"Assistance at A Distance"

Fred Nickols, Managing Partner of Distance Consulting, LLC, provides various kinds of assistance to his clients:

• guiding clients through a structured analysis of a performance problem;

• investigating areas and topics of interest and preparing briefing papers;

• preparing and presenting custom-tailored training materials and presentations, including a wide variety of "illustrated" talks;

• providing suggestions and ideas, including possible investigative paths and reasonable courses of action; and

• acting as a sounding board.

Some examples will illustrate (people’s names have been changed and company names have been omitted).

• Gary, a VP of Training & Development for a national real estate firm, wanted someone to bounce ideas off before moving forward with them at his firm.  Gary and Fred met to discuss fees and how such an arrangement might work.  It was agreed that telephone conversations would suffice.  Fred was engaged on a retainer basis with hourly charges for the telephone calls and any related research work billed against the retainer.   Then, the mortgage crunch hit.  Gary’s budget was slashed and Gary was assigned to another position.  Gary and Fred still talk occasionally but at no charge to Gary.

• Carole, manager of training at an international packaging company, was assembling her company’s management training curriculum (classroom-based) and needed a two-hour module on delegation.  She contacted Fred and they discussed her requirements and his fees.  They agreed on the project and Fred developed trainee materials and an instructor’s guide.  Carole and the lead instructor were involved throughout the development of the module and its trial presentation.  The project took only two weeks, which was in time to meet Carole’s delivery date.

• Henry, president of a small consulting firm with big clients, had a client with a pressing need.  Henry’s client, Dale, a very senior executive with a very large, well-known pharmaceuticals firm, had just been appointed his company’s Chief Learning Officer (CLO).  Dale asked Henry if he could put together a “briefing book” on knowledge management.  Henry turned to Fred.  Over a period of a week, Fred did extensive research into knowledge management and compiled the results of that research into a briefing book for Dale. The briefing book was shipped to Henry in hard copy and electronic form.  Later, that same briefing book was modified and placed on the pharmaceutical firm’s intranet.  A follow-on assignment entailed developing a start-up kit for communities of practice (CoPs).

• Paul, a VP and the general manager of a line of business within a rapidly growing high-tech firm, was part of a committee putting together the agenda for a three-day off-site session for the approximately 90 senior managers and execs who were seen as the company’s “movers and shakers.”  The core of the agenda was a set of nine strategic questions posed by the company’s CEO.  Paul had found and made use of some materials from Fred’s articles web site (www.skullworks.com) and he thought those materials (The Goals Grid) could be usefully applied to the CEO’s strategic questions.   Fred was engaged to custom-fit the CEO’s questions to the Goals Grid framework, to present the Goals Grid framework to the assembled managers and execs, help facilitate the sessions in which working groups of senior managers and execs would apply the Goals Grid framework to their CEO’s questions, and write a follow-on report analyzing the work products developed by the working groups. 

• Elizabeth, the Director of Managed Care Operations for a large health insurer was confronted by an increasing number of changes emanating from headquarters.  She and her staff were looking for some guidance and ideas regarding how to cope with and manage these changes.  Elizabeth came across Fred’s paper on change management (http://home.att.net/~nickols/change.htm) and engaged Fred to assemble a presentation on change management custom-tailored to her group’s situation.  The engagement included having Fred attend her group’s quarterly meeting, make the presentation, and be available for questions afterward.  Elizabeth told Fred afterward that she thought the presentation was first-rate, very helpful, and so did her people.

• Dick, Director of Educational Services for a company serving the electric utilities industry, also came across Fred’s article on change management.  He contacted Fred and asked him to develop a presentation on change management in harsh economic times and deliver it to his company’s clients via a two-hour webinar.  Fred developed and delivered the presentation.  Follow-up survey feedback indicated the webinar was well received.

• The executives of a global HR firm were concerned about the rigor, discipline and structure of their company's strategic decision-making process.  They asked Henry, president of the small consulting firm mentioned above, to provide them with a more systematic process for their consideration.  Henry again turned to Fred and the area of strategic decision-making was researched.  Working together, Henry and Fred devised strategic decision-making process for the client's consideration.  Also developed for the client was a summary presentation of several strategic decision-making models in use in other organizations.  The client elected to continue with the more informal decision-making process that was currently in use.

What do these little projects have in common?  First, they are all small in scope and scale – and in costs to the client.  The most expensive project in the examples provided cost the client $20,000.00.  Others were considerably less.  Second, all the projects were completed in very short time frames.  None took longer than a few weeks and some were completed in a few days.  Third, all the projects were responsive to the client’s stated requirements; none “mushroomed” into other areas, or attempted to generate follow-on business or an ongoing relationship, or tried to get the clients to re-think their approach.  In short, these projects all “answered the mail” – and left it at that.  Fourth, although a couple of the projects did involve visits to the client’s site, in all cases, the bulk of the work was performed off-site, thus illustrating one meaning of “assistance at a distance.”  The other meaning of "assistance at a distance" is that Fred is willing to travel quite a distance to be of assistance.

So, if you’re temporarily strapped or short on resources or in a time-crunch and you don’t have a big budget, or if you’re in need of an imaginative, creative approach to a very knotty problem, give Fred a call or send him an email.  Preliminary discussions to determine Fred’s ability to help out don’t cost anything and perhaps – as he has been for many others – Fred can be of “assistance at a distance” to you and to your company.

This page was last updated on March 22, 2009