TLC aiming to double in size
Consultancy firm aims to create new jobs
As published in The Witness on 22 November 2017 by Edward West
The McCarthy’s started the company in 2001, focussing mainly on business improvement using the Lean Six Sigma methodology. Since then, TLC has broadened its offering into other forms of group and individual training and consultancy services, such as learnerships and internships to support companies with their B-BBEE, leadership training, and workshops on business strategy, purpose-led transformation, as well as short business skills courses. Many of these are available as eLearning courses through their global online portal, The Leadership Centre. TLC has a number of big corporate clients around the country spanning a range of industry sectors, and works with a growing number of Pietermaritzburg-based companies. Training Leadership Consulting (TLC) Managing Director Tanya Hulse believes the company is ready for substantial growth following a period of transition over the past 18 months. TLC won the Pietermaritzburg Chamber of Business’ Small Business of the Year Award recently. In a subsequent interview with The Witness, Hulse said she joined as Managing Director after TLC’s founders, Rick and Debbie McCarthy, re-located back to Rick’s home-country, the US, in August 2016.
“We also support our greater community by using our expertise in the business world to assist a non-profit organisation, Singakwenza, which runs early childhood education programmes in economically disadvantaged communities, using recycling to create toys and teaching tools. We were delighted that Singakwenza won the Social Enterprise of the Year for small NPO’s at the Pietermaritzburg Chamber of Business awards.” said Hulse.
There are twelve full-time employees at TLC, and a well-established network of various Master Black Belts, trainers, partners and other training specialists who manage client requirements on a contractor basis.
“We are keen to grow the company and give the team an opportunity to support more clients, and to create new jobs. In the next two to three years, we’d like to double in size,” said Hulse.
Hulse said the results of their training courses are often substantial, and can be quantified in rand terms. For example, she expects that clients implementing Lean Six Sigma courses should be able to recover at least the cost of the training through the savings achieved in the first year, and certainly within the first two years, of a successful roll-out.
Lean Six Sigma is a powerful integrated methodology and an operational excellence toolset. Lean tools enable businesses to lower the cost of doing business by reducing waste and defects in their processes. Six Sigma focuses on reducing variation in a process by isolating the root-cause of a complex problem through process and data analysis. The business improvement community has seen the benefits of using these two methods simultaneously.
