And this business grew to employ how many people over the years?
BRANDEGEE: Twenty–five was the top number, plus sometimes some freelancers added to that.

This was all in Pittsburgh?
BRANDEGEE: Mainly in Pittsburgh, but our clients had offices all over. We worked mainly with Westinghouse and other large corporations, and at times with the government.

Tell me about a notable project. You had this business for 33 years. Move ahead and tell me about a significant project.
BRANDEGEE: Well, in 1970, a couple of years later, we prepared the report on the White House Conference on Children and Youth. They asked us to be editors of the conference proceedings. But what we actually did was way beyond simply editing. The president, as you might recall, was Nixon. And most everyone involved in the conference really loathed Richard Nixon. It was a very exciting time. Our problem was simple. Originally the conference participants thought we were the tools of the Nixon administration. And we had to work very hard to demonstrate, before they’d even talk to us, that that was not the case. It took a lot of convincing that our objective was to help tell their story as clearly and strongly as they wanted to. Once they trusted us, we were able to work with all 28 forums, each organized around specific subjects like law, education, and TV.

Nobody liked Nixon?
BRANDEGEE: He opened the conference, and when he walked in, almost no one stood up or clapped. And it wasn’t especially a liberal group; they were professionals. Psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, educators, lawyers, judges, social workers, writers, TV producers, experts on family structure, and so on.

When you met new clients with these difficult projects, would you have information about what their problem was or what their objective was? How would you begin to conceive of a solution to their problem? Did you come into these meetings knowing something ahead and then start to conceptualize?
BRANDEGEE: Usually the start of any project involved detailed interviews with key people, which gave us their perceptions of what was happening in their organization and their marketplace. We could generally get a good overview picture of the issues for an organization.

They had to own the ideas that resulted?
BRANDEGEE: It had to be theirs. Whether I was changing a mindset, be it a new strategic direction, a new marketing direction, etc. the people who were responsible for carrying out the change had to participate in creating it. They had to own it. One way we would often start on a strategic change was to use a ’green field’ approach.

Tell me what ‘green field’ means.
BRANDEGEE: We’d ask them to pretend that they were starting the business now, from scratch. “What would you do?” To slow the process down so that participants could entertain new ideas and hear and respond to each other, we recorded all comments on a flip chart. This allowed them to consider what was different today from when an organization had been founded. They could play with “what ifs.” It could be fun, and it was almost always energizing for the group to become creative problem solvers, at least to some degree. But our job within the process was to help them go beyond the current context or mindset. So this process was not a quick one–day session. We had to iterate with them until the new mindset was built. For example, look at transportation. A rail line is built to carry people from point A to point B, but to think in that limited way is to miss the whole context and potential. The rail line is an instrument, a potential tool for economic development, for creating nodes of development at every stop on the rail line. And unless you think in those terms, you fail to even remotely take advantage of what the rail line can do. So we helped them to jump to a higher level of understanding where great possibilities can exist.

And you would find that your clients often weren’t thinking about these things.
BRANDEGEE: That’s correct.

ADA BRANDEGEE: But once we facilitated the process of discovery they would begin to. What would happen is Rob would put together a one page overview or road map based on what they had said. We would also add additional information that would logically flow out of what they had discussed. He carefully created the road maps to be logical and big picture. I would give them connective tissue. They had lots of ideas that floated around independently. Autonomously. They didn’t link to each other, so if you gave them a picture that’s coherent, they often suddenly had an almost eureka response.

What Rob brought to the party was his understanding of a systems approach. I was more intuitive. I took the people where they were and moved them in an interactive process. Rob could structure the pieces so that the participants would fully recognize the bigger picture and their implication. They would not know they hadn’t said it all because it would feel right. In this way we could keep building the new strategy direction and begin to tackle related issues. Throughout the 70’s and 80’s we were creating and refining our consulting skills and tools as well as doing increasingly complex combinations of consulting and communication about the consulting results and the implications for the company and for employees. Plus, we had many exciting communication programs for large industrial clients. Some start ups as well as medical and university projects.

So you ended your business career in Brandegee, Inc. by selling the company?
BRANDEGEE: To two of our employees. Two of our very best and most creative employees.