Legend - Online Consultancy

We can't second-guess what you might need, so the examples shown here are indicative, not definitive. These are just some of the things for which clients have used the Online Consultancy Service

Selecting a design company
Defining objectives
Editing documents
Writing safe, effective design briefs
Project planning
Evaluating proposals
Building presentations
Using plain English
Resolving disputes
Writing contracts
Intellectual property
Writing their CVs
Publishing tenders
Creating effective emails
Making sense of client requirements
Understanding the design process
Building and leading creative teams
Working with diverse teams
Mentoring and fostering creativity
Dealing with opposition
Describing and envisioning change
Influencing corporate culture
Creating better forms and transactions
Writing user handbooks
Managing performance reviews with staff
Delivering difficult news
Improving customer Service

Phil Matthews Sector Development Manager, Samsung Electronics

“The product was very hard to understand, the benefits it delivered were revolutionary, but even we had trouble finding a way to describe it, so you can imagine how lost our design consultancy felt. So we began a conversation with Chris at Legend. In a couple of hours lights started to go on, (in us, not the product). In a couple of days we knew what the story had to be. In four weeks we had a launch at CeBit. In four days at CeBit we had met our annual target.”

1 Sharpen your thinking
Perhaps you are a product manager or someone who is responsible for devising a strategy for a sub-brand or creating a launch for a new product or service. Whether you are evaluating ideas, putting a team together, inviting competetive pitches or just beginning to write the brief, it is always helpful to have an expert partner to review your thinking, to identify qualitative or contractual issues (even experienced design managers can get intellectual property issues wrong)

We can review and discuss with you alternatives that might not be obvious, perhaps give you a steer towards making a project more manageable or clarify phases of work or exit strategies, anything for a project to ensure that the process is as good as the outcome.

Neil Trigger Managing Director, MYO International

“Chris at Legend has a perceptive and incisive intellect, he is thorough, charming, polite, wise and engaging. He is phenomenally knowledgeable and hard-working and is an excellent resource for anyone wishing to improve their business.”

2Managing Change
So many things bring the need for change into sharp focus. A company might acquire another or be acquired, there might be structural changes, changes in establishment, regulatory changes, even campaigns to improve performance require change to be managed.

The vast majority of change management programmes stand or fall by the quality of communication. Support and engagement and ownership are primarily outcomes of the way the change is described, the story that is told, the vision that is given to those most affected by it.

Never is the need for clarity of thought more necessary. And rarely is it more important to be able to hear what you are saying in the way that your audiences will hear it. This is where Legend's online consultancy can be invaluable. We can test statements, apply our superlative listening skills and advise on both general approaches and specific issues of language.

inspiring change

Michael Wolff Director of Michael Wolff and Company, Founder of Wolff Olins

“Chris is experienced, practical and well rounded. He knows a great deal about design and design management. He understand the cultures of huge organizations and has the skills to make things happen in them. That's a rare ability. And he's easy to get along with.”

3Managing Design Projects
For many smaller companies the idea of investing in communication by using an external creative agency is a nightmare of subjectivity. How can you be confident that you have chosen the right consultancy or are making the right appointment if it is an internal role? If the design proposals are not to your personal taste, what are you supposed to do? How do you control the process to avoid added costs? Do you know precisely what you are buying and what might not be included? Even when the project is complete, who owns the intellectual property? (Get this wrong and you could face some very large additional bills)

Legend is as experienced at being a professional client as we are at being a provider of services. There is nothing in the process of working with creative agencies that we do not know about at a deep level. We can stand beside you or behind you. Helping you to avoid pitfalls, to created effective and economic processes and to ensure successful outcomes.

Elias Dencker Pre Construction Project Manager, Willmott Dixon Construction

“Chris' support and advice helped us achieve a 75% success rate in tenders for BSF projects and similar large infrastructure bids. Only 75%? At that time the norm in the industry was below 20%. The key with Chris was the rigour of his insistence that we had to speak to each audience with arguments that addressed their concerns, not as timid laymen, but as thought leaders. And to do that we had to learn to think a lot better.”

4How does this sound?
Everything that is written has a voice. So whether it is your CV or your the company's CSR report, a tv commercial or the user handbook for a dvd player - it has a tone of voice. The more important the document is, the more anxious we can become about how it sounds, or reads. Edit as much as you like, that anxiety will sound through.

If you are, for example, developing a new website for your company, you might well go to a designer to look after its appearance but how do you know that the content is right? Not just the way that it is written, but what you are saying. Legend are expert content developers and many of our clients come to us only for this, enabling us to work closely with their designers to create wonderful user experiences. But we don't have to be creating the content to advise on how to do it. We can edit, or we can show you how to edit. We can write or we can show you how something should be written. And this stuff is easy to do with Online Consultancy

perfect sense

Kenneth Cooper former Chief Executive, The British Library

It was not easy for Chris to convince people that a national library needed help with its writing. It was not until his guidance transformed the literature that supported our services that we realized what he means by writing with emotional intelligence. It was as if someone had suddenly revised our systems and protocols. In fact none of those had changed, it was just that readers and visitors understood us much better.

5 Resolving Conflict
In the progress of design projects there are several common causes of conflict between clients and the creative team. Nearly all of them are to do with undocumented expectations or unspoken assumptions. Clients who are new to commissioning and intellectual property are also vulnerable to misunderstanding. There is much that can be achieved with simple, expert and independent advice to resolve such issues before they become serious.

Adrian Armstrong Director of ************ Engineering

I made the mistake of not engaging Chris early enough in a difficult situation. Had we had that advice earlier the problem would have never arisen. As it was his help was finally decisive when he acted as an expert witness. Not the ideal result, but vastly better than it might have been

7 Supporting You and your success
This is the big difference between online consultancy and project work. Our support is geared only to what you need to achieve and we proactively and perceptively provide the inputs that make you look like the expert. If technique is what is needed we will show the most appropriate technique, but often what our clients need is to understand something better and to develop the skills to deal with this and similar situations.

The vast majority of our clients for Online Consultancy admit that the process not only fostered success for that particular issue, but that they were much better equipped to handle similar issues in the future. Many of these relationships, because of this, have endured for several years.

it works

David Evans: Director Akiko Design

"I've lost count of the conversations I or the teams here have had with Chris and his perceptions and insights are really valuable to us. It's fascinating the way, when he is helping us to deal with a client who perhaps isn't very experienced how he stands both with the client and with us. He talks to us like a design expert and he talks to clients like he was a leader in their company. Somehow everything gets clearer and easier to achieve when he is in the mix"

8 What's Included?
More or less anything you need in the context of setting up, briefing, managing, contracting, evaluating or implementing anything to do with organisational communications or brand development.

You name it, we can discuss it and help you find the appropriate level and shape of support. Any subscription is easy to change and just as easy to cancel when you have done what you need to do, that's the beauty of subscriptions. No budgets to agree beforehand, no project to define, just easy affordable access to genuine expertise.

What is Online Consultancy?

So, how do you get it?