ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It’s nice when work—the day-in, day-out stuff we do in the course of making a living—turns to produce ideas and solutions that offer promise and returns far greater than client fees. Onboarding, because of its character as a high-prospect and hugely under-focused management issue has provided us with just that. And the intellectual, professional, and client impact return is not only a result of these circumstances, but also the fantastic work and support of colleagues at client organizations, peers in the industry, colleagues within our management consulting practice, and finally the interests and support of our friends and family. In particular we would like to call out—in no particular order—the specific and significant contributions of many who have assisted us over the past years in this endeavor and for more broadly shaping our professional thinking and providing us with encouragement and support.

Those names include our colleagues at Kaiser Associates: Parkin Kent for his early (and intense) work in our client delivery on the onboarding front, for also helping us develop and distil so many of our core models and frameworks, and finally for his assistance in development of our original outline for this book; Sarah Fiorillo for her tireless energy, and highest of work product standards for both client engagements and too-numerous, small but necessary pieces of this book; Adam Goldstein for his ideas and analytical prowess associated with several of our basic frameworks, and his contributions to various client outcomes; Megan MacLennan and Sravan Narayan for their support on our economic impact analysis; Lars Wensel for his client contributions and for keeping us so thoughtfully on tack with our professional efforts; Nina Trinca for early encouragement and support in keeping our heads on straight; Matt Laughlin, Karim Nhedi, Scott Albrecht, and Emile Chin-Dickey for their collaboration on our first client facing onboarding work; David Gibson and John Wilhelm—for introducing our work to so many great companies and helping our intellectual capital see the light of day in so many new communities within the commercial world. To Kate Ebner for her best-in-world faith and trust in our abilities and ambition, let alone her intellectual contributions in supporting our aspirations to develop as greater professionals in the field, and her collaborations in solving some very challenging client challenges. To Aimee George Leary for her confidence and trust in allowing us to contribute to such a great effort and critical function at a client organization. To Lillian Pacheco for her partnership in doing heavy lifting and working through “change management” issues with finesse and optimal stakeholder outcomes in mind. To Chris Holmes for her leadership and assistance in ensuring the Booz Allen Hamilton story told inside was thoughtfully presented and instructive for other change agents. To Jonathan Jordan who worked hard as an initial advocate of our methodologies. To Vince Gonzalez, Terry Bickham, Mary Andrade, Brenda Brophy, Eric Nilsson, Tricia Dirks, and Cinda Jensen among numerous other client professionals for your trust, ideas, partnership in ensuring great outcomes, and for making our work fun.

We would also like to thank the 4,000 plus members (and growing) of our onboarding network for your ideas and contributions, not only to elevate the thinking around onboarding in companies across the United States and globally, but also for sharing your experiences to help illustrate the ideas included in this book. To the latter point, we specifically want to call out the contributions of Mindy Moye of John Deere and Beth Kavelaris, Kimberly Thekan, and Karen Berenson of Robert W. Baird & Co.

With regard to actually pulling this work together—both commercially and the specific content—we thank and will forever appreciate the tireless efforts, energy, and backing of Lorin Rees our dedicated agent, Seth Schulman our terrific and tremendously patient editor and world-class sparring partner. Without you two this book would not exist, for better and for worse. We thank Gail Ross for providing valued counsel in the world of book publishing—an area that we simply did not have experience. Additionally we thank our research assistants John Landry, Lin Qing, and Dan Berger. We also want to thank Daniel Lombardi for his style and artistic eye in driving simplicity and elegence to the graphical representation of our frameworks. We thank the team at McGraw-Hill for their support and efforts in the process of bringing these ideas into print on this wide scale.

Professionally, we thank our partners in our consulting practice for helping produce an environment that stimulates great work and intellectual stimulus.

On more personal notes, I (Mark) thank my partner in life, my wife Lisa, for everything that you have ever said (and not said) to support me and help me achieve what I have, and hope to in our future. You make the hard stuff worthwhile and always put me in my place when I most need it. I thank my parents for their support throughout the years and of great particular contribution my father for inspiring me, and causing me to truly enjoy and understand—at a wonderfully early age—the thing that makes the world go round—business. I thank Sylvia Eskind for inspiring me to not wait for the ship to come in, and for everything else that she gave me. I thank Tim Ogilvie for being my first, truest, and greatest mentor—onboarding me like no other into a successful career in management consulting—giving me the cultural, social, strategic, and early (and often) career support that has proved so meaningful to my career.

I (Lilith) thank my husband, Brett, for all of your support. Your encouragement, love, and perspective are invaluable. I could not have accomplished half the things I have in life if not for our partnership. A special thanks on this endeavor for being our first reader and giving us the frank feedback. I thank my parents for all of their encouragement and support from an early age to aspire and achieve whatever I set my mind to. I also want to thank Pam Knox, for taking on many new responsibilities at Kaiser Associates allowing me to transition from my development role to that of author and back to consultant. I thank Kevin Dell’Oro for encouraging my return to Kaiser Associates.

Together, we thank our kids—Mark’s (Ainsley, Sarah, Abigail) and Lilith’s (Tyler and Bryce)—for making life fun (and teaching us that a self applied haircut is just a haircut, not a referendum on our ability to parent, consult, and write a book at the same time) and for giving us feedback when we most need it—in the form of hugs and smiles—that we are doing the right things.