Hey, everyone. Welcome to the new, improved NXT Consulting website. After 10 years of “that thing we do on the side” – like the proverbial order of fries – NXT Consulting is coming into its own. Don Rushmer and I, NXT’s principals, decided it’s high time our public face reflected the caliber of work we do. So, with the assistance of our frequent collaborator, Michele Neary of Mad Bird Design, we’ve given NXT a new online presence.
We hope you like it. Check out our new website at www.nxtconsulting.com
NXT (say “next”) has had an organic evolution that grows out of Don’s and my professional collaborations over the years. It all started on a dark and rainy night at a party at Don and Janet’s Portland house nearly 20 ago. That’s when we first met. At the time, Don was a Vice President and Provost at Pacific University in Oregon and I was a freshly minted consultant working with this new approach to long-range planning called “visioning.”
Almost immediately, Don discerned that I might be able to help him chart a stronger sense of direction for Pacific. Well, in a word, it worked. Soon enough, Pacific University had its first long-range plan, Pacific 2000, and I returned on several occasions to do related work. Pacific today is very different from back then, and I like to think that we had something to do with its future growth and success.
Don always said that if we found a chance to work together, we should go for it. That moment arrived almost a decade later.
After working on a plan for the state court system in Iowa, I was contacted by St. Ambrose University in Davenport to see if I might help them develop an institutional vision. I knew immediately I had found The Project. Working with our colleague Sherry Barrett, Don and I conducted a full blown visioning process for SAU, engaging more than 300 stakeholders. It was a very well received effort, especially by the folks charged with University advancement and major gifts. We were clearly onto something.
It was that first professional collaboration where Don and I hit upon what we think is a great formula: my long-range planning, process design, facilitation and communication skills, and his deep experience in higher education, knowledge of how organizations work – or don’t, and lightening fast research skills. Both of us had public sector experience that ranged beyond higher ed – urban planning, court systems, health care education and advocacy, and community nonprofits – giving us the potential to work with other clientele, too.
So, NXT was born. (We really wanted to call it NeXT, but Steve Jobs had already grabbed that handle; we figured out clients could live without the “e”.)
Flash forward ten years to 2011. Don has dumped the day job and is devoting his full professional attention to NXT. I’m shifting my clientele a bit in response to the recession and re-structuring economy. The best experts tell us that the growth industries for the foreseeable future will be higher education and health care. We think NXT is well positioned to serve that market.
In coming blogs, we’ll share more about our perceptions on a changing world, how change effects all organizations, and how they can respond more strategically. And, you know, we’ve got a lot more than fries to dish out.
So do check back.
–SA
We hope you like it. Check out our new website at www.nxtconsulting.com
NXT (say “next”) has had an organic evolution that grows out of Don’s and my professional collaborations over the years. It all started on a dark and rainy night at a party at Don and Janet’s Portland house nearly 20 ago. That’s when we first met. At the time, Don was a Vice President and Provost at Pacific University in Oregon and I was a freshly minted consultant working with this new approach to long-range planning called “visioning.”
Almost immediately, Don discerned that I might be able to help him chart a stronger sense of direction for Pacific. Well, in a word, it worked. Soon enough, Pacific University had its first long-range plan, Pacific 2000, and I returned on several occasions to do related work. Pacific today is very different from back then, and I like to think that we had something to do with its future growth and success.
Don always said that if we found a chance to work together, we should go for it. That moment arrived almost a decade later.
After working on a plan for the state court system in Iowa, I was contacted by St. Ambrose University in Davenport to see if I might help them develop an institutional vision. I knew immediately I had found The Project. Working with our colleague Sherry Barrett, Don and I conducted a full blown visioning process for SAU, engaging more than 300 stakeholders. It was a very well received effort, especially by the folks charged with University advancement and major gifts. We were clearly onto something.
It was that first professional collaboration where Don and I hit upon what we think is a great formula: my long-range planning, process design, facilitation and communication skills, and his deep experience in higher education, knowledge of how organizations work – or don’t, and lightening fast research skills. Both of us had public sector experience that ranged beyond higher ed – urban planning, court systems, health care education and advocacy, and community nonprofits – giving us the potential to work with other clientele, too.
So, NXT was born. (We really wanted to call it NeXT, but Steve Jobs had already grabbed that handle; we figured out clients could live without the “e”.)
Flash forward ten years to 2011. Don has dumped the day job and is devoting his full professional attention to NXT. I’m shifting my clientele a bit in response to the recession and re-structuring economy. The best experts tell us that the growth industries for the foreseeable future will be higher education and health care. We think NXT is well positioned to serve that market.
In coming blogs, we’ll share more about our perceptions on a changing world, how change effects all organizations, and how they can respond more strategically. And, you know, we’ve got a lot more than fries to dish out.
So do check back.
–SA
