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Ten Things We Look For In A Client

A lot of my readers don't know that The Gilbert Center takes on consulting clients from time to time. Every time I travel to a conference, I find myself explaining exactly what kind of clients we take on. As part of our continuing organizational anniversary theme, I thought I would share with you ten important qualities that characterize our ideal clients. These qualities can be expressed in ten questions: (1) Are You Doing Good Work? (2) Are You Willing to Invest in Planning? (3) Do You Work Strategically? (4) Do You Like Hard Questions? (5) Are You Interested in Ongoing Learning? (6) Are You Structured to Make and Keep Promises? (7) Do You Respect Your Own Time and the Time of Others? (8) Can You Candidly Manage Organizational Politics? (9) Will Your Project Have Potential Benefits for Other Organizations? and (10) Is the timing right? Posted: 5/9/07; 10:41:48 PM #

One Hundred Years of Internet

I've just finished reading Gavin Clabaugh's One Hundred Years of Internet for the second time. As with the other authors in our network, I pitched Gavin on the idea of some kind of an article with ten things in it, in celebration of the ten year anniversary of The Gilbert Center. He outdid himself, penning an idiosyncratic retrospective on the last ten years of the Internet (which are like a hundred years of anything else, hence the homage to Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his title). He compares his own predictions from ten years ago with the present and concludes that he was too pessimistic about the rate of change. Never one to let that deter him, he also offers some predictions about the coming ten years, which he sees as playing out five interlocking themes: Ownership, Identity, Trust, Privacy and Community. Gavin, thank you. With any luck, you and I, the people we've supported, and those who have supported us, will get to play some interesting roles in the years to come. Posted: 5/9/07; 3:46:12 PM #