A successful client engagement is one where the best ideas emerge to address real challenges, agreed-to goals are reached within a reasonable timeframe, and genuine knowledge transfer occurs. Our approach differs from the more traditional expert model, in which outside consultants take almost sole responsibility for issue indentification and problem solving. Working in hundreds of client settings, we have gained two important insights that guide our work:

• First among them: Outside consultants cannot “do” anything to an organization. In fact, the only effective client engagements —- ones that achieve their purpose -— are collaborative ones that recognize that each party brings special knowledge, skills, and attributes to the table.
• The second insight: Genuine knowledge transfer from outside consultants to the organization’s leader and teams must occur for the client to sustain a new strategic direction, fully implement agreed-upon goals, or improve organizational alignment through better systems and processes.

For this reason, we have spent more than a decade perfecting our Collaborative Consulting Model™. Our consulting engagements are partnerships with our clients and are based on a clear understanding of desired outcomes and well-defined mutual expectations. At the beginning of any assignment, we explicitly define individual and collective responsibilities. Our most important request: We ask the leader to support our collaborative model, allowing some of the best in the company to work with us. This is our commitment to knowledge transfer.

We know what conditions foster the best outcomes for our engagements. We believe that time and focus are the scarcest resources our clients have. We prepare for our work together and expect our clients to do the same. We ask our client leaders to make our work a priority during an engagement and, at the right time, to communicate the importance of the work to all key constituencies who will be affected by the project. From the outset, we incorporate principles of change management to reduce inevitable resistance to new initiatives or revised operations.

We have learned that, although clients and their challenges may be similar, every client engagement will have unique characteristics. Consequently, our role varies to meet specific client needs and expectations. Usually, we serve as advisors, content experts, planners, process builders, facilitators, and pragmatic teachers.

We take responsibility for the quality and integrity of our work. When appropriate, we prepare briefing documents, interim presentations, and final recommendations. We organize and guide client interactions. We help our clients develop engagement strategies and implementation plans. We share our methods, processes and techniques so that our clients achieve self-sufficiency as quickly as they are able. We coordinate our engagements so that the ongoing work of the company is not compromised. This is our dedication to ethical conduct.

Contact us directly for further information about our services.