Flight of the consultant

To the typical consultant, going to the place that needs attention is not new. However, when can this be managed effectively from afar? But as stated by Stephen A.Wilson and Andrei Perumal, it’s actually worth making the trip to be there with the client to get past complexity:

Today, companies are dealing with the new realities of a global marketplace: 1) tremendous cost pressure as customers refuse to pay for a company’s wastefulness, and 2) the need for customer intimacy; a company’s product or service has to meet customer needs, not approximately, but exactly.  The implication here is that companies are increasingly faced with a new polarity: how to create sources of scale and at the same time build stronger intimacy with customers.