Articles
Consultant thinking: Developing your talent during the recession
Elevation Learning Article - Developing your Consulting Talent During the Recession - shows how employers can retain and develop their key talented staff without breaking the bank.
Consultant thinking: How to win business and deliver results that matter in the current economic climate
Elevation Learning Article - How to Win Business and Deliver Results that Matter in the Current Economic Climate.
Food for thought: Book review of bridging the culture gap
Elevation Learning Article Book Review - Bridging the Culture Gap published by Kogan Page. Elevation Learning are experts in consultant and consultancy skills training.
Food for thought: Selling and the importance of USPs
Selling and the Importance of USPs covers questions like So what are USPs? Why are they important? How do they enable successful sales?
Food for thought: Improve your relationships and productivity through empathy and understanding – Strength Deployment Inventory
Improve your consultancy relationships and productivity through empathy and understanding – Strength Deployment Inventory.
Food for thought: Getting to know procurement teams and their guidelines
Elevation Learning Article - Getting to know procurement teams and their guidelines currently navigating the new procurement maze is a common problem for many consultants, particularly for independents and small to medium sized firms.
Food for thought: Galvanise your clients with a new ethos for 2009!
Galvanise your consultancy clients with a new ethos for 2009 - For those of you who fancy taking a new and positive approach with clients this spring, Appreciative Inquiry might just be the perfect antidote to hard times.
Food for thought: Innovation is more than idea generation
Innovation is more than idea generation - where do ideas come from and how can we generate more and better ideas find out with this article from Elevation Learning.
Food for thought: How do you consult?
How do you consult? - It's not what you consult, it's how you consult that can make a big difference and make you stand out from the competition.
Food for thought: Incisive questions
Consulting Incisive Questions - Don't let limited thinking hold you back an incisive question accurately identifies the limiting assumption that can hold us back and replaces it with a freeing one.
Food for thought: Dealing with the winter depression
Dealing with The Winter Depression - A few recommendations for consultants to beat the post holidays winter blues from Elevation Learning experts in consultant and consultancy skills training
Food for thought: Handling resistance
Handling Consulting Resistance - You can’t argue a client out of resistance, because it’s an emotional response. How do you cope?
Food for thought: Don't say goodbye like an englishman
Don't Say Goodbye Like an Englishman - How best to say 'Goodbye' or better still 'Au revoir' especially when both time and budget are nearly gone.
Food for thought: A consultant's stressful life!
A Consultant's stressful life! - 5 quick tips consultants can incorporate into their daily routine to beat stress. From Elevation Learning experts in consultant and consultancy skills training.
Food for thought: Push and pull in the world of consulting
Push and Pull in the world of consulting - To help clients, we need to be able to work across a range of consulting styles.
Food for thought: Balanced thinking and feeling
Consultant balanced thinking and feeling - Whether you are naturally a thinker or a feeler both approaches can be right and the challenge is to combine the strengths of both.
Food for thought: Is taking action such a good thing?
Is taking action such a good thing? - Beyond the fine art of getting others to do things, is the even worthier art of allowing things to do themselves.
Food for thought: It's what you know that matters
It's what you know that matters - Being a training provider to many consulting practices we are privileged to get to know them behind the scenes. One of the questions we ask on selling skills courses is, "What distinguishes you from your competitors?"
Food for thought: Are you a trusted client?
Are you a trusted client? - Many professional firms aspire to recognition as a trusted adviser, but what does it take to be a trusted client?
Food for thought: The benefits of concrete
The benefits of concrete - It's easier to find out how much money is in your pocket? (concrete concept) than are you wealthy? (abstract concept)). As consultants we are very accustomed to dealing with abstract concepts, but an over-reliance on the abstract can be a barrier in dealing with clients.
Food for thought: In praise of selfishness
In praise of selfishness - Consultants love being asked, Can you please help us with, but there are pitfalls in being too ready to help.
Food for thought: Training: do we have to do it together?
Training: do we have to do it together? - All students know that self study has its place, but it seems that corporate training is still very much event driven.
Food for thought: The practice of training: how to translate learning into performance
The Practice of Training: how to translate learning into performance back at work - this paper examines consultancy skills training events, with a particular focus on aspects of the evaluation of the training and its subsequent transfer into consultancy practice.
Food for thought: Input, information, knowledge or wisdom?
Input, information, knowledge or wisdom? - It is a good idea to identify in which of the four modes you anticipate any communication to a client to be situated: intended and likely to be received: and not to blur the boundaries.
Food for thought: Friday afternoon blues
Friday Afternoon Blues - Having been caught with too much to do in too short a time again, I find myself resorting to the consultant’s version of the “importance vs urgency” matrix which I call the “What should I do next” matrix.
Food for thought: Rules-based purchasing
Rules-Based Purchasing - In the name of effectiveness, purchasing has become increasingly rules based as the buyer's aim is to achieve best value through fostering competition to drive down prices and by creating a level playing field to give all comers a chance.
Food for thought: Budgeting for internal consultancy services
Budgeting for Internal Consultancy Services - Who should hold the budget for internal central service functions?
Food for thought: Retaining talent and the importance of management training
Competing for Talent - Consultancies, like many other organisations, compete not only for clients but also for talent.
Food for thought: The grumpy old man approach to consultancy
The Grumpy Old Men Approach to Consultancy - Is there pent up corporate grumpiness waiting for consultant relief? Indeed, are consultants the cause of some of this grumpiness?
Food for thought: Portfolio management: planning the renewal of strategies, processes and skills-sets
Portfolio management: planning the renewal of strategies, processes and skills-sets - Robert Fonteijn, leader of Elevation Learning's consulting practice, introduces portfolio management as a means of identifying new routes to business development.
Food for thought: The value of social capital
Knowledge-based businesses know that much of the productive is in the less tangible areas, such as intellectual capital and this includes the social capital of networks, shared norms and mutual trust, that individuals can draw on to help solve problems.
Food for thought: The consultants' survival kit
A first move into consultancy can be a culture shock: new consultants are often unnerved by the lack of structure and support in an environment where everyone else appears to be far too busy to pay any attention to the newbee. Making training available to people early in their consultancy careers is not just a means of equipping them with consultancy skills it must also equip them with the skills to survive and grow in a consultancy practice.
Food for thought: A consultative approach
The pressure is on for skills-led businesses to develop a durable competitive advantage. To do this they need to learn what drives their customers and become expert advisers. Elevation Learning has developed 'best of breed' methods of how to do this.
Food for thought: Methodology or madness?
Are consultants responding intuitively or scientifically to each presenting situations. For the consultant, this question is vital when deciding whether to embark on the labour-intensive work of creating and then following a formal methodology.
Food for thought: Internal outsourcing
Rather than bringing in an outside organisation, take the existing internal resource and turn them into a separate business in their own right. You can then free your organisation from non-core activities and overheads, while still retaining privileged access to the new company.
Food for thought: manager = internal consultant?
Today the manager's role has changed and is now more interventionist and supportive, with a much greater project element. Results must be achieved though influence, particularly as much of the work will be with individuals or units outside the manager's direct control. In fact the skills demanded are remarkably similar to those of the management consultant.
Food for thought: Developing customer intimacy
Elevation Learning Article - Food for thought:Developing Customer Intimacy - All businesses must face the prospect that each product or service, no matter how sophisticated, will sooner or later become commoditised: bought as a generic item by customers who are interested in little beyond price and quantity and so will be largely indifferent about who supplies it.
Sell your way out of economic recession
With today's challenging financial climate, more consultants are being asked to help their companies sell their way out of trouble. However, many consultants may not see sales as their thing and are delaying seeking out potentially vital business development opportunities. Anthony Rees of Elevation Learning offers some tips on how to get even the most reluctant consultant started.
Consultant thinking: Adding value as an internal consultant
Article for internal consultants, Ed Moffatt discusses how internal consultants can position themselves. In these times of uncertainty and pressure on headcount, internal resources can be perceived as a luxury, so while internal consultants are in the happy position of being on the spot and available they can also be seen as an overhead and a soft target for the cost cutters. Thus internal consultants can feel somewhat exposed as management seek to bring about change in their organisations.
Why consulting skills are an essential part of management training
Why consulting skills are an essential part of management training. Articles. Providing consultancy and training, internationally to prestigious clients, in a variety of European languages, to organisations and people who wish to develop their client engagement performance. Offering public and in-house training courses for consultants
Our thinking: Advanced consulting skills for experienced consultants
Advanced consulting skills for experienced consultants. Articles. Providing consultancy and training, internationally to prestigious clients, in a variety of European languages, to organisations and people who wish to develop their client engagement performance. Offering public and in-house training courses for consultants
