Our
Consulting Practice
 

Change Management Consulting

Training & Development

Capacity to Change & Performance Environment Surveys

My name is Phillip Ash. I'm a change management consultant.  Consulting firms are all about people - that's what you pay for when you hire one.  Sometimes I "partner" on projects or get help from associates I've worked with in the past, but basically I'm the firm.  So, let me tell you a little about me.

I have three university degrees including a Ph.D. in Organizational Development from the University of Missouri.  I taught at M.U. and at Columbia College for a couple years because I love teaching, but left because I wasn't sure what I was teaching actually worked in the business world.  It was like teaching medicine without first being a doctor. 

So, I embarked on a career as a change management consultant in 1977.  Since then, I've conducted change management consulting projects with more than 60 clients in 7 countries.  I didn't think of myself as a change management consultant back in 1977 because we didn't use the term then, but my 20+ years of consulting experience have been mostly related to what we now call change management consulting.

By the end of the 1990's, my consulting career took me to a point where I was doing very little consulting, teaching, and writing - the things that I love.  I was spending most of my time working on firm administration and management.  So in 1998 I left my career in consulting firm management to get back to the work I enjoy. 

I work personally with every client - I don't just sell consulting assignments and hand the work off to junior staff.  Most of our consulting relationships begin with an executive briefing or a one-day seminar for those who have responsibility for managing change.  Another way to get started is with our Capacity to Change or Performance Environment surveys.  We can also help to create a business case for change to be sure the change journey is worth the cost and to establish a realistic budget for change management activities.  Once you're committed to a change initiative we can help you develop a change management plan to reduce implementation time without sacrificing performance results, and/or conduct change agent training. 

Obtaining consulting assistance in developing good change management plan is probably the best value clients can get for their investment in change management consultants.  We prefer, however, to continue working with our clients during the implementation process because there will always be unexpected issues and problems to be encountered.  In fact, we tend to be skeptical of consultants who only want to sell plans and are not willing to "partner" with their clients through the implementation phase of change management.

In sum, we can provide change management consulting services on a limited basis through diagnostic surveys, seminars, training, or executive briefings.  On a somewhat larger scale, we can conduct feasibility studies of proposed change initiatives that results in a written business case for change. Our change consulting services can also be extended into planning the change journey and "partnering" throughout the implementation process. 

We can also help organizations that want to develop change management as a core competence.  This is a much different undertaking since the focus is more on developing change management processes, competencies, and infrastructure than implementing a specific change initiative. The objective of this type of change management consulting is to build a resilient organization capable of implementing change faster and more effectively than their competitors.  This is the most challenging type of change consulting but also represent the greatest potential benefit to our client because it can represent a sustainable source of competitive advantage.

Please get to know us better.  In related pages, we provide more information about the services we provide, and some of the clients we have had the pleasure of helping.

Our Billing Rates:

As a change management consultant, the single question I've hated most to answer is "What's your billing rate?"  Firms have to cover their office rents, equipment, furnishings, firm administration and other operating costs in the hourly rates that they charge for their consultants' time, so billing rates can get quite large.   As a result, my billing rate while I was working for large, international consulting firms was quite large.

On the other hand, if you operate as economically as possible and offer billing rates as low as you possibly can, then some potential clients conclude that you're not a very good consultant because your billing rate is not comparable with what "the big firms charge."

The last year I worked for one of the large consulting firms, my billing rate was more that $2,500 per day. Now I work out of an office in my house, so I'm happy to say that my billing rate has been reduced by about half. 

I work off of a retainer that is established for each client and charge only for time spent working on client work -  never for travel time.  Billing rates of  associates of my firm who might work with me on a client project will be detailed in an engagement letter prior to beginning any project.