McDermott Consulting Products & Services

All products and services are customized to your organization and designed to be run within it. Our workshops are highly interactive, give you plenty of opportunity to ask questions and think aloud about how the ideas fit with your organization.

Networks, Communities & Crowds
Title Duration Description
Networked Organization Briefing 1 Day This is an open discussion of the variety of ways to manage interdependence – communities, networks and crowds. It covers the key differences between them, the support each requires, the advantages and disadvantages of each and what combination might be fit the needs of your organization. While we cannot provide a definitive consulting recommendation in the course of a day, we can provide you with enough understanding to sort out a general direction.
Introduction to Communities of Practice
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1 Day Learn the latest research in community development, answer your questions on how to start, sustain and get the most out of your communities.
Community Leader Training 1 Day Effective community leaders are critical to community success.  In this workshop we teach community leaders and support staff how to start and sustain communities, including, how to engage members, manage the interface with operations, and guide their communities through transitions. Based on the largest quantitative study yet conduced on communities, this is the most comprehensive and accurate community leader training available. Requires ½ day customization.
Community Benchmarking
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TBD by sample More Learn how your communities stack up against others and what you can do to make them healthy and effective. Cost depends on the size of the survey & number of communities involved.
Community Development Strategy 1 – 2 Days Using a structured set of thought provoking questions and many examples,, we help you build an overall community development strategy, including governance, structure, roles, participation, reward and implementation. From the discussion we produce a written strategy you can use as a guide to implementation. Cost varies with the complexity of the situation.
Management Community Briefing 2 Hrs Discussion with senior and middle management on the evolving role of communities, the value they provide, what they can expect communities to deliver and what managers need to do to support them.
Revitalizing communities Varies Advise community leaders and development staff on how to rejuvenate flagging communities, increase engagement , build organizational support
Community Leader Toolkit
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This comprehensive toolkit contains tip sheets and templates for community leaders covering all aspects of community leadership. The fee includes customizing the toolkit for your organization. The licensing fee gives all your community leaders access to it.



Develop Greater Expertise
Title Duration Description
Expertise Audit Varies Working with HR, senior and technical management, we identify areas of expertise at risk, experts eligible for retirement, and staff who would be appropriate to pipeline for learning their expertise. This is a concentrated effort to insure that the expertise important to the future of the organization is handed down.
Technical Master Class
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½ day + ½ day expert prep Technical master classes include one or more experts (in the same subject matter) and one or more learners. They are designed to 1) show learners how experts diagnose and resolve technical problems and 2) teach experts how to coach learners. The first master class for an expert includes a ½ day orientation to the master class approach.
Facilitated Follow-up Master Classes ½ day We often facilitate a number of TIPS workshop with the same experts.  Follow up TIPS workshops build on the original orientation we provide for experts.
Supporting mentoring 1½ hour This workshop can be scheduled to coincide with a master class. It helps technical managers understand the nature of teaching expertise, topics that are ripe learning opportunities and what they can do to support learning expertise throughout their department, with or without the master class approach.



Improve Decision-making
Title Duration Description
Knowledge- Enhanced Decision Support Varies This is appropriate for decisions that need to consider similar sets of factors repeatedly, although the data itself might vary. For example, drug development teams need to consider a common set of factors when determining the potential for a compound to cause injury, though the data itself varies from compound to compound and organ to organ.



Enhance Creativity & Innovation
Title Duration Description
Develop a Local Innovation Strategy Varies Working with business unit and technical management, we identify at experts at risk as well as potential learners. Identifying potential learners is actually the most difficult part of this. They must have enough experience to understand the experts but not so much that the experts will be unable to create “ah-ha’s” for them.
Creating Innovation Networks Varies Innovation networks are very different from communities or other networks. We help learn the tricks to creative thinking used by master creatives and we give you plenty of opportunity to practice using them.
An Individuals Guide to Innovation ½ Day Our research on expertise and innovation, as well as research from cognitive science, has brought us a set of mental tricks creative experts use. We teach you these creative tricks, show you how to use them and give you plenty of opportunities to practice.



Change as a Natural Step
Title Duration Description
Change as a Natural Step Varies Implementing change is often experienced as a major strain by both staff and the organization that distracts them from “real work.” We have an approach to implementation that builds on the staff’s needs, gives them an opportunity to learn ways of working that make sense, and helps them focus on the decisions they feel are critical to make. I turns change into a natural, next step in their development.



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