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Hub You - Using, Choosing, and Using an educational consultant
The homebased and small business owner is the "Unsung Hero". Why? The small business owner and today even the homebased business owner are the cornerstones of our society. The homebased business owner employs a number of independent contractors. Small businesses account for a large percentage of our economic work force. Think of the homebased and small business owner as the leaders of a team. They organize their team, tell them the strategy they want to be followed and how to implement that strategy. The business owner takes their responsibility of that team very seriously. Why? Because it they don't, they won't have those people working for them very long, in fact they won't be in business for very long. The small and homebased business owner are - Unsung Heroes! Why? Because people do no
3. Ask for details of similar work undertaken by the consultancy, and for details of satisfied clients – but bear in mind that a reluctance to supply such details may be due to considerations of confidentiality.
4. Ask for references, testimonials, or details of evaluations, ie evidence of quality assurance of the consultants’ work.
5. You can also ask how the consultant gets most of its work. Word of mouth is a go
Today, a number of manufacturers offer high quality paper shredders to suit everyone?s budget. Depending on features and functions, the price of paper shredders varies. Paper shredders are available starting form $10. Strip cut machines are relatively less expensive than crosscut models.A countless number of dealers are there in the paper shredder business scenario to provide paper shredders of all price ranges. Destroyit, GBC, Fellowes, Dahle, MBM, and Kobra are a few among the leading brands. The price of Destroyit shredder models for low volumes starts from $180. Their D.O.D/ NSA-CSS approved shredders and industrial shredders cost more than $5,000 and $28,000 respectively. Fellowes provides paper shredders from $10 to above $2,000. GBC also offers paper shredders of the same price range.Ind
The aim of this document is to provide advice and guidance in choosing a consultant in the field of education. You may be the headteacher or principal of a school or college, an officer in a local education authority (LEA) or school district, or the director of a private company wishing to undertake work in the educational sector. This article focuses mainly on information and communication technology (ICT), but the underlying principles also apply more generally.
Using a consultant
Consultants, at least in the UK, have a poor reputation as a species, and yet they are in greater demand than ever. Why? Why would any organisation elect to use a consultant rather than hiring someone? There are several reasons for this.
Short-term work
Some work is, by its very nature, short-term. If, for example, you are having a new computer suite installed, you might want some advice from an external person who has no axe to grind – and whom you can blame when half the staff complain about the design, the equipment and so on!
Expertise
In a specialist area, such as ICT, it’s quite likely that the school doesn’t have the expertise in-house to do what it needs to do within a particular time scale.
Cost
Although consultants can be expensive, it is (or should be) a relatively short-term expense. And don’t forget that you don’t have all the on-costs, like pension contributions. These can add up to 20% of the salary costs. Also, if the consultant goes on holiday or falls ill, you don’t incur any extra expense.
Choosing a consultant
When choosing a consultant or adviser to assist your school in ICT, whether for Hands-On Support, training, strategic development or any other aspect of ICT, it’s important to get the right person or company for the job.
To help you do so, here is a list of questions you may wish to ask before hiring someone. You are unlikely to find any person or company who can answer “yes” to all of these questions, so you will need to bring your own professional judgement to bear on your decision.
1. Is the consultancy independently accredited by a quality assurance scheme, such as by NaaceMark or similar scheme? If not, is it seeking accreditation? Note that an answer of “No” in either case is not necessarily a bad thing. In my own experience, the work itself is so time-consuming that it’s quite difficult to go through the hoops required to prove that you can do what you’re doing! That’s why the next few questions are important too.
2. Is the consultant a member of a relevant organisation, such as (in the UK) Naace or the Society for Education Consultants? These types of organisation provide a certain degree of quality assurance in the sense that they won’t accept just anybody as members, although they will give no guarantees about the quality of work undertaken by their members. Also, they often provide useful information about the sector in which the consultant works, which in theory at least keeps the consultant up-to-date on current developments in the field.
3. Ask for details of similar work undertaken by the consultancy, and for details of satisfied clients – but bear in mind that a reluctance to supply such details may be due to considerations of confidentiality.
4. Ask for references, testimonials, or details of evaluations, ie evidence of quality assurance of the consultants’ work.
5. You can also ask how the consultant gets most of its work. Word of mouth is a goo
We sure do put up some poor excuses for performance measures - here's what to do with the ugliest of them.INTRODUCTIONWinning awards, completing projects and initiatives on time, meeting budget, counting widgets, annual surveys, and whatever we can find at the back of the 'performance measure pantry' that was left over from last year - they are all ugly measures! If you're stuck with this sort of thing, here are some ideas for what to do about it.WHAT MAKES A MEASURE UGLY?In a nutshell, measures are ugly when they fail to inform your decisions about whether or not you're getting the results you wanted, and how well your actions are doing in making those results happen. Measures are ugly when they fail to give you the feedback you need to have more control or influence over the res
Short-term work
Some work is, by its very nature, short-term. If, for example, you are having a new computer suite installed, you might want some advice from an external person who has no axe to grind – and whom you can blame when half the staff complain about the design, the equipment and so on!
Expertise
In a specialist area, such as ICT, it’s quite likely that the school doesn’t have the expertise in-house to do what it needs to do within a particular time scale.
Cost
Although consultants can be expensive, it is (or should be) a relatively short-term expense. And don’t forget that you don’t have all the on-costs, like pension contributions. These can add up to 20% of the salary costs. Also, if the consultant goes on holiday or falls ill, you don’t incur any extra expense.
Choosing a consultant
When choosing a consultant or adviser to assist your school in ICT, whether for Hands-On Support, training, strategic development or any other aspect of ICT, it’s important to get the right person or company for the job.
To help you do so, here is a list of questions you may wish to ask before hiring someone. You are unlikely to find any person or company who can answer “yes” to all of these questions, so you will need to bring your own professional judgement to bear on your decision.
1. Is the consultancy independently accredited by a quality assurance scheme, such as by NaaceMark or similar scheme? If not, is it seeking accreditation? Note that an answer of “No” in either case is not necessarily a bad thing. In my own experience, the work itself is so time-consuming that it’s quite difficult to go through the hoops required to prove that you can do what you’re doing! That’s why the next few questions are important too.
2. Is the consultant a member of a relevant organisation, such as (in the UK) Naace or the Society for Education Consultants? These types of organisation provide a certain degree of quality assurance in the sense that they won’t accept just anybody as members, although they will give no guarantees about the quality of work undertaken by their members. Also, they often provide useful information about the sector in which the consultant works, which in theory at least keeps the consultant up-to-date on current developments in the field.
3. Ask for details of similar work undertaken by the consultancy, and for details of satisfied clients – but bear in mind that a reluctance to supply such details may be due to considerations of confidentiality.
4. Ask for references, testimonials, or details of evaluations, ie evidence of quality assurance of the consultants’ work.
5. You can also ask how the consultant gets most of its work. Word of mouth is a go
In my previous article entitled: Market and Customer focus - Baldrige Assessment Case Studies for Category 3, I shared about common assessment findings of several companies being assessed by a group of trained and experienced assessors. In this article, I will provide similar findings but on Information and Analysis, of the Baldrige Criteria. It is provided in the form of case studies which include Criteria summary as described in year 2001 Baldrige Criteria, assessment findings in terms of Strengths and Area for Improvements.There are seven categories in the Baldrige Criteria. In this article, I will deal with the bold categories listed below:-Leadership | Strategic Planning | Customer and Market Focus | Information and Analysis | Human Resource Focus | Process Man
Choosing a consultant
When choosing a consultant or adviser to assist your school in ICT, whether for Hands-On Support, training, strategic development or any other aspect of ICT, it’s important to get the right person or company for the job.
To help you do so, here is a list of questions you may wish to ask before hiring someone. You are unlikely to find any person or company who can answer “yes” to all of these questions, so you will need to bring your own professional judgement to bear on your decision.
1. Is the consultancy independently accredited by a quality assurance scheme, such as by NaaceMark or similar scheme? If not, is it seeking accreditation? Note that an answer of “No” in either case is not necessarily a bad thing. In my own experience, the work itself is so time-consuming that it’s quite difficult to go through the hoops required to prove that you can do what you’re doing! That’s why the next few questions are important too.
2. Is the consultant a member of a relevant organisation, such as (in the UK) Naace or the Society for Education Consultants? These types of organisation provide a certain degree of quality assurance in the sense that they won’t accept just anybody as members, although they will give no guarantees about the quality of work undertaken by their members. Also, they often provide useful information about the sector in which the consultant works, which in theory at least keeps the consultant up-to-date on current developments in the field.
3. Ask for details of similar work undertaken by the consultancy, and for details of satisfied clients – but bear in mind that a reluctance to supply such details may be due to considerations of confidentiality.
4. Ask for references, testimonials, or details of evaluations, ie evidence of quality assurance of the consultants’ work.
5. You can also ask how the consultant gets most of its work. Word of mouth is a go
The fields we're going to cover in this installment of medical billing of electronic claims, using NSF 3.01 specifications, are of absolutely no use to anyone. That's right. They are not supported by any payer in the system. So the question you have to ask is "why"? Why waste all that space when maybe it could have been used for something productive? Certainly we don't have enough red tape when it comes to medical billing, so why have nine fields that serve absolutely no purpose? Well, we're not going to try to answer that question here because the truth is, nobody has an answer for it. What we are going to do is try to explain what is keeping the makers of the NSF specifications from removing these fields and replacing them with something that is actually worthwhile.We should probably start of
2. Is the consultant a member of a relevant organisation, such as (in the UK) Naace or the Society for Education Consultants? These types of organisation provide a certain degree of quality assurance in the sense that they won’t accept just anybody as members, although they will give no guarantees about the quality of work undertaken by their members. Also, they often provide useful information about the sector in which the consultant works, which in theory at least keeps the consultant up-to-date on current developments in the field.
3. Ask for details of similar work undertaken by the consultancy, and for details of satisfied clients – but bear in mind that a reluctance to supply such details may be due to considerations of confidentiality.
4. Ask for references, testimonials, or details of evaluations, ie evidence of quality assurance of the consultants’ work.
5. You can also ask how the consultant gets most of its work. Word of mouth is a go
As technology becomes ubiquitous, we are still going to need the soft skills, to compete and become a successful business. Development of these skills -- oral and written communications, decision-making, self esteem, overcoming the fear of speaking to groups, call reluctant and teamwork -- will be the differentiation of successful businesses built to last, oppose to those that vanish.Today, any good breakthrough idea can spread like a wildfire globally, within seconds, in the technology economy. Technology, innovation and marketing, accelerates the speed, but it is the people, their passion and skills that sustain optimal growth and culture for an organization.Another major aspect, of the technology economy, is that start-ups today are faced with only a short time in which to reach a viable chu
3. Ask for details of similar work undertaken by the consultancy, and for details of satisfied clients – but bear in mind that a reluctance to supply such details may be due to considerations of confidentiality.
4. Ask for references, testimonials, or details of evaluations, ie evidence of quality assurance of the consultants’ work.
5. You can also ask how the consultant gets most of its work. Word of mouth is a good sign.
6. Ask for the CVs of the consultants who will be working in your organisation if you decide to sign up this consultancy.
7. Is the consultant qualified to undertake the work? This could be an academic qualification, accreditation as an inspector or training provider in one or more schemes, or qualification by experience.
8. Has the consultant been on relevant training in the last year?
9. Ensure that the consultancy agrees not to subcontract the work without prior discussion with you, the client.
10. If you are considering the consultant for staff training, ask if you can attend one of their training sessions in another school.
11. Ask for other evidence that will help you decide if the consultancy is the best for this particular work in your school, such as a client list (but note point about confidentiality above), examples of video work, published work or a website.
Using a consultant
Once you’ve decided on a particular consultant, have an agreement drawn up that ensures, for example, that you will be kept informed of progress. For example, it may not be unreasonable to ask for a summary every 2 weeks, if you are an LEA and the consultant is working in your schools.
Once you’ve hired a consultant, make sure you get the best value for money. This means some or even all of the following, depending on the particular circumstances:
Have a clear set of aims and objectives that you are both agreed upon. This may be developed in discussion with the consultant before signing on the dotted line, but there must be a clear set of expectations by the time the consultant starts work.
Make sure that the consultant has the tools needed to do the job effectively. This could mean access to the computer network, desk space, essential contact information and so on.
Ensure that you have all the contact information you need too: phone and fax numbers, a mobile phone number too, perhaps, with the facility for leaving messages, and an email address.
Put in place whatever is needed to enable the consultant to “hit the ground running”. If, for example, you spend the first morning discussing what the consultant should do, you’re throwing money down the drain: all that should have been agreed beforehand – unless, of course, there is a need for a sudden change in plan, although even in those situations there should have been a contingency plan (a “Plan B”) in place.
Don’t keep asking the consultant to do more and more in an unplanned kind of way. If more work is needed, discuss whether it could feasibly be done well in the agreed time, or whether more days need to be allocated for it.
Conclusion
With proper groundwork when choosing a consultant, and sound planning, hiring a consultant to help you with your
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