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Fred Nickols

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"Toolmaker for Knowledge Workers"

You will find a PDF version of a PowerPoint presentation about me at this link: Fred Nickols

To reflect my abundance of years and my many years of experience across several industries and organizational functions, I recently added a "Silver Fox" one-page profile to my site.  To view it, click here.

About Me

I was born and grew up in Fort Madison, Iowa.  I joined the Navy right after graduating from high school and I spent 20 years there, retiring as a decorated Chief Petty Officer.  While in the Navy I was trained as a technician, an instructor, a programmed instruction writer, an instructional systems developer and an internal organization development (OD) consultant.  After retiring from the Navy, I took up a career as a consultant, then as an executive and now as a researcher and writer.

I am curious, smart, quick, creative, knowledgeable, hard-working, willing to step up, and a risk-taker.  I am also more than a little lucky.  These qualities account for any success I enjoyed in the Navy and in my subsequent civilian career.

Early in my civilian career, I established a reputation as "a bacon-saver," a guy who could dig his client out of a hole (or keep him from falling into one).  That happened because I was willing to take on assignments no one else wanted.  The projects were seen as high-risk, and as having lots of downside and not much upside.  The pros steered clear. But, as a newcomer, and a guy with no college degree, I didn't have much to lose.  Besides, in some of those situations, if you did succeed, the payoffs were pretty good.  I usually managed to succeed.  To do that, I had to innovate, I had to come up with some new approach or tool or way of viewing the situation to make it manageable.  And, although I can work as hard as anyone, I'm always looking for easier, smarter ways of doing things.  Consequently, in many cases, I had to write my own playbook instead of playing by someone else's.

A CEO who hired me to head up systems and operations at his company once told me, "You come more quickly to the heart of a matter than anyone I've ever known."  That ability no doubt accounts for much of my success.  An EVP who hired me to join his company said, "You have a most unusual knack for getting the 'little people' to go along with the program."  That, too, has contributed to my success.

One more thing:  I was fortunate enough to have clients who were anxious to find someone, anyone, who could help them with what they were up against.

 

About My Work

I consider myself to be an organizational generalist.  My career includes work as a technician, an internal consultant, an external consultant, an executive and a writer, all of which are forms of knowledge work.  I've worked in several different industries and most major organizational functions. For more information see my Project History.

Along the way I encountered many difficult, novel and vexing situations and, in the course of successfully dealing with them, I had to devise various tools, strategies and tactics. In a very real sense, I became a toolmaker.  Indeed, there is an award-winning section on my web site titled “Knowledge Workers Tool Room.” It contains dozens of tools useful to and usable by knowledge workers.

The tools I created repeatedly proved their utility and their value – to me, my clients and my employers. Accordingly, one of my current aims is to share some of the more useful and valuable of these tools.  The four that are center-stage right now are The Target Model, The Goals Grid, The Achievement Path and The Solution Engineering Process.  All four are proven tools and all four stem from my own career as a knowledge worker.

All throughout my career, clients have asked me to "look into things."  One wanted to know about knowledge management.  Another wanted to know about the current "hot" issues in distribution.  A third wanted to know why one of her best salespeople was calling in sick when he was in the middle of good run of sales.  A fourth wanted to know what a "common systems architecture" would look like for what were then separate and disparate programs.  In all cases, I delivered.  In a very real sense, I am an investigator.

Currently, my work consists mainly of "looking into things" for my clients, writing and publishing.  Although I am semi-retired, I am still available for consulting, coaching and making presentations regarding the topics featured on this website.  As always, I am happy to be of "Assistance at A Distance."

If you're a senior manager, an executive, or a CEO, you might want to read an open letter to CEOs about a couple of "Big Wins"

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This page last updated on July 5, 2023