About Plan Resonate

Plan Resonate LLC is a San Francisco based Growth Management consulting business.

Jeffrey R. Osborne

That’s me, the growth management consultant, the third generation entrepreneur, the guy who will happily talk your ear off about business. How’s work?

What I Do

I’ve developed a team-oriented, collaborative, and interdisciplinary method for business planning. This effective process is unique to Plan Resonate. I help businesses implement the Plan Resonate growth management approach to strategic planning.

The idea came from the land use planning industry. Land use consultants and city planners regularly talk about growth management. They use the term to refer to community and real estate development issues. Growth management makes sense at the city, region, and state level. Does it make sense for a commercial organization? I think so.

Growth management is a process; it’s designed to help you identify profitable, efficient, and sustainable economic opportunities.

I have formal credentials: MBA in Sustainable Management, ‘05, Presidio School. BS in Political Economics, ‘97, Michigan State University. More importantly, I’ve been following a self-designed curriculum that includes academic and professional training in South Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Oregon, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Guatemala, and Mexico. I’m also aware of the internet.

About Management Consulting

Management consulting means different things to different people. Here are a few descriptions:

“Management consulting is an uncertain and evolving process conducted by a foreign intruder who muddles through by performing various problem-solving activities, while trying to maintain high professional standards and still attempting to meet the needs of the client.”
- Consulting to Management, Greiner/Metzger, Prentice Hall, 1983


“A teacher needs education courses and a college degree. A bus driver needs a driver’s license. A manicurist must be state certified to work on your nails in a salon. But there are no such constraints on the consultant. Anyone, at any time, and virtually anywhere can be a consultant.”
- Million Dollar Consulting, Alan Weiss, McGraw-Hill, 2003


“The successful psychotherapist is the one whose patients all believe they cured themselves - they internalized the therapy and it thereby became truly an integral part of them. Consultants suffer much from the dilemma of the psychotherapist - the problem of internalization. If they wish the client to use the right solution with full and lasting commitment then they must let him believe it is his solution.”
- Understanding Organizations, Charles Handy, Penguin, 1976

I believe that the solutions that “work” will most often be the solutions that come from you and your team. You know your business better than anyone! I agree with Weiss that many so-called consultants are inexperienced and unqualified. And I think it’s important to acknowledge the cultural role of a consultant as an outsider, maybe not an “intruder”, but certainly someone with a foreign perspective. Often it’s that new energy and fresh point of view that can move things forward.

Location

Plan Resonate studio is located in the Lower 24th St. Community of San Francisco’s Mission District, California, USA. Most of my work is done remotely, via telephone and internet.