Our friends at customer experience consultancy cxpartners have shared their experiences of collaborating with us on the project to redevelop the R&D section of the Jisc website.
We invited the team to come and work in our offices during key stages of design development. This meant that, rather than communicating through long – and sometimes slow – email exchanges, they could just swing by our desks and run their ideas past us in person.
What’s more, as the development of the R&D section is of interest to so many colleagues outside of the web team, it was lovely to have an open door so people could pop in and have a nose at what we were up to.
Read Neil Schwarz‘s blog post in full on the cxpartners website: How a goldfish bowl and a biscuit tin helped us collaborate. He’s keen to hear inspired collaboration ideas from others.
2 replies on “Sharing the love (and our office)”
Each year management consultants in the United States receive more than $2 billion for their services.
Much of this money pays for impractical data and poorly implemented recommendations.
To reduce this waste, clients need a better understanding of what consulting assignments can accomplish.
They need to ask more from such advisers, who in turn must learn to satisfy expanded expectations.
This article grows out of current research on effective consulting, including interviews with partners and officers of five well-known firms.
It also stems from my experience supervising beginning consultants and from the many conversations and associations I’ve had with consultants and clients in the United States and abroad.
These experiences lead me to propose a means of clarifying the purposes of management consulting.
When clarity about purpose exists, both parties are more likely to handle the engagement process satisfactorily.
Moving up the pyramid toward more ambitious purposes requires increasing sophistication and skill in the processes of consulting and in managing the consultant-client relationship.
Sometimes a professional tries to shift the purpose of an engagement even though a shift is not called for; the firm may have lost track of the line between what’s best for the client and what’s best for the consultant’s business.
But reputable consultants do not usually try to prolong engagements or enlarge their scope.
Wherever on the pyramid the relationship starts, the outsider’s first job is to address the purpose the client requests.
As the need arises, both parties may agree to move to other goals.