Why does your service work ?
The service works because of my dedicated focus, communication skills, R&D experience and personal creativity.
My strategy is to first work with executive management to define the problem and then to work intensively, hands-on, with your people, individually and in groups, to explore the problem and generate and explore ideas. The process of carefully defining a problem with key participants can often simultaneously reveal a solution without further work.
My personal focus throughout is on leading, managing my own personal communication and the communication between others, all the time searching for relationships between the problem description and the possible opportunities and objections to identified opportunities. I continually watch for inflexibility's, inconsistencies in information and understanding, and for participants implicit and explicit, shared and unshared assumptions, as I probe for opportunities.
What kind of problems can you solve ?
Technical, schedule, relationship, strategic, tactical - anything that comes between R&D and the achievement of success as defined by the business's leaders.
You don't understand our business or market or technology or people.
I don't need to understand your business - your people already do so. My objective is to persuade them - via my communication skills - to use that knowledge to solve the issue at hand, having first briefed them and 'sold' them on the value of solving the target problem. I am a 'quick study', and have worked in many companies, business, R&D and technical situations, so I am able to rapidly acquire sufficient grasp of your business to develop and deliver, with your people, the solution you require. If the problem is not soluble with existing in-house information the process I use leads to a minimization of the new information required, managing risk and minimizing resource demands.
I would rather use our own people.
Obviously you will have already tried to solve the problem issue. I believe I am usually significantly more efficient and creative at solving problems than most managers and engineers because of my communication skills, dedicated focus and personal creativity combined with varied R&D experience as a leader and manager. R&D people are often poor communicators. I have developed a specialized skill in overcoming R&D communication weaknesses and I believe I am considerably more effective than typical engineers and managers in problem solving. And my costs are low compared to the benefit - please review the cost-benefit analysis
here.
Why is your service fast ?
I aim to rely on knowledge already in people's heads; I do not set-out to educate myself and then generate solutions. I have found that in many situations there is a latent solution divided amongst many people's heads. Using careful, focussed communication that latent solution can be revealed, developed and verified. Sometimes there are many possible solutions; usually solutions exist across boundaries of technology and function and between the business and it's customers. If the problem is not soluble with existing in-house information the process I use leads to a minimization of the new information required, managing risk and minimizing resource demands.
Credibility ?
Many years of successful experience as an R&D leader and manager (
Email: pateo@pateo.com to request a Resume; review my varied background here) plus the extensive original material on this website that describes our area of specialization:
The Central Role of Communication in successful R&D.
How do you work ?
Principally by facilitated, led, managed discussion involving groups and individuals, senior and junior, across the business.
'Discussion' is a highly creative skill that is commonly highly undeveloped; weakness in discussion skills hides many solutions and opportunities. Inadequately developed discussion skills are particularly prevalent amongst engineers-scientists-software people; weakness in communication sometimes almost seems a qualification for joining one of those groups.
Politics ?
I try to steer clear of politics by working as if everybody is on the same side and hence working from the same, broadly accepted, strategic and tactical briefing.
"Politics" reflects the fact that people have - inevitably - different opinions on important topics - the key issue is whether they act on those different opinions - actively or passively - and whether those opinions de-motivate them or others. I work to get everybody to have the same understanding of the reasons for wanting a problem solution and to persuade people to wait out the time taken for executive leadership's direction to have been judged by the market or technical success/failure.
A business's political environment is strongly influenced by that business's leaders degree of respect for their employees, senior and junior. Good leaders know that there are always conflicts - explicit or hidden, expressed or latent - between all employees simply because it is impossible to completely share the same information in the same context. They know too that these conflicts can be discussed to a business-relevant resolution by using 'external' knowledge from the marketplace or technical understanding as decision-defining 'razors', coupled with putting energy into developing mutually shared understanding. In this way the energy in a conflict can be turned to the business's great advantage.
You are too expensive !
Our rates correspond to the cost of employing a senior engineer; please review the cost-benefit analysis
here.
Contact:
To explore finding a solution to a current issue or discuss something mentioned here
call Andrew Herrington - Canada (519) 635-5308/ UK - Mobile: 077 36717312;
Pateo Consulting
UK - Mobile: 077 36717312;
Canada - Cell: (519) 635-5308;
email: xxxpateo@pateo.com.
76 York Street,
Kitchener,
Ontario N2G 1T7,
Canada.
