– To Inside Out Thinking

Inside Out Thinking - Specialising In Operating “Outside The Box”

We love to work with our clients to discover new and unique ways of dealing with issues that can often seem to be insoluble.

Our specialty is to dredge “win-win” solutions from situations that often seem to be without any redeeming features.

Some of the tasks that we have managed to revive from the brink of disaster are:

Consultancy gone wrong:

A well respected chartered accountancy firm won a government contract to develop a business case for the establishment of a training center to be attached to a defence establishment.

Unfortunately, a number of things went wrong and as a result the Board Of Management threatened the contractor with extremely dire consequences if they failed to turn the task around in the last 4 weeks of a 3 month contract.

We were called in as project managers to rejig the project, and through the implementation of a new project plan (and a lot of long days) were able to ensure that the required report was delivered to the client by the due date.

As a result, the contractor’s reputation was saved, the report was implemented and as a result the Government concerned was successful in ensuring that a multi-million dollar defence contract was awarded to its state.

Ministerial Launch of Website – With no Content:

On another occasion, an educational institution contacted us three days before the scheduled launch by the federal Minister of a website which had been commissioned as a directory of nationally available educational resources.

Again, the project had gone horribly wrong, and as a result there was nothing meaningful on the site. It was recognised that this would result in a tremendous embarrassment not only to the Minister, but of course also to the educational institution that had accepted government funds to establish the website.

We worked extremely hard to locate a software team able to build an appropriate website, graphics designers to develop the look and feel as well as database specialists to establish an online directory to pull up the appropriate information on demand.

As a result, the project was pulled together some 45 minutes before the arrival of the Minister, and everything about the launch ran smoothly, and the website went live as a significant Government educational resource.

The Cruise That Almost Wasn’t:

Our resources were required recently as a result of a planned seminar cruise for some 230 passengers, primarily from Australia.

As it happened, the cruise from Los Angeles to the Mexican Riviera was booked on a cruise ship that became disabled about 3 to 4 weeks before the group was due to depart on their trip. The result was that the cruise company notified that the cruise was to be cancelled only 20 days prior to the scheduled emabarkation date.

At this stage, the organisers had over 200 people who had flights booked from Australia across to the west coast of the US, and nothing organised beyond a seminar in a Los Angeles hotel.

The upshot of the situation was that about 90 of the original participants decided to play the safe option and pull out of the event and request a refund from the cruise line. However, we still had over 140 people who decided to take the plunge and proceed with whatever we were able to pull together in terms of the seminar event.

As a result of many many hours of negotiation and seeking out options, two possibilities emerged – either to take the group onto another cruise out of New York Harbour down to the Bahamas or to arrange a land based event out of Las Vegas.

It was felt that the New York option was the superior one, but this required return flights from LA to New York. However, after much negotiation and discussion with the cruise line concerned, it was eventually possible to have these provided by the cruise company.

This option was selected, and “red eye” flights were arranged for the passsengers to avoid additional accommodation costs during the period between the end of the introductory seminar in LA and the beginning of the cruise in NYC.

However, the company running the New York cruise notified us only 24 hours before embarkation that due to a delay in dry dock, the departure of the ship on our new cruise would be delayed by 24 hours. This meant that we would have some 140 people, both adults and kids, arriving tired and cranky into New York early in the morning, without anything to do or anywhere to sleep until the following morning.

As a result, it was necessary to find accommodation in New York City for the 141 passengers who had decided to avail themselves of the “Magical Mystery Tour” opportunity.

We were then left with the need to find out what we could do with these participants. After many hours of negotiations and further discussions we were able to provide accommodation for all of our people in one of New York’s iconic hotels, together with an evening meal in their restaurant.

We also arranged that coach pick-up from one of the 3 airports used for the transfer from LA include a coach tour of the Manhattan region prior to drop-off at the hotel. This provided an additional experience for those who hadn’t visited New York previously, as well as allowing time for the hotel to have the necessary number of rooms ready for the arrival of these new guests.

The whole package was eventually assembled only hours prior to the departure from LA, but as a result, the passengers were absolutely delighted.

This resulted in what would have been a potential disaster on behalf of the organisers of the seminar and cruise being transformed into a tremendous success.