Originally Posted by
bundabergdevil
I once had a consultant go above my head and pitch my boss with a white paper that had plagiarized from Wikipedia.
Here's what you do when you are a consultant to a large organization, government or corporate. You go around and talk to the smartest staff people and managers you can find. If this is an improvement project, the answer is somewhere in the organization. Then you package it and present it to the top -- taking full claim for the ideas, but encouraging the boss to involve your sources in the implementation. There's value-added here, believe it or not. Much of the value-add is in building a solid case with data and everything, as well as an implementation plan. And getting your bill paid.
If the "right answer" is a major change and not necessarily supported by the thinking of those within the organization, then keep it short and make it really dramatic -- because no one will accept a major change written in a 200-page report. It will have to proceed through multiple phases of thinking.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013