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Updated: May 4, 2020 Ask ACE

Ask ACE: How can I make productive use of downtime during the pandemic?

By Jim Milliken

Q. The lockdown is frustrating because my work involves face-to-face consultation with small groups of people. How can I make productive use of this period?

ACE advises: This down time can be an excellent opportunity to do research or self-evaluation. It’s also a good time for the product or service upgrade you had not had the time or mental space to do very thoroughly.

Spend some time now reviewing the websites and other online material posted by your competitors and by university people and others who are experts in your field. Look for information and ideas you can use to enhance your presentations.

You should have received evaluations of your work from those you have worked with. Review the evaluations in light of what your online research has told you. If you don’t have such results, contact past participants and managers who hired you, and ask them to comment on your work.

Besides helping you see ways to improve your consulting services, this process will provide you with ideas for new consulting designs and approaches. A product extension you could consider might be articles or booklets you could publish for sale and/or distribution to provide added value to your consultation work.

One example of how this can work would be to create surveys for online presentation to other consultants or to executives in your market. Providing the results to those surveyed can be a reputation builder for you. You also can write articles on this material, both for sharing with your colleagues and for presentation to your target market.

What is most important about your approach to his unprecedented time is that you use it to add value to your work.

Jim Milliken is a newly retired management training consultant in Portland. He can be contacted at millikenproject@gmail.com

About ACE

The Association for Consulting Expertise (ACE) is a nonprofit association of independent consultants who value “Success through Collaboration.” The public is welcome to attend its regular meetings to share best practices and engage with industry experts. For more information go to www.consultexpertise.com.

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