Author: Carter McNamara

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Using Project Teams On Organizational Change Projects

Benefits of Consulting and/or Project Teams

Occasionally, a client will specify that they want a team of consultants on the project because the project requires substantial expertise and resources. While there can be many frustrations for consultants working in teams, there are also major benefits.

  • The team can provide a wide variety of expertise and perspectives during the project, often resulting in a more accurate understanding and resolution of problems in the client’s organization.
  • If the team is designed well, members often provide useful ongoing support and feedback amongst each other, as well.
  • If a consultant suddenly is not able to work on the project, other consultants can step in to cover for the missing consultant.

As a result, consultants enjoy a more successful project and develop a network of trusted peers.

A Team on a Project Might Include:

  • An organizational change consultant to guide development of the collaborative relationship and overall project plan.
  • If a Board of Directors is involved (and they should be on major projects), Board trainers who ensure the Board of Directors is sufficiently developed to oversee the organizational change project.
  • A strategic planning facilitator to guide development of an overall strategic planning framework in which the organizational change plan can be integrated.
  • Specialists in products or services to guide development of certain plans, including groups of customers to serve, and how to develop and sell the product on an ongoing basis.
  • Marketing consultants to provide expertise, for example, in market research, public relations, branding, and advertising and promotions planning.
  • Trainers to convey “expert” content at various times to various members of the client’s organization.

Here Are Some Useful, Free Online Resources

What do you think?

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For more resources, see the Library topic Project Management.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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Links to Build a Consulting Practice

A laptop with "consulting" written on it

Our firm gets 4-5 calls/month from people wanting to know how to start or grow a consulting practice. Obviously, there’s no standardized procedure for that. It depends on the nature of the service you’d offer as a consultant. If you’re selling services to develop job descriptions for rural electric co-ops in Kansas, well your service and market are very specific — and limited. If you doing web design, you could work for anyone who can pay.

But there are some general considerations to address and in a certain order if you want to carefully and systematically start or grow a business. A list of the detailed considerations would comprise numerous blog posts — and there’s already many books about how to start a consulting business.

The following links are to free, online resources with guidelines to address the considerations and in the right order. They assume that you already have some expertise that you could provide to clients in exchange for a fee and that you also have a good understanding of a consulting process, and that you also are thinking about starting a business to be a professional consultant. (To learn more about consulting processes, see the topic Consultants in the Free Management Library.)

Are You Really an Entrepreneur?

Starting a New Organization?

Planning Your New Organization

Deciding the Legal Structure of Your New Organization

Or Expanding a Current Organization?

Or Starting a New Product or Service?

Marketing Your Organization, Product or Service

Getting and Keeping Clients

Getting Paid

Dealing With Clients

When to Bail from a Project

Minimizing Risk

Staying Centered as a Consultant

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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Developing Your Skills in Empathy

Strat empathy on a white background

A guest blog from Carter McNamara.

What Is Empathy? Why Is It So Important?

Empathy is the ability to accurately put yourself “in someone else’s shoes” – to understand their situation, perceptions and feelings from their point of view – and to be able to communicate that understanding back to the other person. Empathy is a critical skill for you to have as a coach, trainer or consultant. It contributes toward accurate understanding of your clients, their perceptions and concerns. It also enhances your communication skills because you can sense what your client wants to know and if they are getting it from you or not. Ideally, your client can learn skills in empathy from you, thereby helping them to become more effective leaders, managers and supervisors.

Note that empathy is sometimes confused with sympathy. Sympathy involves actually being affected by the other person’s perceptions, opinions and feelings. For example, if the client is frustrated and sad, the sympathetic consultant would experience the same emotions, resulting in the consultant many times struggling with the same issues as the client. Thus, sympathy can actually get in the way of effective consulting.

Guidelines to Develop Empathy

1. Experience the major differences among people.

One of the best examples of strong skills in empathy is people who have traveled or worked in multicultural environments. They have learned that the way they see and experience things is often different from others. People with little or no skills in empathy might have an intellectual awareness of these differences. However, until they actually experience these differences, their skills in empathy will probably remain quite limited.

2. Learn to identify your own feelings – develop some emotional intelligence.

Many of us are so “processed” and “sophisticated” about feelings that we cannot readily identify them in ourselves, much less in others. For example, we might perceive thoughts to be the same as feelings. So when someone asks you how you feel about a project, you might respond, “I think we have a lot to do.” Or, we might not distinguish between seemingly related emotions, for example, between frustration and irritability or between happiness and excitement.

See the Free Management Library for resources about Emotional Intelligence.

3. Regularly ask clients for their perspectives and/or feelings regarding a situation.

Silently compare their responses to what you might have thought they would be. This approach not only helps you to sharpen your own empathic skills, but also helps you to learn more about your client.

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 763-971-8890
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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How Much Should the Client Be Involved in Consulting Projects?

Hand holding a consulting card

Peter Block, author of Flawless Consulting, asserts that, as a consultant, you should not be contributing more than 50% of the effort in a consulting project. Your client should work the remainder. You should never be doing what your client can do in a project.

This is especially true for external consultants. Internal consultants might do more than 50% of the work. However, they still should strive to have clients do most of the work if those clients are to learn to solve problems for themselves.

Others might believe that the amount of work each party contributes depends on the nature of services in the consulting project. For example, a technical consultant installing a computer system might do most of the work. However, even in projects where you are an expert consultant, for example, training clients how to conduct a certain procedure, your client must participate substantially in the project.

For example, they must actively participate in your training methods, be actively listening to you, thinking about what you are saying to them, and engaging in small group exercises.

Prominent psychologist, Carl Rogers, asserted that you cannot teach anyone anything. People can only learn when they are ready to learn. That is why Block’s assumptions about consulting are so valid, particularly that effective decision-making requires free and open choice among participants and that effective implementation requires the internal commitment of your clients.

A challenge, particularly for new organizational consultants, is to cultivate a collaborative relationship with clients so clients are highly involved in all phases of the consulting project. New organizational consultants might fall victim to the myths that they can somehow descend into an organization and “fix” it without the client having to participate.

The irony of this situation is that when the organizational consultant follows that approach, the client often reacts positively. However, soon after the consultant leaves the project, both the consultant and client realize that the intended changes to the organization never really occurred. Instead, the client is now in a situation worse than before. Reports from the consultant sit unread on the client’s shelves. People are confused about what to do because little or no learning occurred from the project. Perhaps worst of all, members of the organization lose faith in the value of bringing in outside help again in the future.

Organizational change efforts often fail. That is why organizational consultants have to move away from the traditional “outside expert” approach and toward collaborative organizational consulting.

What do you think?

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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Some Criteria For a Mission Statement to Meet

Mission statement of a business

There are few topics in strategic planning that generate such diverse and strong opinions as what should be in a mission statement. The statements vary from one-line slogans to multi-page documents.

There are few activities that can become such as waste of time as extensive discussions about what words should be in a mission statement — perhaps planners should spend more time identifying external and internal trends and then what to do about them, than discussing at length what words should be in their mission statements.

One o the best ways to efficiently write a mission statement, and yet leave time and energy for the rest of the important planning process, is to establish certain criteria that the mission statement should meet. Then, after an hour or two of discussing the mission, a subgroup could draft a mission statement that meets the criteria.

Some Proposed Criteria for a Mission Statement

  1. Is clearly understandable by people internal and external to the organization (strong requirement)
  2. Succinctly describes the purpose of the organization (strong requirement)
  3. Succinctly describes the overall type(s) of customers/client served by the organization (strong requirement)
  4. Provides sufficient focus and direction that Board members and employees can reference the mission when making major decisions (strong requirement)
  5. Succinctly describes the particular customer/client needs and wants to be met the organization (recommended)
  6. Mentions the particular results (new knowledge, skills and/or conditions) that the organization tries to help its customers/clients to achieve (recommended)
  7. Differentiates the organization from other organizations in the area (recommended)
  8. Conveys strong public image (recommended)
  9. Mentions the locale in which the organization operates (optional)
  10. Mentions any particular strengths and opportunities identified during the strategic planning’s external and internal analysis (optional)

What do you think?

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 763-971-8890
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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Some New Nonprofit Board Models

Two male volunteers

As demands for Board effectiveness and accountability continue to grow, research and discussions about how Boards might operate differently, continue to grow, as well. There are a variety of new ideas for Board models.

Networked Governance

David Renz suggests that the effectiveness of governance could be enhanced when we realize that governance can include organizations and activities that go beyond the role of the Board in an organization. Nowadays, many nonprofit services to a community are often delivered across a network of organizations and, thus, the distributed governance of that network is a key point in the effectiveness of those services. Renz mentions the advantages of the perspective on networked governance and also mentions the difficult challenges inherent in that perspective, for example, how can individual nonprofits and Boards influence the overall network and how can we ensure that individual Boards are doing their fiduciary responsibilities.

System-Wide Governance

Judy Freiwirth asserts that the traditional “top down,” “command and control” paradigm of Boards actually gets in the way of the nonprofit’s successfully working toward its mission. She suggests that the governance responsibility to be shared among constituents, including members, staff and Board. In System-Wide Governance, Board members are from the community and constituency. Although, governance is very democratic in nature, Board members do perform some legal and fiduciary responsibilities. She mentions the Whole Scale Change methodology as an example of how constituency-based planning and operations can be successful.

Community-Driven Governance: Governing for What Matters

Community-Driven Governance is a framework that defines a Board’s primary purpose as leadership towards making a significant, visionary difference in the community the organization serves. The Board’s work centers around an annual plan that aims first and foremost at the difference the organization will make in the community. The plan then addresses the organizational infrastructure needed to implement that plans. The approach is intended to be simple enough for any Board to put into practice, while comprehensively addressing first the ends, and then the means for which a Board will hold itself accountable. The approach also aims to avoid a typical problem in Boards when they attend primarily to internal operations, rather than truly representing the needs of stakeholders.

See Governing for What Matters by Hildy Gottlieb

Relationship Model

Steven Block proposes a model that, instead of having a rigid, top-down structure of roles and hierarchy of the traditional policy model, provides for Board and staff members to work together with great priority on generating relationships and value from those relationships. The Executive Director and staff play an important role in bringing matters to the group (a group of Board members and staff) and their opinions are greatly valued. Board and staff share experiences together, for example, rituals and meals, to develop relationships. Board members are not expected to take part in activities outside Board meetings. They can be there to assist staff. Committees are not used.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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What is “Success” in Project Management?

Your client’s perception of project “success” is the basis from which your client concludes, for example, whether the project of high quality, that money paid to you was well spent, that you did a good job as a consultant, and whether you might be hired again (if you are an external consultant). Early in the project, it is important for you and your client to discuss how to determine the success of the project.

Unfortunately, determining whether a project was successful or not is not nearly as easy as it might seem because there are numerous perspectives on what is project “success.” Therefore, it is important to consider all of these perspectives, especially about a complex – and usually changing – project. Consider the following possible definitions of what might be considered as “success” in your consulting project, and work with your client to select one or more.

1. Desired outcomes and results listed in the project agreement are achieved?

Both you and your client should somehow specify the overall results that the project is to achieve. Ideally, the results are described in terms such that you both could readily discern if the results were achieved or not. This outcome is often a measure as to whether the project was successful or not.

2. The client’s problem is solved?

More times than people realize, the originally specified project results have little to do with actually solving the most important problem in your client’s organization. That occurs because, as you and your client work together to examine and address their overall problem, you both realize that there is a more important problem to address. At that time, it is wise to change your project plans if both of you agree. Discuss the new results that you prefer and how you will know whether or not they are achieved.

Still, later on, your client might believe that any agreed-to results that were achieved from the project were not as important as addressing any current, unsolved problems, so your client might still conclude that the project was not as successful as it should have been. Or, your client might believe that any achieved results were actually more useful than addressing the original problem that you discussed, so your client might still conclude that the project was highly successful.

3. The project is finished on time and within budget?

Often, your client has limited resources in terms of money and time. Therefore, any project that did not require more time and money than expected might be considered successful. That might be true, especially if your client has the philosophy that there are always problems to be solved in any organization and that the project was done as best as could be done.

4. You and your client sustain a high-quality, working relationship?

The quality of your relationship with your client is often directly associated with what the client perceives to be the quality of the project. In a highly collaborative approach to consulting, you want your relationship with your client to be as open, honest and trusting as possible. The nature of the relationship supports your client’s strong, ongoing commitment and participation in the project itself, which, in turn, helps to ensure that the project effectively addresses problems in their organization.

5. Your client learns to address similar problems by themselves in the future?

This outcome should be one of the major goals for any consultant. However, the exact nature of the problem may never arise in the client’s organization again, so it is often difficult to assess if the client has learned to solve that problem. Also, few consultants are willing to scope a project to the time required to assess whether a client really can solve the same type of problem in the future.

6. Your client says that they would hire you again (if you are an external consultant)?

One of the most powerful outcomes is that you both are willing to work with each other again. One of the ethical considerations for any consultant is to avoid creating a dependency of the client on the consultant – where the client cannot capably participate in the organization without the ongoing services of the consultant. However, it is not uncommon that the client strongly believes that the quality of the relationship with the consultant is as important as the consultant’s expertise. The client might choose to use that consultant wherever and whenever they can in the future.

7. You get paid in full?

This perspective might sound rather trite. However, you might feel good about the quality and progress of a project only to conclude, later on, if you have not been paid as promised, that the project was not successful.

What do you think?

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For more resources, see the Library topic Project Management.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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8 Guidelines for Managing Ethics in the Workplace

A businesswoman going through a file on her table

The following guidelines ensure the ethics management program is operated in a meaningful fashion:

1. Recognize that managing ethics is a process.

Ethics is a matter of values and associated behaviors. Values are discerned through the process of ongoing reflection. Therefore, ethics programs may seem more process-oriented than most management practices. Managers tend to be skeptical of process-oriented activities, and instead prefer processes focused on deliverables with measurements. However, experienced managers realize that the deliverables of standard management practices (planning, organizing, motivating, controlling) are only tangible representations of very process-oriented practices. For example, the process of strategic planning is much more important than the plan produced by the process. The same is true for ethics management. Ethics programs do produce deliverables, e.g., codes, policies and procedures, budget items, meeting minutes, authorization forms, newsletters, etc. However, the most important aspect from an ethics management program is the process of reflection and dialogue that produces these deliverables.

2. The bottom line of an ethics program is accomplishing preferred behaviors in the workplace.

As with any management practice, the most important outcome is behaviors preferred by the organization. The best of ethical values and intentions are relatively meaningless unless they generate fair and just behaviors in the workplace. That’s why practices that generate lists of ethical values, or codes of ethics, must also generate policies, procedures and training that translate those values to appropriate behaviors.

3. The best way to handle ethical dilemmas is to avoid their occurrence in the first place.

That’s why practices such as developing codes of ethics and codes of conduct are so important. Their development sensitizes employees to ethical considerations and minimize the chances of unethical behavior occurring in the first place.

4. Make ethics decisions in groups, and make decisions public, as appropriate.

This usually produces better quality decisions by including diverse interests and perspectives, and increases the credibility of the decision process and outcome by reducing suspicion of unfair bias.

5. Integrate ethics management with other management practices.

When developing the values statement during strategic planning, include ethical values preferred in the workplace. When developing personnel policies, reflect on what ethical values you’d like to be most prominent in the organization’s culture and then design policies to produce these behaviors.

6. Use cross-functional teams when developing and implementing the ethics management program.

It’s vital that the organization’s employees feel a sense of participation and ownership in the program if they are to adhere to its ethical values. Therefore, include employees in developing and operating the program.

7. Value forgiveness.

This may sound rather religious or preachy to some, but it’s probably the most important component of any management practice. An ethics management program may at first actually increase the number of ethical issues to be dealt with because people are more sensitive to their occurrence. Consequently, there may be more occasions to address people’s unethical behavior. The most important ingredient for remaining ethical is trying to be ethical. Therefore, help people recognize and address their mistakes and then support them to continue to try operate ethically.

8. Note that trying to operate ethically and making a few mistakes is better than not trying at all.

Some organizations have become widely known as operating in a highly ethical manner, e.g., Ben and Jerrys, Johnson and Johnson, Aveda, Hewlett Packard, etc. Unfortunately, it seems that when an organization achieves this strong public image, it’s placed on a pedestal by some business ethics writers. All organizations are comprised of people and people are not perfect. However, when a mistake is made by any of these organizations, the organization has a long way to fall. In our increasingly critical society, these organizations are accused of being hypocritical and they are soon pilloried by social critics. Consequently, some leaders may fear sticking their necks out publicly to announce an ethics management program. This is extremely unfortunate. It’s the trying that counts and brings peace of mind — not achieving an heroic status in society.

What do you think?

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 763-971-8890
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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Linking Innovation and Operations

An-innovation-sign-on-wall.

Development is hard pressed to interface with operations. Yet it is extremely important that this interface be workable because developments are not relevant until they find their way into operations. This is the “reason for being” of development; to have new systems and adaptive processes and structures integrated, in the long run, to foster organizational performance and adaptation.

What’s The Difference?

An operation is charted to preserve the status quo, the current thinking and methods. Operations assumes this status quo as a “given” and works within current procedures to improve them and “operationalize” them with a high degree of efficiency. In most operations the problem is clear and solutions are knowable. Fast response is an overriding value in executing a “fix” and getting the operation back on-line.

Development, on the other hand is a constructive conspiracy. It is the development function, who’s job it is to replace the current ways of doing things, with new tools and assumptions more in line with changing business and organizational conditions. Development is rife with ambiguity; it is a searching and learning process. The overriding value is gaining commitment to change.

Innovation and Development is fragile, complex and conceptual. Nothing kills it faster than premature exploitation- rushing to capitalize on it too soon. Development is not charted but it is navagatable, it is a learned activity in action where hunches are tested and theory is developed in the process of action. The context of development is uncertainty. Operations on the other hand, works to reduce uncertainty to a program, an operational term.

Learning It While Doing It

Operations are based in control. Developments emerge and are always subject to un- intended consequences in action as development is moved toward its purpose. One of the themes of these essays is that developments are realized through the process of development, it is in effect learned in the process of doing it.

Usually there is not a great deal of organizational understanding and support for doing this. An often operation does not see the need or understand the purpose of the development itself. For this reason, development needs protection at a certain stage. Protection and understanding go hand in hand. As the development is understood the protection can be loosened which is necessary to gain the institutional support for prioritizing the resources for more disciplined development.

Boundary management means the protection and support of a differentiated development culture and the managed change of this culture when appropriate. Boundary management is a continual effort of judgment and balance because technical organizations optimize performance and their activities are always influenced by demands and feedback from a variety of sources in the global environment. Establishing and managing boundaries is both necessary and problematic.

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

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Jim Smith has over 40 years of organization development experience in a wide range of organizations. He can be reached at ChangeAgents@gmail.com