More than four decades have passed since I took on my first consulting assignment.
My practice began with technical focus and has become people driven.
Clients have become more sophisticated and people have become more important.
Customers are more savvy and have greater choices in the market place.
Labor has typically become the highest cost of doing business and now drives more decisions around how a company competes in the marketplace than ever before.
While clients continue to worry about costs, margins, marketing and competitiveness, many are realizing the consequences of short-sighted hiring and training and the lack of an environment to foster retention, the result of which is high turnover and lower customer satisfaction.
From very early in my consulting career, my focus with clients has been to emphasize the need to engage staff – in training, coaching and community building.
What has changed significantly for me in the past ten years is the emphasis on empowering both staff and ownership to develop an approach that honors the organization as a community while attending to the process of resolution and a celebration of the result.
What is significantly different from a client perspective is the trend by clients to retain services for their own education in building a lasting organization as well as improving the overall satisfaction of their staffs.
My work today contains more and more components centered around community/diversity, and awareness and listening than at any other time in my career.
I am immensely pleased that by furthering my own education, my clients find benefit and more satisfaction in their businesses.
There is, after all, no greater joy than seeing others succeed, and realizing emotional and financial success for ourselves as well…