deepening communications, servant leadership, capacity building, change management, retaining customers

The Answer to How? is Yes

I offer Professional Consulting and Coaching services to my clients. Below is a partial listing of the kinds of discrete types of projects I am able to, or have, undertaken.

I follow a strict code of confidentiality and I’m old enough, wise enough and experienced enough to know that such a policy is paramount for my long-term relationships. My clients count on me to be discrete.

Rates: I work on an hourly, project and retainer basis. My rates are quite reasonable for my experience and capabilities: I’m interested in working with smaller organizations and, often, they are shocked by high-priced consulting services. So, my fees are reasonable; that’s all I’ll say about that for now.

When I am engaged to perform some assessments, I look at both the organization's stated mission/goals as a reference as well as some informal benchmarking (how the other guys are doing). When it comes to organizations and, more precisely, human systems there are few, if any, absolutes. I have expertise on a process for evaluation that is fair, comprehensive and prudent.

Why engage my services? Because you’re looking for a generalist, not a specialist. Because you think (or believe) that you have an organizational/people problem that needs some attention. Perhaps, you just want to talk with someone who is objective and has no stake in a troubling situation. Perhaps, you just want to be reassured that you’re doing everything that’s prudent to solve a nagging people problem.

If you’re a big thinker, you’ll engage my services because you know, deep down, that you and your organization can do better. You can raise the bar, be more effective and more efficient. And, you want some help in figuring out why you might want to do that and, then, how. I can help.

Click on one of the services in the list to find out more details.

Remedial Coaching:

Can You Help Me Fix This Person?
One on One Coaching:

Improving Personal Mastery (Confidential)
Self-Assessment Tools:

Understanding the Results

(Note: Services to Non-profits are offered on either a sliding scale or pro bono basis)

Interim Management:

Can You Take Over Customer Service for Me?

Enterprise Wide Services

Customer Research:
Structured: Surveys
Un-Structured: Interviews
(Skills Transfer Recommended)
Focus Groups

Do you wish you could know what your customers (internal/external) think of your products and services...but were afraid to ask? Makes sense. I believe one of the most ineffective things we can do on this subject is craft a survey to get statistics: too much time, energy and resources go into the process and there’s too little actionable information to be generated.

What’s my better idea? Customer interviews. An unstructured review that starts with some courage and then begins to ask the question “Why do you buy from my client?” The information that flows is qualitative, yes, but it’s the most powerful data we’ll acquire.

The interviews begin to tell us what is it that our customer wants from us? From there, we can figure out creative, cost-effective ways to do just that. And, the other, important, questions we should be asking but haven’t. Yet, anyway.

(Please Note: this is an area of ongoing assessment that I recommend to my clients; see “Skills Transfer” for more insight into how I approach the process of getting your people to do this work.)

Community Building Workshops

Since 1992, I have been involved in the work of deepening conversations and creating connections using the methodology created by M. Scott Peck, M.D., a mentor of mine. “Community Building” is a proven set of technologies that provide people in organizations a format for connecting at a deeper level than ever before experienced. This has been both a source of personal growth for me and a gift I am offering to others.

I have organized/ convened these circles and also been a source of worldwide support for the work in public venues. Experience in many settings with different kinds of participants provides me with a unique ability to use this tool for skills acquisition and capacity building in your organization.

Are you interested in exploring how a methodology like this can be used in your organization? Exploratory formats are easy to organize and execute.

Peer Research: What Are the Other Guys Doing?

Ever wanted to know what your competitors are doing? They’ll tell me/us if we can ask properly. What about some of the companies that you think are doing things well? Your shipping provider, for example, or your technology services provider. We can actually get them to come in and talk; it’s enlightening, invigorating, fascinating. And, it’s usually free.

Analytical Services Troubleshooting / Assessment: How Are We Doing?

Wondering how people are feeling about the company, their jobs, their future? Some people would argue that we shouldn’t care how they feel; I think that perspective is passe and on the way out. People’s other side -- the emotional side -- is part of who they are. (See Peter Senge and The Fifth Discipline for more on this subject of Emotional Intelligence and Personal Mastery.)

So, would you like to find out if your perceptions are close to their feelings? We can do that. Groups and individuals. Rules (like complete confidentailiy) and trust give me/us an edge in finding what’s “real.” Note: For efforts like this, I am compelled to engage a couple of my associates so that we can get a balanced perspective.

Technology Implementation: Integrating People and Machines That Serve Them

You put in a new, expensive phone system and people still don’t know how to forward their phones or make conference calls. Pitiful. New computers and software get delivered but are they exploited? Who still has a Rolodex?

Implementing these new productivity tools often leaves out the human factors. With over ten years of work in impleneting information technologies, I know how to partner with the IT folks and your technology providers to make a stellar implementation. One that really leverages the machines to make some key differences in the busienss.

Services for Groups

Organizational Troubleshooting
Is There Something Wrong With Us?
Is There Something Right With Us?

If I assembled of group of mid-level, low-level and high-level folks in your organization in one of your conference rooms -- or better yet, offsite -- after some groundrules were established, they’d be quick to tell me (complain?) about what’s wrong with: management; the pay; the company; the market. Ugh.

With a different set of groundrules, a fair amount of coaxing, I could also get them to tell me what’s going right. Read the next section on Appreciative Inquiry.

Appreciative Inquiry: Creating a New Paradigm -- Looking at the Good Stuff

Humans are predisposed to be problem solvers. That means that problems are important; it’s partly how I get the question of metrics answered: How am I doing today? Answer: Good, I’ve solved three major problems. Crossed that off my list. This model has me looking for problems but, that only addresses a part of the real work.

Another option to this paradigm is to ask What did we do well today?

Ap-pre’ci-ate, v., 1. valuing; the act of recognizing the best in people or the world around us; affirming past and present strengths, successes, and potentials; to perceive those things that give life (health, vitality, excellence) to living systems 2. to increase in value, e.g. the economy has appreciated in value. Synonyms: VALUING, PRIZING, ESTEEMING, and HONORING.

In-quire’ (kwir), v., 1. the act of exploration and discovery. 2. To ask questions; to be open to seeing new potentials and possibilities. Synonyms: DISCOVERY, SEARCH, and SYSTEMATIC EXPLORATION, STUDY.

AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential.

from A Positive Revolution in Change: Appreciative Inquiry by David L. Cooperrider and Diana Whitney.

Could you imagine the change -- in thinking, in feeling, in responding, in innovating -- that would come to a group of people, a workplace, when this is the predominant approach to evaluating our work? Wow.

Ongoing “Learning” Groups: Study the Masters in New Thinking

What are all the professors at MIT Sloan School of Management or Harvard Business School talking about? Writing about? Shouldn’t we take a look at what they’re thinking about and writing and see if it has some merit? Perhaps, they have ideas that could be exploited and integrated into the buisness. Scintillating, perhaps.

The Executive Roundtable: Peer Support, Advice, New Ideas

Would you like to get together with some of your geographic, industry peers and talk about...business, life? We can do that. Group Facilitation: Strategy, Mission, Vision Leadership Workshops: How Do We Integrate Styles, Methods, Needs?

Services for Individuals

Remedial Coaching:
Can You Help Me Fix This Person?

Situation: you have someone who reports to you and...you like him/her; s/he has some really positive attributes. But, s/he’s inconsistent. Or, behaviors don’t always match the needs in the situation. You don’t want to go the termination route but you don’t have time to see if you can “fix” him /her. You can’t justify investing your own time in the effort but you woulddn’t mind writing a check to somone else who can do the “heavy lifting” with this person. I can help.

We first start a three-way conversation that gets at the heart of the matters and makes things clear. I, and my protege, get our marching orders there. A set of goals -- desired bheaviors and outcomes -- within a given timeframe. We go to work.

One on One Coaching: Improving Personal Mastery (Confidential)

A bit different from the Remedial work above because the objective is higher performance, mastery not fixing. Also, this work is -- and has to be -- completely confidential. Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly. In-person, over the phone or at Starbuck’s.

An examination of the desires, the drivers, and an assessment of the skills that are needed. We look at what’s going well; we look at problems. I try my best to shut up and let you talk. Often, hearing yourself say the words is the most motivating part of the enterprise.

Self-Assessment Tools: Understanding the Results

Enneagram. Meyers-Briggs. Leadership Skills Indicator. Tools for understanding myself, my style, my personality. But, once I’m done with them, do I ever go back? Take a look at where I am versus where I want to be? Perhaps, look at the results of the instruments and ask: “Geez, what do these things tell me about what I’ve got going for me?” Help in this arena becomes my job. Just another way to focus.

Services for Non-Profits

Note: I’ve been involved with helping non-profits -- Board Member, Founder, Board President, Consultant, Advisor -- since 1983. I believe in the NP sector as an area where social progress and justice is more possible and, in fact, a desirable outvome.

I’ve also noticed, in that span of time, that many organizations and their Boards are not optimally effective. (The same goes for the for-profit sector, but...they have more wiggle room.) So, this is an area of not only personal interest but organizational curiosity: how do we get non-profit Boards to be more effective?

(Note: Services to Non-profits are offered on either a sliding scale or pro bono basis)

Optimizing Board Performance: How Do We Become More Effective?

How do we make Boards more effective? First, we help make them more disciplined. More practical. I could go on for pages. In a nutshell, we use a variety of methodologies to conduct assessments and, then, faciitate a disussion about possibiilities based on our findings. It’s not an expert-student, top-down approach: it’s a collaboration. It’s more risky -- for us -- than traditional approaches but the outcomes have higher potential.

Why bother? Non-profit Boards are charged with two major tasks: setting policy for the organization and 2) Raising money. Obviously, the first one is always more palatable than the second since there’s so much fear and trepidation, for most folks, around the task of asking others for money.

We help our clients become more clear about the intentions of the Board, the Agency. And in the process, the execution becomes more focused, more precise -- closer to the targets. Behaviors and actions more clearly aligned with a collective purpose and a tighter integration with the Mission and Vision.

Mission / Vision Development: Group Facilitation

Groups and teams, although very well organized and efficient, may not be aware of all of the unwritten rules and guidelines that channel their work together. Sessions and mini-workshops whose goal is to find common ground, values and purpose can be of enormous help. By clarifying what has not been spoken or articulated, members of the team better understand what is being asked of them.

There are a number of subtle yet effective ways that I’ve developed for this kind of work. It allows us to engage in a process, which most people think is painful and diffuclt, and make it fairly easy and...fun. There is no intentional use of play in this work but it does come out.

Other Services

Interim Management:
Can You Take Over Customer Service /
Operations for Me?

Need to let someone go? Have an opening you don’t want to fill just now? I can’t, and wouldn’t try, to run your packaging line but I do know the basics of managing work and leading people: what’s being asked of us? Is that the right thing for us to be focusing on? How do we martial our resources and talents to do that?

This service is customized, negotiated and can be taken on a part-time basis.