NOTE: There can be very different styles in going through this implementation phase, ranging from a carefully specified and sequential set of activities to an unfolding and nonsequential arrangement. See the very Different Approaches in Consulting. For the sake of being highly informative with clear and well organized information, this topic will explain a rather orderly, but highly collaborative approach to implementation.
(This phase is sometimes referred to as the Intervention Phase or Transition Phase.)
Description
See a video about the implementation phase, including ingredients for change, change management plans, integrating plans into organization, sustaining client’s and consultant’s momentum, managing resistance, tracking status and adjusting plans. From the Consultants Development Institute.
At this point in the project, you and your client have worked together in the discovery phase to examine your client’s situation and generate recommendations to address it. During the next phase, the action planning phase, you both developed action plans to implement each recommendation — and each action plan specified various objectives to be accomplished, along with who will be accomplishing them and when. Then you might have integrated the action plans, along with plans for communications, learning and evaluation into an overall Implementation Plan.
In this phase, you and your client will work together to effectively implement the Implementation Plan. Although you want to work in a highly collaborative manner with your client, it is ultimately your client who must implement that Plan in the workplace. Your role is to guide and support your client along the way. Organizations, especially small- to medium-sized ones, often have major challenges to overcome when trying to accomplish successful change in their organizations. They face shortages of funds, time and energy.
Now is when you must muster all of your skills as a consultant because you will be working to get a lot done, but will be working through others to do it. You might sometimes struggle just to know the status of implementation of plans. You might need to modify the plans at times and that will be fine as long as you make those changes systematically. It is not unusual in this phase to encounter some resistance to change from your client. If so, then you will need your skills in authenticity and assertiveness to respectfully address it. Other times, you will congratulate them on their accomplishments.
Integrate the Implementation Plan and its various associated plans throughout the necessary systems in your client’s organization.
Ensure continued motivation and momentum to implement the plans.
Keep monitoring the status of implementation using the measures of success identified during the action planning.
Continue to show support from top leaders in the organization.
Regularly communicate status to all relevant stakeholders.
Managing Change During Implementation
Reminder, Who is Your Direct Client Now?
In the contracting phase, we talked about the importance of always knowing who the direct client is now. That is the person or team who has the most influence in helping you now in the project. It can be a different person or team at different times.
See a video about the nature of coaching, when to use the conversations, nature of useful questions, role of actions and learning and defining “successful” coaching.
From the Consultants
Development Institute.
Motivate change – Remind people of the need for the change and how it benefits them. Leaders must continue to show strong support of the change. Continue to solicit everyone’s feedback about the change.
Remind them of the vision — They need to see some vision of success, some goal they are working toward. It should be very relevant and realistic.
Cultivate political support – Keep the support of all key power players, for example, senior management, subject matter experts and others who are recognized as having strong expertise and integrity in the organization.
Manage the transition – Ensure ongoing coaching to leaders and managers about helping their employees to deal with challenges, especially stress and time management. Continue to communicate status to all employees. Be willing to adjust plans as necessary.
Sustain momentum – Communicate accomplishments to everyone. Reward those who lead and excel. Authentically and assertively address resistance, including from the client and the consultant. Integrate new practices into plans, policies and job descriptions.
One of the most powerful means to ensure the success of organizational change is through ongoing, systematic communication to all stakeholders about the status of the change activities. Communication reduces people’s resistance to change. It maintains their focus on the vision and actions for change. It shows them that the top leaders continue to support the change effort. Ultimately, it helps to maintain the motivation, vision, political support and momentum to accomplish successful change.
Unless your client has a large organization, you need not have an extensive and detailed Communications Plan. The Plan should identify what messages need to be conveyed to which specific groups of stakeholders, along with how, who and when.
Plans are rarely implemented as designed. That is not a problem – it is acceptable to adjust plans. The plan is only a guideline – not a strict roadmap, which must be followed exactly as specified when first written. Plans must be flexible. Changes can be done systematically, including to:
Recognize the need for a deviation from the plan.
Understand the reason for the deviation.
Decide what the change should be.
Communicate the need for the change to the plan and what the change should be (before making the change to the plan).
Obtain approval to make the change.
Make the change to the plan.
Update the version of the plan, for example, changing the date on each of the pages and adding commentary that explained the change.
Track the status of the plan.
If the Project Gets Stuck
Projects can get stuck for a variety of reasons, for example, if the overall situation changes, people succumb to burnout, key people leave the organization, the relationship between the consultant and client changes, or people refuse to implement action plans. If the implementation of the plans gets stalled, then you might cycle back to an earlier phase in the consulting in order to update and restart the change management project.
Understand What to Expect from a Professional Consultant
When hiring consultants, it is important to understand what consulting is, the types of consultants and services that you might need, and what to expect from hiring a professional consultant. Therefore, be sure to read
The following are typical situations when an organization might need a consultant.
1. The organization has no expertise in the area of need.
2. The time of need is considered short-term, e.g., less than a year, with a general start and stop time.
3. The organization’s previous attempts to meet their own needs were not successful.
4. Organization members continue to disagree about how to meet the need and bring in a consultant to provide expertise or facilitation skills to come to consensus.
5. Leaders want an objective perspective, i.e., someone without strong biases about the organization’s past and current issues.
6. A consultant can do work that no one else wants to do.
7. An outside organization demands that a consultant be brought in, e.g., a funder wants to ensure the organization is well suited to spend the funder’s money.
8. The organization wants a consultant to lend credibility to a decision that’s already been made (this situation would be looked at by many experienced consultants as highly unethical).
1. Contact professional associations, e.g., networks of organization development practitioners, facilitators, trainers, fundraisers, accountants, lawyers, computer users, etc.
2. Contact local large corporations; they often have community service programs and can provide a wide range of management and technical expertise.
3. Consult the local telephone company’s Yellow Pages under the category “Consultant” and “Volunteering.”
4. Call a local university or college and speak to someone in the college of Human Resources, Training and Development, or Business Administration.
5. Ask other organizations for ideas, particularly those that have similar services and head-count size, for contacts and references.
6. Nonprofits in Minnesota, see the “Directory of Services and Resources for Minnesota Nonprofits” from the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits (642-1904).
(Note that nonprofits can often get consultants to provide services on a pro bono basis. It’s worth asking, especially if the consultant is in strong agreement with the community’s need for the nonprofit’s services.)
How You Can Make a Consultancy as Productive as Possible
(This section includes advice graciously provided by Barbara Davis, 317 South Hamline, St. Paul, Minnesota 55105)
1. Know what you want to do, and make sure your organization is prepared for it.
2. Try to reach internal agreement (board and staff) about the consultancy.
3. Don’t become dependent on a consultant.
4. If possible, don’t limit the consultant to recommending action; get the consultant involved in implementing recommendations.
5. Fix causes, not symptoms.
Getting and Hiring the Best Consultant
(This section includes advice graciously provided by Barbara Davis, 317 South Hamline, St. Paul, Minnesota 55105) 1. Give interested people the information they need to understand your needs by using a “request for proposal” (RFQ) or through direct conversation. (See Sample Request for Proposal.)
2. Get a written proposal from every interested party.
3. Get a bid on the fee and reimbursable expenses.
4. Look at more than one proposal and examine them all carefully.
5. Interview the best prospects and check their references. (Consider their extent of expertise, listening skills, ability to adapt to the nature of your organization, ability to coach to ensure the organization can address the problem in the future, etc.)
6. Don’t pick someone based only on price.
7. Write a good contract including (see Sample Agreement for Services):
· a list of “deliverables”
· a project completion date
· a payment schedule
· checkpoints at which you can evaluate programs
· a “bail-out” clause
· name of person in your agency who has the authority to agree to expenditures or approve work
· agreement on reimbursable expenses
· understanding on who will do the actual consulting
· (see the following section, Additional Advice, about considerations regarding IRS)
1. Help Consultants to Understand Your Organization:
There are a few basic techniques which can greatly help the consultant to understand your organization, particularly if they are brought in to work organization-wide and non-technical issues.
a) Help them understand your service(s), market(s) and stakeholder(s).
For example, provide them copies of your strategic plans, budgets, policies, most recent annual report, organization charts, and advertising/promotions/sales literature. If there is a full range of these types of documents, your organization probably values careful documentation when making important decisions, and will likely prefer the same from the consulting project. If these documents appear to be very comprehensive and include a great deal of graphs, figures, and numbers, your organization probably highly values careful research, analysis, and conclusions, and will prefer the same in the consultation project.
b) Give them a sense for the overall nature of your organization, e.g.,
Are staff highly independent and work alone or do they prefer working in teams? Do you go for consensus on decisions even if it takes a long time to get or do you want timely closure on decisions? Are their strong traditions you require based on the diversity of your workforce? How does the staff feel about using consultants?
c) Give them a sense for the overall priorities of your organization,
e.g., you might attempt to identify the general life stage of your nonprofit, e.g., start-up, developing/building, stabilizing, declining, etc. The stage will indicate your overall priorities, as well, e.g., getting any help you can get, grabbing market share and/or more clients and/or more revenue, developing a wide range of careful documentation, divesting resources while ensuring client needs are met, etc.
2. Include Frequent Evaluations, Including Project Follow-Up
The extent of the consultant’s and clients’ participation in evaluating the project is often an indicator of how much they really see themselves responsible for the overall, long-term quality of the consulting project.
a) The consulting project should be evaluated regularly, including briefly at the end of each meeting (about the process used in that meeting), at mid-point in the planning effort, and at its end. Specify in the contract that certain deliverables (e.g., tangible products, such as reports, presentations, project reviews, etc.) be delivered during the project. Ideally, the project is evaluated at three months and six months after completion of the project, particularly about whether the consultant’s recommendations were implemented or not and whether the project’s goals were reached or not.
b) Establish criteria early on from which the overall consulting effort can be evaluated at the mid-point and end of the project. Establish criteria by having you and the consultant specify what constitutes a successful consulting project and process. Get descriptions to be as detailed as possible to later know if the project was clearly a success or not.
c) Don’t base evaluations mostly on feelings. Avoid this mistake by specifying, as much as possible, behaviors that will reflect a successful consulting project.
3. If IRS Disagrees Service Provider is “Independent Contractor,” You May Pay Penalties and Taxes
The Issue
A major, recent issue found during IRS audits is nonprofits arranging to use what they term as “independent contractors,” but what the IRS concludes are “employees.” In these cases, the IRS demands the nonprofit pay back taxes and penalties. Consequently, a client must be very careful when entering into a relationship with a service provider to ensure the relationship will be deemed an “independent contractor” relationship by the IRS.
Background
As background, one aspect of the arrangement between a client and consultant is that the client typically does not have to pay benefits and workers compensation, match Social Security payments, and withhold income taxes. Consequently, the IRS is quite concerned that clients accurately classify their service providers as “employees” or “independent contractors.” There appears to be no clear distinction between the two in the law, and each situation is settled on a case-by-case basis. However, there are certain guidelines a nonprofit can follow to minimize the likelihood that IRS will deem a service provider to be an employee.
Guidelines to Minimize Likelihood of IRS Penalties and Taxes
Whether a service provider is an employee or an independent contractor depends primarily on the extent of control the client organization has over the service provider: the less control in the relationship, the less likely the IRS will deem the service provider an employee. Consider the following actions when attempting to define the relationship with an independent contractor:
1. Carefully specify your relationship with the service provider in a written document.
2. The terms of the relationship (specific services, fees, project start and stop dates, etc.) should all be specified in the contract.
3. Attempt to arrange fees to be based on results or tasks, rather than on time.
4. In the document, specify the relationship to be with an independent contractor who is responsible to pay their own taxes.
5. The service provider should have all or considerable discretion in how services are carried out, including the process and scheduling.
6. The service provider should be responsible to obtain and pay for their own training to carry out the services.
7. The service provider should not be required to carry out his or her services at the offices of the client.
8. The service provider should have or be making obvious efforts to advertise and retain business with other clients.
9. The service provider should have their own place of business.
10. Note that the more a service provider appears as a manager (i.e., makes operating decisions, supervises people, is responsible for resource allocations, etc.), the more likely the service provider will be deemed an “employee” by the IRS.
To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.
Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.
(This phase is sometimes called the diagnostic phase.)
Description
Audiences for This Topic
This phase is useful for internal and external consultants, but also for leaders and managers whose roles include guiding and supporting others to solve complex problems in their organizations.
Different Approaches to This Phase
There can be very different approaches and styles in going through this discovery phase, ranging from a carefully specified and sequential set of activities to an unfolding and nonsequential dialogue with clients. (See the very Different Approaches in Consulting and How Consultants Customize Their Approaches.) For the sake of being highly informative with clear and well organized information in this topic, it will explain a rather orderly, but highly collaborative approach to discovery that is especially useful when working to address recurring, complex issues in organizations.
Typical Activities in This Phase
Whether you are an external or internal consultant, if you are attending to a complex problem or goal, then you and your client will work together during this phase to understand more about the overall priority (problem or goal) of the change effort and how you all can effectively address it. Together, you will collect information, analyze it to identify findings and conclusions, and then make recommendations from that information. Sometimes the data-collection effort is very quick, for example, facilitating a large planning meeting. Other times, the effort is more extensive, for example, evaluating an entire organization and developing a complete plan for change.
Importance — and Ethical Responsibility — to Do This Phase
Sometimes, people minimize the importance of – or altogether skip – this critical discovery phase, and start the project by articulating an ambitious and comprehensive vision for change. However, many would argue that it is unethical to start making ambitious recommendations without fully examining (or discovering) the current situation in the client’s organization. Focusing most of the change efforts on achieving a robust vision, without at least some careful discovery, often can be harmful to your client’s organization because your project can end up dealing with symptoms of any current issues, rather than the root causes. Also, the project could end up pushing an exciting vision that, while initially inspiring and motivating to many, could be completely unrealistic to achieve — especially if the organization already has many current, major issues to address. Therefore, when working to guide change in an organization that already is facing several significant issues, you are usually better off to start from where your client is at now — that means conducting an effective discovery to identify current priorities for change.
Discovery Itself is Powerful Strategy for Change
Your activities for discovery do not have to be tedious and demanding — almost overwhelming. Just the activities of working to understand more about the organization can itself cause a major change in the client’s organization. For example, the activities help your client to become more enlightened about their organization and excited about making any necessary changes. The activities help members to feel that their opinions and concerns are being heard. That feeling is critical to sustaining the type of motivation and momentum required for successful change. Perhaps the most important result from discovery is mobilizing your client for change. As a result, you now have their interest, focus and energy for changing their organization. These features are critical to the success of your project.
Goals for This Discovery Phase
See a video about finding root causes, targeting the problem, selecting performance standards, focusing research, collecting data, analyzing data and generating useful recommendations. From the Consultants Development Institute.
The primary purpose of the discovery phase is to fully understand the client’s situation by examining the area of the organization that needs the most attention and what kinds of attention it needs. By collaborating with your client during this phase, you orient your client to accepting feedback about the situation and also the recommendations for how it can be addressed. In their book, Practicing Organization Development : A Guide for Consultants, Rothwell, Sullivan and McLean mention the following benefits of an assessment — the type of activity that is at the core of this discovery phase:
It identifies the causes of problems in the organization.
It provides the basis for sharing feedback between you and your client.
It provides background information for upcoming action planning.
It provides a basis for tracking and evaluating the project activities.
The goals of this phase are for you and your client to collaboratively:
Decide what information is needed, starting with the symptoms of the situation.
Decide how that information can be collected and by whom in a realistic and practical fashion.
Gather that information, usually by conducting an assessment of some kind.
Understand the information — often, this is not nearly as difficult as it might seem.
Identify key priorities that are revealed from the collected information.
Share mutual impressions of what the information indicates. The mutual impressions are critical to the upcoming action planning phase of consulting.
One of the most powerful means to cultivate collaboration is by working with a project team comprised of key personnel from the client’s organization. The use of a project team helps to ensure that the client understands the activities in the project, takes strong ownership of them and therefore is much more likely to implement the necessary changes needed in the organization. The “job description” for the team might be to work with you to:
Answer various questions from you during the project. There will be times when you do not understand various terms and practices within the client’s organization. Team members can explain what is happening, any effects on the project and suggest how the project might be modified.
Review various drafted results from the consulting process. For example, team members can help develop and review plans for data collection, collect and analyze that data, generate preliminary recommendations and conduct presentations.
Help customize plans and activities during upcoming phases in the consulting cycle. Team members could give you feedback to ensure that the project’s activities suit the nature and needs of their organization. Team members often know more about the organization’s culture and how to work within that culture than the consultant.
Monitor progress of the project. Team members should know the project plans and be aware of the status of their implementation. Members can help by suggesting any changes needed to get the plans back on schedule.
Sustain momentum throughout the planning process. Team members can show enthusiasm and support for the project. Other members of your client’s organization can be inspired if they see their fellow employees really believing in the project.
See a video about what performance is, including the role of performance standards that often are in diagnostic models. From the Consultants
Development Institute.
What is a Diagnostic Model?
We all have diagnostic models. Some are explicit and known to us. Others are implicit and intuitive. For example, think about how you feel about a certain team or organization that you know about. You probably had some automatic reaction to it, for example, a conclusion or a feeling that it is struggling or high-performing. That reaction came from some explicit or implicit set of standards that you have for how it should be acting or performing. You probably also had some suggestions for what it could do to improve. That is your diagnostic model.
Without an explicit and mutually discussed diagnostic model, you and your client can end up just wondering around in the project according to each of your own unknown biases and standards, often believing that you all are working well together — when you actually are not. Each of you might be seeing the same organization very differently and coming up with very different recommendations.
Benefits of a Diagnostic Model
A very good diagnostic model can be useful to:
Suggest a set of best practices or a standard of performance in regard to the area in the organization that exhibits the ongoing problem.
Suggest what data needs to be collected in the organization to compare it to the best practices or the standard.
Suggest what actions need to be taken to increase the performance in that area of the organization.
Evaluate the success of the project by comparing the performance of the improved area to the best practices or standard.
The guidelines for choosing which model to use are similar to the guidelines for choosing which strategies (or “interventions”) to use when working to improve an organization. See the section: How to Choose Which Strategies (Interventions) to Use for Change
Do not be alarmed about the word “research”. It need not be a highly scientific and laborious activity during this phase. The more realistic that you make it, the better. Ideally, the research conducted by you and your client would be useful to everyone in your client’s organization. However, without a clear and specific focus, the research can quickly become a demanding and wide-ranging set of activities that can produce a tremendous amount of seemingly disconnected information – information that can end up being useful to no one.
Therefore, it is extremely important to get as much focus as possible before you and your client start the research. A useful way to focus your research is to identify one overall question that the research must answer, for example:
How can we stop the recurring cash shortages in the client’s for-profit organization?
That question invites a few more, including:
So what does an ideal for-profit organization do to ensure strong financial and organizational sustainability? What are the typical best practices? A diagnostic model about high-performing, for-profit organizations will often suggest those best practices. In our example, let’s use this diagnostic tool: Systems-Based Model to Diagnose For-Profit Organizations.
How is the organization performing those best practices now?
Identify What Data to Collect and How
A good diagnostic model will also suggest what data to collect. In our example of the recurring cash shortages, our chosen diagnostic model looks at the entire system of an organization. When we read about the model, it suggests that recurring problems with cash are often caused by problems with poor financial management. It also suggested that the recurring problems could be caused by poor business planning, which can be caused by unrealistic strategic planning.
So, to be sure that we are focusing on the true cause of the recurring cash shortages — and not just its symptoms, we decide to look at the best practices in each of those three major functions. Here are some overall types of data to collect regarding common functions in an overall organization. Some Common Types of Data to Collect
The plan should specify the primary research question to be answered and any associated questions. It should also specify the data that is needed, sources of the data, how it will be collected, when and by whom. It should be a very relevant, realistic and practical plan. Do not worry about your plan being perfect. You will learn more about what is really needed as you implement it. The client should review the drafted plan as well to be sure it is understandable and acceptable to them. See Planning Your Business Research
Collecting Your Data
Before collecting your data, you will need to have the research announced to the participants. You also will need to prepare them for providing the data. Also, you should be prepared if you encounter any surprises, such as unethical or illegal practices. See: Conducting Research With an Organization
Analyzing Results of Research
In our example of the recurring cash shortages above, we selected a diagnostic tool and an organizational assessment tool. The diagnostic tool suggested that we look especially at the best practices in financial management, business planning and strategic planning. Our organizational assessment tool evaluated the quality of the best practices in each of those three functions. So in our analysis of the data from the assessment, we need to analyze how well the organization is doing in those three functions. Our key question is:
What are any differences between how the client’s organization is doing financial management, business planning and strategic planning now, as compared to the best practices suggested by the assessment tool? Any differences that we find are the types of issues that our consulting needs to address.
Generating Recommendations Based on Results of Discovery
Traits of Useful Recommendations
Recommendations should be focused on the client’s priority (problem or goal), match the culture of the client’s organization, be doable within their current or near-term resources, and focused on the what needs to be done and not on the how that it needs to be done. (The how will be determined during the upcoming action planning phase). They should also be prioritized for implementation.
The recommendations need not address all of the issues that were found. Because your client’s organization is a system with many integrated parts, you and your client can often make a significant difference with recommendations that affect only a few of those parts. Then, as those parts become healthier, they positively affect the rest of the organization.
In our example of the recurring shortages of cash, our analysis might have found that the functions of financial management, business planning and strategic planning all need to have certain best practices implemented within each of them. The diagnostic tool also suggested that the improvements be made in the general order of strategic planning, then business planning and then financial management practices. Of course, improvements might be made to all of them together, depending on the expertise of the consultant and resources of the client’s organization. It might be useful to also see:
See a video about roles and goals of a facilitator, structures of groups, managing meetings, when and how to intervene, maximizing participation, group decision making and group conflict. From the Consultants Development Institute.
The Feedback Meeting
Now that you and your client have generated findings and identified recommendations based on the findings, both of you are now ready to share that information with the rest of the members of the organization in what is often referred to as a feedback meeting. The manner in which you share that feedback can greatly influence how others in the organization will accept and implement the recommendations.
If you have been working in a highly collaborative fashion with your client, now is the time that collaboration will really pay off. There will be few surprises when hearing the results of the discovery activities. The sharing of the recommendations is often done in what is called a feedback meeting. The primary outcome of the meeting should be that leaders in the organization select which of the recommendations to implement.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
A common mistake is to allocate far too much time to discussion about the problem, the research and its findings. People assume that the more the participants know about the problem, including all of the dynamics of its causes and effects, the more likely they will be to successfully solve it. That assumption is not valid because problems rarely have simple, rational causes that can be fully understood. Delving into the background of the problem usually results in participants feeling deep despair and anxiety. Besides, most members of the organization usually are already aware that the problem exists – they want to move
forward to solve it as soon as possible.
Suggested Agenda for the Meeting
Here is a reasonable agenda for that meeting.
Welcome and brief introductions (10 minutes)
Review the agenda, goals of the meeting and its ground rules (3)
Describe the project, including your role and the role of the research (2)
Describe the focus of the research and its research methods (3)
Explain that issues are from broken systems, not from broken people (2)
Describe the overall findings discovered from the research (20)
Describe the overall recommendations from you and your client (30)
Decide which recommendations to follow (30)
Specify next steps (10)
Evaluate the meeting (10)
Total Time 120
The next phase of consulting, Action Planning Phase of Consulting, will be about developing specific action plans to implement each of the recommendations that were approved during the feedback meeting.
Some Useful Resources for Sharing Feedback and Recommendations
Reminder: See a video about the discovery phase, including finding real causes, performance standards, focusing research, collecting and analyzing data, sharing recommendations, and getting agreement. From the Consultants Development Institute.
See a video about the contracting phase, including introducing yourself, client’s perceptions, identifying the direct client, evaluation preparation, learning client’s organization, ensuring client is ready, and writing a contract/agreement. From the Consultants Development Institute.
Audiences for This Topic
This phase is useful for internal and external consultants, although the scope of how contracting is done often differs between the two. Externals often have a more comprehensive, written and formal agreement with clients. Internals, while also in consulting roles, often have more focused and less comprehensive agreements, sometimes implied rather than written.
Critical Importance of This Phase
This phase is usually where the relationship between you and your client starts, whether you are an external or internal consultant. Experts assert that this phase is one of the most – if not the most – important phases in the organizational change process. Activities during this stage form the foundation for a successful consulting project. The quality of how this phase is carried out usually is a strong indicator of how the project will go.
Occasionally this phase needs to be repeated, for example, if a new problem arises in your client’s organization and, therefore, a new project design and plan are needed. On other occasions, you and your client might decide to do a separate contract for certain phases of an overall project. For example, you might contract to finish an assessment and then contract to guide your client through implementing the recommendations from that assessment.
(Note that the information in this section refers to “your client,” even though, in the early activities of this phase, your potential client and you might not have formalized an agreement to work together on the project yet.)
Here are some other perspectives on the contracting phase:
See a video about knowing your consulting style, biases, emotional intelligence, “lens” on organizations, and how you share feedback and conflict. This is very useful to know about yourself in first meetings with your client.
From the Consultants Development Institute.
Goals of this phase include the following and in the following general sequence:
Exchange introductions, including information about how each of you prefers to work in a project, and about your values and style.
Clarify who the official client is. Also identify who direct and indirect clients might be.
Get a description of your client’s need for a project (the presenting priority).
Scope the project, identifying the major problem to be solved and/or its preliminary goals, when the project should start and stop, and to whom you need access in the project.
Understand how the project can be coordinated and administered, including how project decisions can be made and how communications can occur.
Get some sense of your client’s and your own readiness to undertake the project.
Decide whether both of you want to work together now on a project or if any additional activities are needed, such as another meeting, follow-up proposal or references check.
Gain agreement on the overall approach to the project, including a collaborative approach to further discovery, action planning, implementation and evaluation.
Arrange a formal agreement, for example, a letter of agreement or contract, and decide what terms should be included in the documents.
Obtain information for you to understand more about your client’s organization.
How to Do the First Meeting With Your Client
See a video about interpersonal skills to build trust and collaboration, including listening, authenticity, sharing feedback, working with diversity, managing interpersonal conflict and managing resistance. From the Consultants Development Institute.
At some point in the project, you will have your first face-to-face meeting with your client, usually scheduled during an initial telephone call. The following guidelines will help ensure that your first meeting is highly productive. They will also be useful during the initial telephone call.
See a video about planning and managing meetings, and ensuring maximum participation and effective decisions. From the Consultants Development Institute.
Clients often hire consultants based on how well the client believes that the consultant actually listened and understood their situation. Therefore, focus especially on understanding the client’s situation now, not on “selling” yourself.
Use your interpersonal skills to hear their story. The more effective your
skills are in these areas, the more likely that you and your client will have a firm foundation from which to share complete and accurate information, thereby resulting in a more successful project.
Focus on hearing about – not solving – the client’s problem. It is important not to start giving advice about how to solve the problem now. Even if you are convinced that you know how, you still have not conducted sufficient discovery to be sure you clearly understand the situation. Also, you do not want to prematurely commit yourself to a solution with your client that might soon change after you have done discovery.
Identify to Yourself, Who is the Direct/Current Client Now?
It is important to know who the official decision maker is regarding whether to hire you or not (the official client). However, it is as important to recognize who seems to know the most about the situation now (the direct or current client). That will indicate to whom to direct your types of questions. That kind of interpersonal acuity will get you the most useful information. It also will convey to the direct/current client that you are sensitive to the different roles that each of them has. This kind of sensibility will be very important during the upcoming implementation phase when different people will be your direct/current client — they will have the most useful information for you then and often will have the most influence in helping the project.
There are many different definitions of success in a consulting project. In addition to solving the problem, it might be as important — or more — to not exceed any deadlines or the budget for the project. It might be to not break any norms in their culture. Ask them about these aspects.
Ask them to list two to three things that are needed in their organization for the project to achieve that success. Mention that these are often considered to be critical success factors.
Now, Assess if the Client is Ready for a Project
Ultimately, this decision is up to you as the consultant, although the client might have reservations now after having answered your questions. Consider, have they allocated sufficient funds for the project? What obstacles might they see in participating in it? Have they used a consultant before, and if so, how did that work out? What was their role? What did they learn? What might they have done differently? Are there any people or activities that are off limits for access during the project? If so, then that could be a warning about the extent of their cooperation and involvement in the project. Are there people who might be uncomfortable with this project? What is the evidence that top management supports the project?
If you believe that the client is not ready, then share your opinions now and explain your reasoning. That would be one of your greatest gifts to them. They are much more likely to be ready for a project later on – and they will greatly respect you for being so honest with them.
If Client is Indeed Ready, Share Information About How You Work
See a video about principles for effective and ethical consulting, and defining “success” in a consulting project. From the Consultants Development Institute.
Mention your personal values, mission in your work and primary goals in how you work. Highlight your expertise and explain your approach to consulting. Explain the collaborative approach to consulting, its benefits and the roles of the consultant and client. Mention any boundaries in your work, for example, that you offer guidance, materials and support, but it is up to the client to implement your help. If the client asks how you will solve their problem, tell them that you want to give it the thought that it deserves and that you will respond with a proposal. Mention that your fees will be specified in that document.
Learn More About Client’s Organization
Ask for information that you otherwise could not get from the organization’s literature, for example:
How do you like to make decisions and solve problems?
What is unique about the culture of your organization?
How can a consultant best work in that culture?
How do you prefer to communicate? In-person? In writing?
What is your approach to situations, for example, do you refer to “problems” or “opportunities”?
Do you talk most about the “business” side of the organization or the “people” side?
What do you know about change management? How would you like to learn?
What is the personality of your meetings?
How to Do Consulting Proposals and Contracts
How to Do Proposals
It is very useful to provide a proposal of some kind, even if they do not ask for one. The activity of developing a proposal ensures that you give careful thought to the desired outcomes, tangible outputs, kinds of services and deliverables, roles and timing for the project.
If there is indeed a match between you and the client, and you agree to work together, then you will always want to formalize an agreement. Ask the client if they have a preference for the means to do that. Share how you formalize agreements, as well. The information in the following links is not to be understood as legal advice.
Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:
Many people have the mistaken impression that consultants are people who primarily give expert advice to solve problems for their clients. However, a much more accurate description is given by Peter Block in his seminal book, Flawless Consulting. Block explains that a consultant is someone in a role to help another person, team or organization to change, but who has no authority to make them change. Thus, a consultant can be an advisor, trainer, coach or facilitator.
This topic provides the guidelines and resources for doing consulting. However, you cannot develop skills in consulting, unless you actually practice applying that new information.
Learn More in the Library’s Blog Related to Consulting and Hiring Consultants
In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blog that has posts related to Consulting and Hiring Consultants. Scan down the blog’s page to see its various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related resources.
See a video about overview of methods of advising, coaching and facilitating; which methods to use and when; when to switch methods; and major myths about consulting. From the Consultants Development Institute.
Misunderstandings About Consultants
As mentioned above, a consultant is someone in a role to help another person, team or organization to change, but who has no authority to make that change happen. There are many myths and misunderstandings about consulting, the most common of which is that consultants always provide expert advice to solve “problems”.
Actually, a consultant might use many different styles, approaches and methods, depending on the nature of the client and focus of the consulting project.
Roles can range along a continuum from that of an expert who gives ongoing advice to that of a coach or facilitator who supports a person or group with ongoing reflective questions to bring out their own wisdom and apply it.
Thus, consultants can act in the role of (alphabetically):
Coach – helping individuals to clarify and achieve a goal by helping them to bring out and apply their own wisdom.
Collaborator/partner – working with another to benefit from the mutual relationship.
Educator/trainer – helping others especially to develop new knowledge, skills and insights.
Expert – providing specific information and expertise in specific areas.
Facilitator – helping members of a group to clarify their desired goals and how they want to achieve them — and then helping them to bring out and apply their own wisdom to achieve the goals (thus, a coach who is coaching a group also works in a very facilitative manner).
Problem solver – helping others to clarify their problems and then helping them to “solve” them.
Researcher – collecting, organizing, analyzing and reporting information for others.
Other roles might include analyst, synthesizer, impartial observer, critic, friend and mentor.
See a video about definitions, types of consultants, primary goals of consultants, identifying real clients, and differences between internal and external consultants. From the Consultants Development Institute.
It is useful to know the general types of consulting services because they are often used to categorize, for example, in advertisements, catalogs of training programs and tracking statistics about consultants. Consultants might use roles ranging from the expert to the facilitator in any of the following categories depending on the nature of the client and focus of the consulting project.
Types of Services
Private Practice Consultants
They focus on professional services, for example, counseling and coaching, that include helping others with individual and professional development. They work in a highly facilitative and collaborative manner with their clients, and in a highly confidential relationship, as well. (The term “private” is often used to suggest that the consultants are working as independent consultants. However, it can also apply to the strong requirement for confidentiality in the nature of their work.)
(Note that the above use of the terms counseling and coaching refer to services that are delivered in a carefully designed relationship in order to accomplish significant personal goals with the client. This is in contrast to an informal counseling and coaching activity in which a person offers advice or thoughtful questions in a spontaneous conversation.)
Technical Consultants
They provide highly specialized content and expertise regarding certain specific systems and processes in the organization, for example, information technology and business analysis. The types of services provided by these consultants are often referred to as technical assistance.
Management Consultants
They help leaders and managers to be more productive in the practices of planning, organizing, leading and coordinating resources in the organization. For example, they can help with practices in strategic planning, financial management and personnel management. They might work in an expert role while training others about best practices and then in a facilitator role when supporting others to apply those practices.
Organizational Development Consultants
They help organizations to improve performance in a significant portion of the organization or in the entire organization itself. They might use a wide variety of approaches, for example, training about best practices in accomplishing successful change, facilitating groups of leaders to plan the change, and informal coaching conversations to maintain momentum during the change.
Many people assert that there is a difference between the phrases “organizational development consultants” and “Organization Development consultants.” They would use the latter phrase to refer to consultants who consider themselves to be working in the field of Organization Development.
Types Can Overlap
Each type of consultant might be needed at various times in a project. For example, an organizational development consultant might work with various groups to identify the most important problems to address in an organization. Then management consultants might train various managers about the best practices needed to address the problem, for example, strategic planning, management by objectives and supervision. Concurrently, a professional coach might coach the chief executive officer through the challenges of dealing with a major change.
Whether the consultants are generalists or specialists depends on the nature of their services. The more specific the nature of their services, for example, information technology or market research, the more likely they would be referred to as specialists.
Many people would consider private practice and technical consultants to be specialists. They have rather unique and extensive expertise, such as in medicine, counseling and coaching — even though they can often vary widely in how they provide their services.
Many people would consider management and organizational development consultants to be generalists, although both types might use a mix of specialist and generalist expertise, especially when working on complex projects.
Context of Their Services
An external consultant is not a full- or part-time employee of the client’s organization and instead works independently to serve a number of different clients. In contrast, an internal consultant is a part- or full-time employee in the client’s organization. It is very useful to know the typical differences between the two, especially in terms of how they are viewed by their clients and the different parameters in their roles.
To know the overall, recurring goals of professional consultants, regardless of their type, we again defer to Block. He suggests that the following goals be primary for professional consultants, especially if they are often working to help others accomplish significant change.
Establish a collaborative relationship with your clients.
As a consultant, you should work with your clients as if you are peers working as a team. Working in a collaborative fashion with your clients helps you ensure that recommendations — generated from you and/or the client — are accurate, that clients follow the recommendations and that they adopt the necessary changes as needed.
Solve problems so your clients can solve them later themselves.
The approach to solving the problem in the project should always involve your client’s learning about what is being done and why, so your client can very likely repeat the approach as much as possible after you are gone.
Ensure equal attention to solving the problem and your relationship with your client. The quality of the relationship between you and your client is a reliable predictor of the quality of the outcome from the project. Clients often judge projects, not only by their outcomes, but also by the quality of their working relationship with the consultant.
Professional consultants should always adhere to certain principles and ethics in their work, as well as continually developing themselves as individuals and consultants. The following resources provide numerous guidelines to help you as a professional.
See a video about principles for successful consulting, defining “success”, principles for ethical consulting, managing risks and liabilities, and knowing when to leave. From the Consultants
Development Institute.
All Consultants Follow General Phases in Their Consulting – Just Differently
All professional consultants tend to follow a general design, or framework, in their consulting that includes a general sequence of cyclical and highly integrated phases. Phases often include, for example, a start-up or contracting phase that clarifies the project’s goals and roles, then specifying the actions to achieve the goals, then implementing the actions and then doing a final project evaluation.
Very Different Styles in Going Through the Phases
However, different consultants might go through the same general phases very differently along a continuum of styles. At one end are consultants who prefer clearly delineated beginning and ending points for each phase, as well as specific kinds of sequential deliverables within them. They might see themselves as leading in all aspects of the project. Technical consultants often prefer this kind of approach to ensure that the project activities closely conform to the steps needed to successfully install the technical systems or practices, such as installing computer systems and conducting market research.
At the other end, are consultants who, along with the client, co-create the content within each phase as well as the activities within each. They might not see themselves as working within phases, at all, but rather engaging in a highly collaborative dialogue in which the goals, roles and actions are continually unfolding from the relationship itself. Examples along this half of the continuum might include coaching, process consultation, Dialogic Organization Development, collaborative consulting, whole systems change and Theory U.
The various styles in going through the phases depend on a variety of factors that are explained in the next section, “How Consultants Customize Their Approaches”.
If they are private practice consultants, then they probably are specialists in their particular profession, which often requires certification or licensure in the profession. However, they very often use highly collaborative and facilitative approaches with their clients.
If they are technical consultants, then they probably are specialists whose work is often highly specific and procedural in nature. Thus, they might mostly offer expert advice and be rather predictable in how they work.
If they are management and organizational development consultants, then they probably are a mix of specialists and generalists. They might use a variety of approaches ranging from offering expert advice to conducting spontaneous coaching conversations.
Depends on Their Training
Their approach to their work depends on their training in a certain philosophy and associated model. For example, coaches might use a specific model focused on life coaching or performance coaching. Trainers might use a certain model to design their curriculum, such as ADDIE or SAM. Managerial consultants might specialize in a certain practice, such as leadership development or strategic planning. Organizational consultants might focus on a certain organizational performance model, such as management by objectives or the Balanced Scorecard.
Depends on the Nature and Needs of Their Clients
However, all professional consultants should be able to accommodate the nature of the individual client and the culture of the client’s organization. For example, some clients learn especially from frequent interaction with the consultant. Others prefer frequent time alone to reflect and re-energize themselves.
Some organizations are clearly and consistently structured in how they operate, including how they make decisions and solve problems. Decisions require extensive communication and formal approval. Other organizations are more adaptable and decentralized. Decisions require discussions and consensus.
Example of an Approach to Consulting: Collaborative Consulting
The collaborative consulting process is based on the work of psychologist Carl Rogers, Peter Block and others. It is not a specific model as much as a mutual way of working through the general process for the consultant and client during a consulting project. This type of process is widely used in consulting to solve complex problems and achieve major goals in organizations. Collaborative Consulting for Performance, Change and Learning
One version of the process includes the following general sequence of phases. They are highly integrated and often cyclical in nature.
This topic assumes 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 as described in this overall topic, and that you also are thinking about starting a business to be a professional consultant. The guidelines in this topic are focused on helping you to start a new organization or expand a current organization.
You might develop a request for proposal (RFP) and provide it to many potential consultants, asking them to respond with proposals. This section will be helpful when developing an RFP.
It is not enough to just have strong interpersonal and technical skills to be a highly competent consultant. You also need consulting skills. Why Consulting Skills?
There are many resources from which consultants can start and market a consulting business. However, there are very few programs in which consultants can further develop their skills to solve problems or achieve goals in the clients’ organizations. Consider the following resource, the Consultants Development Institute
For the Category of Organization Development:
To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.
Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.
The Library’s topic All About Internal and External Consulting is a broad overview of the field of consulting. This topic builds on that foundation by explaining one particular style of consulting, collaborative consulting.
Collaborative consulting is not a discovery, development or trademarked service of this author. The general concept has been around in one form or another for several decades, ranging from Carl Rogers’ collaborative approach to psychotherapy to full explanations in Peter Block’s seminal book on consulting, Flawless Consulting.
This topic gives the reader the basic guidelines and resources to begin understanding the process. However, to master the process, the reader should practice applying the guidelines, ideally under the guidance of an already highly experienced consultant.
What is Collaborative Consulting?
Problems With Expert-Based Approaches to Consulting
See a video about the collaborative approach to consulting, including description, benefits, cycles, shared and individual responsibilities, and collaborating with busy clients. From the Consultants Development Institute.
A traditional view of consultants is that they are experts who largely work alone in their client’s organizations. They do some very complex analysis, generate highly technical recommendations and then bestow them upon clients — for the clients to implement later on, somehow.
However, research shows that traditional approach rarely works when the consultant is trying to help the client to accomplish significant change in the organization, whether to solve a complex problem or achieve a significant goal. The consultant’s recommendations are rarely implemented, either because they are completely unrealistic, the client is not confident to implement them or they don’t match the culture of the client’s organization. See:
Collaborative Approach Ensures Recommendations Are Implemented
As important as the accuracy of the recommendations is the client’s commitment to actually implementing them. Research shows that kind of commitment comes from their truly understanding the recommendations and believing in them. In turn, that comes from their collaborating with the consultant as much as possible in order to analyze their own situation and what to actually do about it. Overall, that collaborative approach is much more likely to produce the kind of support, momentum and learning that are necessary for successful organizational change.
In additional to organizational consultants, the highly collaborative approach applies to technical consultants, too, especially if the focus of the project is on a complex technical system, where the consultant needs to ensure that the system is adaptable to the client’s organizational culture. Many other helping professions, for example, therapy, social work and education, have also realized the critical role of working in collaboration with others.
Dynamics of the Collaborative Consulting Cycle
Background
Community organizers have long used the philosophy that people who were being served also had to be involved in the effort. For Example, Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander Folk School, used that philosophy to help desegregate schools in the south. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks both got trained there. Paulo Freire, an adult educator who has been credited with educating more people than anyone else in the world, used the philosophy.
Psychologist, Carl Rogers, suggested a highly collaborative approach in his person-centered psychology. Educator and Organization Development researcher, Edgar Schein, described what could be a collaborative consulting philosophy in his writings about process consultation. Organization Development practitioner and writer, Peter Block, wrote extensively about collaborative consulting in his book, Flawless Consulting. Today, collaborative consulting has become a major movement in various fields of human and Organization Development.
Cycle of Learning in Collaborative Consulting
As explained, very few complex problems are solved merely from the advice of an expert consultant. Instead, they are solved from a cycle of continuous learning between the consultant and client. There are various phases in that cycle of learning.
If the consultant acts authentically with the client, including being respectfully open, honest and engaging, then the client is much more willing to form a working relationship with the consultant.
If the client trusts the consultant, then he’s much more likely to seriously consider her expertise and methods in consulting. He is also more likely to seriously consider her coaching in the form of thoughtful questions — questions which can cultivate deep reflection and learning for the client and consultant.
As a result, the client gains much more understanding and learning about his situation and his organization. He also can more readily explain the situation to other key players in the organization – to those people whose understanding and commitment he will soon need.
Because of the client’s enhanced understanding and learning, he is more committed to taking actions to solve the problem, and to share the results and learning with the consultant.
Then, both consultant and client assess whether there was progress in the project, for example, whether a specific milestone was achieved or the overall problem was solved.
Steps 1 through 5 might be repeated until the client agrees that the overall problem is solved.
Major Benefits of Collaborative Consulting
Consultants in organizational change efforts must be able to work comfortably in collaboration with their clients. Often, that starts by explaining collaborative consulting to the client, including why the process is so useful. The following list outlines some of the major benefits of working in a collaborative approach.
It ensures that consultants work according to the standard goals of professional consultants. According to Block, the primary goals for any effective consultant are to work collaboratively with clients to ensure their current problems are understood, realistic options are identified, the problems are solved — and the clients can solve those problems themselves in the future. A primary working assumption includes that, for projects to be successful, clients must freely provide accurate information and maintain internal commitment to the project. That comes from their collaboration with the client.
It provides powerful means to identifying the real causes of the client’s problem. Organizations, like people, rarely struggle because of a missing piece of information. Rather, they struggle because they cannot see the situation any differently, they have conflicting feelings about it, or they are afraid to take any actions to address it. Therefore, consultants and clients need to work together to share their own perceptions about the problem. They need to have ongoing discussions about what to do about it and then come to suitable conclusions about what to do to solve it. The client needs to assign realistic accountabilities to take the necessary actions to solve it.
It ensures that plans remain relevant, realistic and flexible during change. Plans are rarely implemented exactly as planned. Instead, changes inside and outside of the organization frequently cause the plans to be modified. Without the ongoing participation of clients in making realistic changes to the plans, it is not likely that the plans will remain relevant and realistic.
It ensures the most long-lasting solutions to the client’s problems. Long-lasting solutions to complex problems involve necessary changes to the structures and systems in the client’s organization, not just in inspiring and motivating its people. Changes are not incorporated without the strong, ongoing ownership, commitment and participation of clients. That commitment requires their ongoing trust — the trust that comes from their continual collaboration with the consultant during the project.
It ensures continuous learning and improvements in consulting projects. Adults learn by applying new information to current and real-world situations, reflecting on the results of those applications and exchanging ongoing feedback with others about their new learning. Projects provide a clinic for learning when the consultant and client collaborate together in the consulting project.
How Much Should Client Be Involved in Collaborative Consulting?
They Should Be Involved in at Least Half of It
Prominent psychologist, Carl Rogers, asserted that you cannot teach anyone anything. People can only learn when they are ready and willing to learn. That is in accordance with Block’s assertion that effective implementation requires the internal commitment of clients.
Block asserts that the consultant should not be contributing more than 50% of the effort in a consulting project. The client should be doing the rest. The consultant should never be doing what the client could 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 their problems for themselves.
Others might believe that the amount of work each party contributes depends on the nature of the services in the consulting project. For example, a technical consultant installing a computer system might do most of the work. However, even in those projects, the client needs to learn the system and how to use it to its full advantage. That will happen if the client is actively involved with the consultant in customizing the right methods of training, practicing how to use the system and in sharing feedback with others about their experiences.
Can Be a Challenge for New Consultants
A challenge, particularly for new consultants, is to actually cultivate a collaborative relationship with clients. They might feel they need to impress and satisfy the client by doing all the work themselves. Or, they might fall victim to the myth that they can somehow descend into an organization and “fix” it without the client ever having to participate. The irony of this situation is that when the consultant follows that approach, the client often reacts positively at first.
However, soon after the consultant leaves, the client realizes that the recommendations were not fully understood — not enough to actually begin implementing them. Also, others in the organization are confused about what to do with the recommendations because little or no learning occurred about them. In effect, the client is in a situation that is worse now than before. So, the consultant’s report sits unread, collecting dust on the client’s shelf. Perhaps worst of all, members of the organization lose faith in the value of ever bringing in a consultant again.
Responsibilities in Collaborative Consulting
Shared Responsibilities
Again, we turn to Peter Block to articulate the shared responsibilities in a collaborative consulting process. These apply for internal or external consultants.
The success of the project is an achievement by both consultant and client. It is not the result of an all-knowing consultant who somehow swooped in and “saved” the organization. Success is really from a continued collaborative approach between the consultant and client to solving the client’s problem.
Decision making comes from the consultant and client engaging in shared discussions, negotiations and agreements. There is a mutual desire to come to consensus, based on the belief that the consultant and client both benefit from each other’s knowledge and wisdom.
The consultant and client share in the discovery, or diagnosis, of the problem, including its causes and the plan to solve it. Only the client can implement the plan, but both can monitor its implementation. If implementation is behind schedule, then both can discuss whether to try get more resources, extend deadlines or reduce expectations in the project.
In a collaborative consultation, both are responsible to identify new learning, that is, new knowledge, skills and abilities gained in the project, as well as new ways of looking at things and making assumptions about them. Learning comes from continued reflection on their mutual dialogue and on the rich experiences in the project.
Consultant’s Responsibilities
The consultant brings her unique expertise – in particular, in the area of her practice and also in the consulting process itself.
She uses her skills in coaching to help sustain momentum and learning for individuals and teams in her client’s organization.
She uses her skills in facilitation to help teams in her client’s organization to become more clear on current priorities and what to do about them.
She might also use her skills in training to impart certain special knowledge so her client can do a current task or job even better.
Most consultants have amassed many useful materials and tools to share, so that can be her role, too.
A primary responsibility throughout the project for her is to help her client to learn.
Client’s Responsibilities
Regarding the client, he shares information about his organization, including the problems that he wants her to help solve.
He considers her help in the form of expertise, coaching, facilitation, training and materials.
He decides what to do with that help, including whether to take actions and if not, to explain why.
He implements the actions that he agreed to, including to lead implementation of plans in his organization.
He regularly shares status with her, so both can discuss and decide what should be done.
Similar to her, he has a responsibility to learn throughout the project – to reflect on his experiences and his working relationship with her.
Nature of the Collaborative Consulting Cycle
The organizational change process is often like that of a wide-ranging and wandering journey between the consultant and client. Accordingly, the phases in the collaborating consulting process are much like a highly engaging and constructive conversation. The various phases provide a common frame of reference during that conversation.
The phases are often cyclical and highly integrated in nature. For example, it is not uncommon to return to an earlier phase because some major aspect of the client’s organization has changed, such as a key leader leaving or a new issue arising in the organization.
There often is no clear-cut distinction between the various phases. The order in which the consultant and client proceed through them and the amount of time that they spend in each depends on a variety of factors, including:
The nature of the issues to be addressed by the project, including its focus and the extent of change needed to address the issues.
Any particular change model that the consultant and client might be using to accomplish organizational change, for example, action research or strategic management.
The expertise of the consultant while working with the client to proceed through the phases.
Whether the consultant is working for a service provider who has certain policies and procedures for conducting their consulting projects.
Whether the consultant is a specialist who focuses primarily on certain functions (Boards, marketing, staffing, etc.) or a generalist focusing on multiple functions.
Whether the consultant is contracting to provide recommendations only or to guide the client to actually implement the recommendations.
The amount of resistance from the clients and also from the consultants themselves during significant changes in the project.
The client’s available resources to commit to the project.
Phases in the Collaborative Consulting Cycle
Various books on consulting usually suggest similar designs, ranging from five to eight phases in the overall consulting process. Authors might use different names and emphasize different terms, but the approaches they suggest are usually somewhat similar. After all, their approaches are often based on the same action research model developed by Kurt Lewin, the founder of social psychology, about 50 years ago.
1. Contracting and Engagement Phase
This phase is also sometimes called the Start-up, Entry or Agreement phase. Although some practitioners distinguish the Start-up phase as being especially about the consultant and client learning about each other and considering whether to connect with each other. They might see the Start-up as being when the consultant and client actually meet together and come to agreement about the project.
This phase is usually the first time that the consultant and client meet. The overall goal of this phase is for both to understand each other’s nature and needs, the intended outcomes from the project and how they prefer to work together. They also begin exploring the presenting priority in the client’s organization, assess the readiness of the client to begin a consulting project, decide if there is a suitable match between them, and then identify next steps, including if and how an agreement can be established. Guidelines and Resources for Contracting Phase of Consulting
2. Discovery Phase
This phase is sometimes called the Diagnostic Phase. The nature of discovery depends on the philosophy of the consultant and client. Some prefer a rather orderly sequence of phases, while others prefer a more emergent approach.
During this phase, the consultant and client work together in a highly collaborative fashion to further examine the presenting priority, its context and causes, and what can be done to effectively address the priority. Discovery involves carefully collecting information about the priority, how it has been managed and its effect on the rest of the organization. During this phase, the consultant and client might review documentation, administer questionnaires and conduct interviews, to get information about the priority. The consultant will use principles of systems thinking and organizational change to identify issues and generate recommendations to address the issues. Then the consultant and client will share with the rest of the organization the results of the discovery, including issues that the discovery found and the recommendations to address those issues. Guidelines and Resources for Discovery Phase of Consulting
3. Action Planning, Alignment and Integration
As with the discovery phase of consulting, the nature of the action planning depends on the philosophy of the consultant and client. Some prefer a rather orderly sequence of phases, while others prefer a more emergent approach.
By now, the consultant and client will have a fairly clear impression of what the issues are and the specific actions needed to address them. Now both work together to develop those actions into action plans, identifying who will do what and by when. They will ensure that those action plans are relevant, realistic and flexible and that they are fully integrated with each other. Next, they will integrate the action plans into an overall Implementation Plan that will include plans for evaluation and learning, recognition and communications. Guidelines and Resources for Action Planning Phase of Consulting
4. Implementation and Change Management
As with the contracting and discovery phases of consulting, the nature of this implementation phase depends on the philosophy of the consultant and client. Again, some prefer a rather orderly sequence of phases, while others prefer a more emergent approach.
During this phase, the consultant will guide and support the client in implementing the Implementation Plan, including its various related plans. The focus of their efforts will be on guiding the implementation according to principles of successful organizational change. The consultant will help the client sustain motivation and momentum throughout the implementation. The consultant will inform the client about a variety of tools to track the status of implementation, as well. During this phase, the consultant and client will continually be evaluating the quality of the change effort and making adjustments as necessary. Guidelines and Resources for Implementation Phase of Consulting
This phase is sometimes referred to as the Evaluation and Adoption Phase, although some practitioners separate the Adoption phase and consider it to be focused especially on ensuring the client has adopted the new practices needed to solve the client’s problem — and also has learned how to solve similar problems into the future.
This phase is marked by having successfully addressed the presenting priority in the client’s organization, as well as having addressed any issues found during the activities of discovery. The consultant and client will conduct an evaluation to verify that those accomplishments indeed were achieved. The client will have learned a great deal during the project, including how to successfully manage change efforts in their organization. Guidelines and Resources for Project Evaluation Phase of Consulting
6. Project Termination and Closure
This phase is sometimes referred to as the Separation Phase. The consultant and client will reflect on what both have achieved. They will develop a project termination plan that will address how to begin moving out of the project, ethically and administratively. Both will further attend to the results of the evaluation and will clean up any loose ends in the project. They might discuss any future engagements, as well. Guidelines and Resources for Termination Phase of Consulting
Similar to the discovery phase, there can be very different approaches and styles in going through this action planning phase, ranging from a carefully specified and sequential set of activities to an unfolding and nonsequential dialogue with clients. (See the very Different Approaches in Consulting and How Consultants Customize Their Approaches.) For the sake of being highly informative with clear and well organized information in this topic, it will explain a rather orderly, but highly collaborative approach to action planning that is especially useful when working to address recurring, complex issues in organizations.
Overview of This Phase
In the previous discovery phase, you and your client conducted realistic research, discovered various priorities that needed attention, generated recommendations to address those priorities, and shared your information with others in the organization, for example, in a feedback meeting. Near the end of that meeting, your client selected which recommendations they are committed to implementing.
This phase is focused on further specifying each of those selected recommendations, along with developing them into various action plans. Thus, the action planning is somewhat of a continuation of the activities near the end of the earlier discovery phase.
They provide the “roadmap” for managing the transition from the present state to the desired future state. Development of the various action plans is often an enlightening experience for your client because members of their organization begin to realize a more systematic and accountable approach to their planning and day-to-day activities.
Goals for This Action Planning Phase
See a video about the action planning phase, including criteria and formats for useful action plans, performance indicators, integrating and aligning, reality checking and writing a change management plan. From the Consultants
Development Institute.
Develop complete action plans for each recommendation that was selected during the discovery phase. Action plans include objectives, responsibilities, timelines and how the achievement of objectives will be monitored.
Align and integrate the action plans with each other to ensure complete effectiveness and efficiency of all action plans throughout the system of the organization.
Ensure action plans are relevant, realistic and flexible so they remain credible and they retain the commitment and participation of all members of the organization.
Combine action plans into an overall Implementation Plan that includes the integrated action plans, as well as associated plans, including those for communicating the Plan and for evaluating the project activities and its results.
Integrate and communicate the contents of the Implementation Plan throughout the organization to ensure its implementation.
Translate Selected Recommendations into Vision and Goals
Develop Vision for Change Now?
Some people prefer to focus their overall project activities on a broad, compelling vision. Many times, that vision for change becomes the same as, or replaces, the overall organizational vision that was developed during strategic planning. The vision for change can be a powerful means to sustain the type of motivation and momentum critical for successful change. The activities of developing that vision can be exciting, as well.
However, be careful. Expending too much energy on first developing an exciting vision sometimes leaves planners too tired to attend to the important task of developing and refining action plans. If you do decide to include a vision for change, you can carefully develop that vision now, or you might wait until after you have developed all of your action plans and then realistically develop your vision based on the expected outcomes from having implemented those action plans.
It is very useful now to review each of the selected recommendations from the discovery phase and re-word them into goals. That makes it much easier to articulate specific action plans associated with each goal.
For example, a recommendation to “Implement best practices in the product development team’s activities” could become the goal “Product development team passes the Ideal Standards Test by January 2019”. Then develop the necessary action plan(s) to achieve that goal.
Select Best Approaches to Implement Recommendations
There are a wide variety of approaches to improve organizations. Many of them are common practices in governance, leadership and management, for example, Board development, leadership development, strategic planning and team building. The recommendations from the discovery phase might have already included some suggested approaches.
The approaches are often referred to as interventions, a term from the field of Organization Development. Read the section How to Choose Which Strategies (Interventions) to Use for Change to select the most likely intervention for now. That section includes complete guidelines for carefully selecting the best intervention for now.
The interventions that you selected very often specifies the types of actions that you need to take in order to implement each intervention. For example, team building often specifies that a high-quality team has a clear purpose, leadership role in the team, means to communicate with upper management, a sufficient budget, means for making decisions and solving problems, and administrative support. Each of those would need an action plan associated with it.
The organizational diagnostic model that you chose during the discovery phase often has a list of best practices or standards of excellence. Those practices and standards suggests action to take in their list.
Components of Good Action Plans
It is extremely important that all of the people who will be responsible for implementing the action plans are also involved in developing them. The best action plan specifies:
What must be accomplished (what many people call “objectives”) to achieve each goal. In our example above, the goal was “Product development team passes the Ideal Standards Test by January 2019”.
After all action plans are developed, they should be integrated so that none of them adversely affects or overlaps a great deal with any others. It can be very useful to combine them into one grand timeline and then consider the overlapping times to start and stop them. After they are integrated, do a reality check
by reviewing any overlaps and the resources required to implement each action plan.
Then prioritize the plans according to those that will 1) produce the quickest successes (this is very powerful for ensuring credibility and motivation to implement the plans), 2) those that will make the most impact on the goal, and 3) those that can be done much later in the project. Action Plans – Alignment, Integration and Reality Check
Develop Communications Plan
One of the most important ingredients for successful change is continued communications among stakeholders (those with a stake in the change) to solicit their input to the plans for change and to share status of the implementation.
A professional consultant, whether internal or external, should ensure that the client has the ability to solve similar problems in the future. That can come from continual collaboration and reflection with the client during the project. It can come from continually asking, “What are we learning?”.
Evaluation should occur during the entire project and be about the quality of the project’s activities as they are underway and also about the final results of the project at its completion. The evaluation plan is very similar to the research plan used during the discovery phase, including to specify the research question, what information is needed to answer it, how the data will be collect and when. The following link refers to developing a program evaluation plan, but is just as applicable to developing a project evaluation plan.
Note that resources are listed throughout the above topics referenced from this page. Thanks to www.accessmagazine.com for many of the following links.
To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.
Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.
To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.
Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.
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