That’s how I would describe my relationship with Ouellette over the past 15+ years, I have been fortunate to experience, in 3 different organizations – in equally different industries, the value that the top-notch team and skilled leaders at Ouellette can deliver.

Without a doubt, this is one of the very few consulting organizations who not only practices what they preach, but does so with the competence, professionalism, and most importantly – customer flexibility.  They have helped me and my teams work within and across different IT and business organizations to raise the awareness and focus on service, and actually move the performance standard up.

Ouellette has done a superb job of understanding their niche (‘human’side of IT), and haven’t tried to diversify so broadly that they lose their ability to retain their own excellence. 

My personal experience originated by simply attending the “IT as a Service Organization” public workshop.  I was extremely impressed with the facilitator, related to the key messages, and actually enjoyed learning the reasonable and fairly simple tools.  That first experience has expanded into leveraging their multiple offerings for various teams:  professional development, Project Management, Publications, public workshops, and consulting (primarily of a strategic nature).  Each investment has produced specific results that I’ve been able to measure.  Some were IT internal only; others had a broader business impact.  Every investment has paid for itself many times over. 

Meg Williams
IT Executive and three-time client
Financial Services

 

It’s been a privilege for me to work with O&A over the past 10 years and of the many things I’ve come to appreciate about you (the collective you), your professionalism, relevance, and integrity stands out.  Without exception, everyone I’ve encountered at O&A has been easy and enjoyable to work with, really knows their stuff, and always follows through.   The materials and subject matter that you share with your clients is applicable to our ever changing environment and holds true on many levels, across geographies, and in across various cultures.  And, not only do you provide great instruction, but you practice and exemplify what you teach!

I look forward to continuing our work together.  Thank you for your partnership.

Michael Ryan
IT Manager and ten year client
Sports Apparel and Footwear Industry

 

Throughout my 45 year career, I attended many classes on sales techniques and business relations management.  Most often, the value of those seminars was like chewing gum – ten minutes of exciting flavor and a lifetime of worthless repetition.

However, when I attended the OA workshops, the results were different.  Their tagline should be, “we deliver the results that last.” 

> > The material is relevant and timely – workshop titles may have remained the same over time, but the content changed to meet the ever-changing needs of business.    

> > The workshops pack punch – OA workshops are not filled with time-killer content to pump up prices.  They are not two-day classes that race down a table of contents.  They focus on ONLY the right stuff.

> > Facilitators add exceptional value – any workshop can have content.  OA facilitators exude enthusiasm for the material.  They draw from the wealth of their own rich experiences to explain concepts in a way that are easy to understand.

Whatever the topic, you can be sure OA will craft it to make it timely, relevant, pack punch, and provide facilitators who add value.  The results?  Well, they last.

Thank you, Ouellette & Associates!

Jeff Denning
Information Technology Officer

 

I was introduced to Ouellette & Associates in the mid nineties. The challenge was to coordinate and align the IT organization with the business of a 15 plant manufacturing division for a fortune 500 company. IT faced all of the typical issues of a rapidly deteriorating relationship with its clients. After reading Paul Ouellette’s book a pilot session was set up for me and my management team. Success was realized the first evening, when my best development manager announced that he had successfully applied the techniques learned that day to remedy a conflict with one of his clients. Before this exchange, this manager had openly declared that the O&A training would be a waste of his time. He was so happy with the results that he bought the entire class a round of drinks!

I knew right then that I was on to something big, something that not only could change my career but the careers of everyone working for me. Over the next few years the courses were rolled out across the country. I took every opportunity to attend as many of the classes as I could. Not realizing that each time I sat through a class that I too was solidifying the O&A skills into my day to day management practices. IT soon found itself engaged with the business and my success guaranteed.

Success breeds opportunity and I have leveraged O&A at my next two CIO positions as a strategic way of instituting fundamental change into each IS organization. In addition, now that I have been promoted to oversee other back office operations they too are benefiting from O&A skills training. Quality and satisfaction scores have improved but most importantly the front line is better able to service our customers. Market share has increased and the BHAG of yesterday is now a real possibility.

Guy Russo
CIO and three-time client
Financial Services Company

 

The more things change the more they remain the same, at the center of any successful project are people; it’s the only constant in the equation known as Information Technology.  Success begins and ends not with how well we manage the other variables but rather if we let the inevitable fluctuations in budget and schedule and the technical challenges that will certainly arise adversely impact the known constant, people. Effective relationship management is the cornerstone of a successful project but it is not time boxed by the project schedule or a single event that occurs when you are asked to do something but rather built over time from series of contacts, formal and informal with people.  Sadly many in our profession can recite in excruciating detail the size and speed of the hard-drive the resolution and refresh rate of the video card and the speed of the processor but ask the UNIX administrator his/her office mates birthday, how many children they have or their ages and/or favorite movie or book and they’d likely need to GOOGLE it first. 

More than anything the work I’ve done with Ouellette over the past 20 years has taught me one thing; success starts and ends with people. It’s not about what we do but rather how we do it and more importantly who we do it for.  The word USER suggests that somehow we can take back the technology if we don’t like how it’s being used; as if it were our ball to take home after the game. The eventuality of such an attitude is that we’ll wake-up one day only to find that someone else has put another ball in play and some ungrateful USER forgot to TWITTER me using the demo account I was nice enough to let them have access to.

Thomas L. Kuczynski
CIO and four-time client
Utility Industry