Dear All,
Daniel, this is a great question, and you've already received some truly excellent advice.
Before getting into what I'd like to add which is more about how this works in industry, just a little personal background. Back before 2005, when I was still active as industrial consultant, I was a "captive" to those employees who also worked in my same companies. As a personal corporate resource in each successive company I worked at, literally anybody in an organization of tens of thousands of employees could and did call for statistical help. Corporate management could and did direct people from all over the far-flung company to my doorstep and it was my job to help them as best I could.
I didn't start working freelance until after retirement, and therefore had no need to seek new business. At that point, after about 28 years in the chemical and paper industries, I started working exclusively from home using exactly the same resources mentioned by Dr. Chantel Perry, but with no guaranteed supply of clients. The resources mentioned by Michiko Wollcott and Chris Barker sound extremely interesting and hopefully affordable, and I'd welcome the opportunity to try out their approaches for myself (thanks for sharing!), so forgive me if my current "home-remote" stand-alone communication scheme sounds somewhat simplistic. It is.
What I'd like to address is the typical situation facing a consultant in statistics ( or any other profession ) in a modern corporate setting, which is a very different resource-rich environment compared to the "remote-home" stand-alone situation, but which can be partially duplicated nowadays at home using the internet, by mimicking the corporate model which sets the standard in networked communications in industry.
Unlike many of the other commenters, when employed, I was supported by an internal corporate equivalent of the internet, (an intranet of sorts?) which offered secure direct links to globally remote locations via my company's private computer network. This is a great advantage, which almost all major companies and universities have some version of, linked to at least some of their remote sites, because it prevents unauthorized access, guarantees the other parties are trustworthy, and instantly provides a common background and a chain of command for resolving just about all proprietary questions. This eliminates the need for a lot of otherwise necessary self-protection mechanisms which are almost unaffordable to implement by oneself, and it provides a trusted, shared work environment. We also had a shared video network to a few selected corporate locations with electronic whiteboards at each video center, so literally everything presented at any meeting could be shared, captured in the moment, replayed, edited, stored, printed, etc. And that was all before 2001, so presumably by now things have only gotten more ubiquitous and more flexible.
In other words, you can send just about anything ( I've sent massive blueprints of whole paper mills and massive data files) when they're needed to communicate at any level of detail for problem-solving if the situation justifies using the resource. So clearly, doing the same type of statistical consulting after retirement, but now using only those resources available to everyone via the internet was for me, at least perceptualy, a limitation on the kinds and scale of problems I could undertake. Ultimately, I adapted to the "stand-alone home-remote" technology and have come to feel just as unconstrained as I was back in a large corporation, albeit with limited tech support, which isn't that big a deal. Nowadays the technology needed is virtually everywhere and the only limit is your imagination and your willingness to stay up to date technologically.
Personally I enjoy using this digital medium more than the strict face-to-face or classroom setting with whiteboard or projectors, because it forces a discipline onto the consulting relationship that requires sharing digitally and in writing, even as we are doing here in this thread, and just as one would have to do if for some reason everything had to be done via email or documents. It puts some of the educational burden directly on the client who must now get their own books and software and do some analysis themselves. Because this is a "self-documenting" process, it eliminates a lot of potential communication problems by enforcing a level of clarity and structure onto the process that typical verbal interaction and classroom dialogue lacks.
However, the price for all this is the loss of speed, simplicity and a sense of immediacy. So the projects undertaken must of necessity be high value. So a lot depends on the response time and the amount of "hand-holding" the client needs and that the situation calls for. In my experience, there are very few true statistical emergencies which require the speed of decision-making and personal bedside manner a medical doctor would provide in an emergency room. Of course, if your client thinks "time is of the essence", or a personal touch is essential, then by definition it is. In those matters, the client is always right.
The key to my adaptation to the "lone-wolf" stand-alone style was mostly freeing my imagination to fully envision the situation at my client's location and then make full use of whatever communication medium was good for them in order to insure we truly shared all the relevant information to solve their problem, and that it was the right problem, not just the presenting problem. Obviously, the more visual, auditory, graphic and simultaneous the communication and presentation process can be made, the better. But in my experience we always seemed to discover on the fly the best combination of resources for the particular client situation, because inevitably each remote client had some unique communication constraints and problem-specific information to share, so whatever constraint was limiting set the parameters for the communication process we ultimately selected.
Everyone on this thread has probably experienced some strange combination of the effects of language barriers, time-zones, telecom access, software preferences, etc. So the key is being flexible and adaptable to the particular needs of the situation, wherever in the world it occurs. Obviously, the more types of communication resources you're aware of and comfortable using, the more variety of clientele you can take on and at greater distances, and both university and corporate environments are typically the most resource rich. But even a "lone-wolf" stand-alone consultant as I currently am, with personal financial constraints and limited access to affiliated organizations, can still offer remote services that primarily depend on relevant subject matter knowledge and access to problem-solving tools, using only the simplest of the communication options already mentioned and by leveraging use of the client's resources. A lot of these communications skills and the confidence to use them creatively comes from trying to teach complex statistical subject matter in a simple direct manner that communicates most efficiently with a particular client, whether in person or remote, one-at-a-time or in groups, but always driven by the need to solve a problem. If you work at doing this using the all the digital communication tools mentioned on this thread, I think you'll discover you can get very good at this.
The particular resources you select really depends on what kind of problem-solving mode you're addressing. Obviously, teaching a large scale course would require some sophisticated interactive video capabilities, however, one-on-few can be handled fairly conveniently ... so it all depends on the scale of interaction you envision and the specific consulting situations you are designing for. My remote consulting experience was almost exclusively with one lead client at a time at a site, usually connected by video link, and they took responsibility for locally gathering information and contacting others at their site. Most of my direct communication with clients was by telephone, video, FAX, email and shared files via all manner of media ( internet; intranet; snail mailed CDs thumb drives and hard discs; ... even sheets of paper ... you name it we used it ). The consulting time frame was often live on video but typically not in person (i.e. via videoconference, teleconference or realtime electronic communications like phone, text and email). The exceptions were typically; high level presentations of results in which relevant expertise and in-person appearance was critical ( e.g. senior corporate management meetings, legal counsel sessions, expert witness support, large public groups, government relations, etc.); or, those routine local contacts which didn't require travel or only infrequent scheduled travel to predetermined remote locations. All this was done to minimize expensive and time wasting travel and to simultaneously maximize consultant availability to the largest breadth of clientele. This is because nowadays a corporate statistical consultant is typically a scarce resource ( where they even still exist ) which must be shared broadly to get the maximum corporate benefit and maintain corporate relevance.
In a nutshell, most real world communication in business and industry generally is not face-to-face anymore. At most people make a few initial contacts in person in order to establish a working personal relationship and then typically resume their separate work processes at their remote sites. How well this works in practice determines how the working relationship evolves. The work flow thereafter typically depends on the needs of the problem and only rarely can anyone in business afford the travel and meeting time required for exclusive face-to-face consulting or working sessions. Travel is usually on an as-needed basis, and "need" requires management approvals because someone has to pay for it.
Perhaps this is different in academic settings where scheduing is more flexible and convenient because everyone relevant to the discussion is generally available locally with only a few link-ins. It's been a long time since I was on a campus or in a university classroom. But the very things that make the simple direct meeting approach work in an academic setting are exactly the things which nobody in the business world can afford. Travel is very expensive, time-consuming and exhausting physically. Nobody is at the same location. Meetings are usually a very inefficient use of expensive employees time, unless they're one-on-one, or one-on-few, and there's obviously a limit to how many total clients can be served by this model. Each meeting has to be productive and justifiable economically. Everyone in business is stretched to be as productive as possible, or they won't be in business very long due to the relentless pressure of competition. Keep these things in mind if your consulting business is going to be offered to businesses, or for-profit or time-critical client organizations.
These comments are not intended in any way to be critical of your natural desire to continue the collegial consulting model. It's just that the "campus" we in the larger world must serve just can't be handled using the collegial model exclusively. All the modern telecommunication technology was invented precisely to deal with this fundamental resource allocation problem. It's all in what you think of as resources.
Tom
Thomas D. Sandry, PhD
Industrial Statistical Consultant, Retired
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Thomas Sandry
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-17-2019 21:10
From: Daniel Coven
Subject: Request for Info: Handling Online Consultations
In my limited experience consulting with graduate students, I find that I rely on face-to-face communication and the ability to sketch statistical concepts and models. My department would like to offer online consultations, but I worry this will limit our ability to communicate effectively with clients.
If you are aware of any resources that might be helpful or have comments relating to challenges you've observed or solutions you may have found performing distance consulting, I would be most appreciative. I am most interested when the entire process is completed online, obviously many continuing communications take place digitally.
Sincerely,
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Daniel Coven
Graduate Statistics Consultant
Arizona State University
Daniel.Coven@asu.edu
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