A Collaborative Approach

We are consultants, helping clients to resolve complex commercial issues. We have extensive experience and knowledge of the main issue-areas that we cover, and of these specifically in the chemicals and materials sectors. And we in part follow a consulting-style “directional” approach, i.e. analysing, recommending and advising.

However, the best-designed improvements and strategies fail if they are not owned by the organisation.

We therefore blend this consulting style with a participative, collaborative, “non-directional” approach, drawing on a mix of coaching and mentoring techniques and tools.

Simply, we emphasise involving your staff in ways that foster understanding, acceptance, ownership and commitment, to ensure that changes are properly and enthusiastically adopted, and so “stick”.

• We work closely with the individuals responsible; and where possible and appropriate, we form and participate in collaborative project teams
• We adopt a collaborative, guiding, mentoring, coaching and knowledge-transferring style.
• We are skilled listeners, and prioritise gaining full understanding of the issues, and also the opinions and underlying beliefs held by your key staff.  We endeavour to draw out solutions from your team so they have ‘direct ownership’ – but we do not hold back from offering opinions and advice, and from making recommendations based on our experience and expertise.
• We will agree with you at the outset how directive [or not] we will be. We can play a spectrum of roles from ‘coach’ or ‘facilitator’, through to ‘Project Manager’.
• We are highly aware of time constraints, and will agree with you at the outset how much time your people can contribute to the project.
• We undertake specific elements of project work on a straightforward ‘consulting’ basis as required, e.g. a piece of market analysis; or an objective internal appraisal to define what the problem really is (i.e. to separate out symptoms from root causes). We undertake these as stand-alone pieces of work, and feed our findings and conclusions into the project team – and we encourage debate and critiquing of such elements by the team.
• Simple solutions are the most likely to succeed. Too often consultants further complicate already-complex situations. If it is difficult to explain or understand, not only is it unlikely to be implemented, but it is probably not the best solution anyway. We will guide the team away from jargon and from intricate and difficult-to-implement solutions
• Our work is transparent: clients know at every point where the project stands, what we are doing and costs incurred.