64 ◾ Odyssey—The Business of Consulting
exercise, which indicates how a gap has been closed, how a cost has
been eliminated, how time has been saved, how a sales metric has been
increased, how an activity has been engaged in, or how productivity and
profit have been improved, is the best way to close off the assignment.
The SER report outlines the outcomes and may suggest some ongoing
recommendations as value-added advice or service for the client. The SER
terminates the consulting assignment.
Odyssey in Action I
Ron Price, Price Associates, Boise, Idaho
It’s Not a Product, It’s a Partnership
I went through Odyssey in April of 2006. At the time, I had just started hav-
ing a conversation with a company about a succession management project.
Historically, in that context, I would automatically have thought of a product
of some kind, a job benchmark or something of that nature, but because of
my experience with Odyssey, I slowed down, I took a step back. I wanted to
try to understand the significance of this project as it fitted into the big pic-
ture. So I flew out to meet with the CEO and his team. I spent half a day with
them, and all but thirty minutes of that half-day was about listening to them,
nothing more. I wanted to understand their situation. I wanted to operate on a
much deeper level than I had ever tried to operate before.
I realized right away that I needed to get away from thinking about the spe-
cific details at the beginning—we can always get to the details later—I needed
to step back and understand the big picture: What have they tried in the past,
and if it didn’t work, why didn’t it work? What’s the real impact of this particular
issue? What’s the emotional impact of this issue on the team? I realized that if I
took the time to do all that and I wasn’t anxious to rush out a proposal, I would
develop a much better picture of what was going on. I would be able to help
them see an opportunity not as a transaction but a transformation.
Towards the end of my time with them, I began to see what could be
done with this client, and it was something that reached far beyond any par-
ticular product or workshop. They asked me, “Well, do you have any idea of
what it would cost for you to help us with this?”
I told them that what they needed was not a product, it was a partner-
ship. I said that I’d have to put pencil to paper, but my first thought was