?
IT With Impact is Bamboo Partners’ seven step ecosystem that re-invents IT’s relationship with “the business” to drive top and bottom line results.
Services
We understand that each organization’s journey is unique. Every IT With Impact program is customized to you, your organization’s culture and your current environment.
We start by assessing your progress on the journey and design a program that works for you. Sample services:
Transform
Business Partnering for Impact System transforms IT organizations to become visionary and innovative leaders that drive significant impact. This program enables change on many dimensions to ensure that partnering is woven into the strategy, behaviors and work processes. Bamboo’s seven step ecosystem is customized to organizations and cultures to make partnering the way projects and work gets done. Bamboo guides implementation with a light touch that ensures results build over time.
Reduce frustration and get results
Project Accelerator builds collaboration, accountability and shared goals for projects, helping cross functional teams work together in new ways to get improved project results. Different than traditional project management, this approach builds IT with Impact concepts and behaviors into the project — ensures project success, reduces frustration and delivers better business results.
Solve chronic process problems
Discover Opportunities stops the automation of inefficient processes. By using the powerful end-to-end process knowledge IT has across functions, geographies and other boundaries – we design and facilitate sessions that bust through silo thinking and quickly move to idea generation and implementation to solve chronic process problems..
Learn a new way
Partnering Plug Ins are workshops and webinars that teach the Bamboo Partners Business Partnering for Impact process. Participants learn a new definition and way of thinking about partnering and practice application to their specific real-world situations. Each participant creates a plan that guides their application of the new learnings.
Change behaviors
Partnering Sprints engage teams to learn and apply IT with Impact principles in their day-to-day work. This concept application series changes mindsets and behaviors over time as teams and individuals practice and apply the new concepts.
Define your impact
Partnering Game Plan is a strategic working session that creates the vision for a new way to work, builds the roadmap and sets a way to measure impact. This direction-setting work defines the outcomes and goals for IT with Impact.
Identify opportunities
Partnering Baseline is an assessment that helps Technology leaders understand their IT organization’s specific IT with Impact opportunities and uncover ways they can increase their impact.
Our approach
Customized and practical
Resources
Technology Partner Score (TPS)
Wonder what your internal partners think of your current level partnering?
Who we are
We named our firm Bamboo Partners because bamboo is strong, yet flexible; fast growing, yet sustainable. We strive to emulate these characteristics with powerful business acumen, flexibility to create unique common-sense solutions for our clients, and an unrelenting focus on results that last.
In some cultures, bamboo is a symbol of uprightness and friendship — we aim to become our clients’ trusted advisor and friend. We believe that:
- Solutions to problems and challenges cannot be “one size fits all”
- Effective organizations focus on executing a few critical priorities
- Everyone needs to align how they work to the bigger strategy
- The people closest to the work are the best ones to design the work
- People achieve their best when they are challenged to think differently
Susan Heinlein
Partner and Co-Founder of Bamboo Partners
“When I have a difficult problem to solve I hire Susan. She is a true partner who gets us focused on the most important things; she owns the output and works to make sure we are able to execute after she leaves.”
Marian Powell
Partner and Co-Founder of Bamboo Partners
“Marian gets us all moving in the same direction. She is dynamic in her thinking, uses simple approaches, and facilitates with a lot of energy that motivates us to get things done.”
Susan Heinlein
Susan has over 25 years experience working with companies to develop customer focused growth strategies by aligning resources across organizations, simplifying and improving business processes, and identifying critical actions to improve business results. She is the leading expert in the newest thinking about how to make internal partnering a trainable, repeatable, and measurable process. Susan believes that better collaboration will deliver the next level of business performance.
Susan combines real life experience in business planning, business performance reporting, pricing, value proposition development and communication, change management and process design and improvement with a down to earth style that draws attention to what is critical and helps organizations take the actions needed to be successful. Leaders who are implementing change value her genuine, thought provoking and results focused approach.
Previous to founding Bamboo Partners, Susan was a partner at Korn Consulting Group and spent 10 years at Ameriprise and GE in senior roles in finance, pricing and operations. Prior to GE, Susan spent 10 years at Honeywell in a broad range of Finance roles including international roles in Asia.
Susan holds an MBA in Finance and Strategic Management from the Carlson School of Management and a BA in Business Administration from St. Catherine University. She is a Six Sigma Certified Master Black Belt.
Marian Powell
With over three decades of experience working with some of the world’s greatest companies and top business leaders in the world, Marian is an expert at helping people work together on exciting ideas that drive results. She believes that how people work together is as critical to success as what they work on.
Marian fuses real life experience and business knowledge with a conversational style and probing questions to draw out the best thinking of your organization. Leaders who want to drive change rely on her to help align their organization and build needed performance capabilities. Marian also coaches executives and managers to enhance their leadership and performance.
Prior to founding Bamboo Partners, Marian was a partner at Korn Consulting Group Inc. She also spent 17 years at GE where her last role was Officer of GE Capital and the SVP Global Sales and Marketing for GE Equipment Services. Other senior roles she held at GE were in product management, communications, operations, quality, and human resources.
Marian’s industry-leading Client Advisory Boards, new techniques in customer loyalty research, and application of Six Sigma to the selling process were adopted across GE. Her innovative approach to developing on-line customer work-flow tools was honored with awards from CIO Magazine and the Data Warehouse Institute. She is a Six Sigma Certified Black Belt with deep expertise in change management. Marian holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Cleveland Institute of Art and an MBA from De Paul University.
Our team
Claudia Carasso
Communications and Branding Consultant. Brand Development, Messaging Strategy, Content Alignment, Executive Presentation Coaching.
Katy Paul Chowdry, PhD
Organizational Change Consultant. Strategy, Change Management, Business Writing and Communication, Rapid Results, Facilitation.
Barb Hoffgre-Meyer
Systems Project Integration Specialist. Project Management.
Katja Jeanneret
Former Operations Director – GE. Six Sigma Black Belt, Process Design and Improvement, Value Stream Mapping, Systems Implementation, Agile Transformation, Project Management.
Jim Knight
Former Global CIO – Chubb. Technology Strategist and Executive Coach, IT Transformation, IT Organizational Development and Alignment, Global IT Governance, Advanced Business Analytics, Cyber Security, Digital Enablement.
Lisa Kline
Former Finance Executive – General Mills. University of Minnesota Adjunct Professor. Coaching, Process Improvement, Strategy Alignment, Defining Value.
Sandra Marshall, PhD
Talent and Human Resources Consultant. Talent Selection and Performance Appraisal Practices, 360 Feedback, Executive Assessments.
John Pancoast
Consultant and Coach. Post-Merger Integration, Staff Function Strategy and Value Delivery, Shared Services, Organization Effectiveness, Facilitation.
Vicki Rosetti
Former Human Resources Executive – Chubb. Executive Coach, HR and People Practices, Organization Design, Talent Assessment, Facilitation, Learning and Development.
Deb Seidman
Former BP Leadership and Organization Development – JP Morgan Chase. Team Alignment, and Development, Leadership Development, Organization Design, Change Implementation, Talent Processes.
Cozy Wittman
Strategic Growth. IT Business Development, Relationship Management, Value Based Marketing, Strategy, Facilitation.