Category: Consulting & Freelancing

Free Advice Too Often Backfires On You

During a recession when potential clients are more reluctant to pay consultants for services, it can be very enticing for consultants to do almost anything to win contracts, even to do a lot of free consulting — to give away what the consultants otherwise would be paid for.

For example, I recently had 3 phone calls with a potential client who was considering me to teach their employees how to facilitate strategic planning. I really wanted that work. So in each call, I tried hard to convince the potential client of why they should hire me. In each call I explained more detail about how the employees should facilitate. I even freely sent a book I had written on how to facilitate planning. A week ago, they told me they decided not to hire me, and would do the facilitator training themselves. I’m haunted by how much their decision was based on the free advice and materials I had given them.

New consultants far too often give away far too much. They’re trying to land those first few projects to get their consulting business started. Experienced consultants have learned that free advice too often convinces clients that your services aren’t worth that much or that they could merely do the project themselves. Free advice can also convince clients that, if they do contract with you, you shouldn’t be paid very much.

So how do you know when you’ve given away too much to the potential client?

Different Philosophies About Giving Away Value

Philosophy — Give It Away and It’ll Come Back to You

I’m a big believer in this philosophy, but only to a general audience. I’ve “donated” probably 3,000 hours over 15 years in providing one of the world’s largest collections of free resources for organizations at managementhelp.org. That Library has paid for itself many times over, especially by showing my strong expertise, resulting in clients hiring me. But those free resources were to a wide general audience. What do you give away to one potential client when they’re thinking about hiring you?

Philosophy – Give Free Consulting to Show Expertise, to Establish Credibility

Research shows that fear is a great motivator, but only for a short time. Free advice is the same. Some free advice in the first conversation with your potential client shows that you know what you’re talking about. The second time you offer it for free, you’re conveying you’re too eager to get the work – that you’ll continue to work for free or for a very low fee. It shows you’re an inexperienced consultant.

Philosophy — There’s No Free Lunch

Another philosophy is that the value of your services should not be given away, any more than you should work a job for free without getting paid. The basis for any successful consulting project is the exchange of fair value between the consultant and client. The consultant provides value in the form of advice or materials, and the client provides value back to the consultant (hopefully in the form of paid fees. If this exchange does not include equal value for both sides, the relationship will not continue. That premise has been verified for centuries and is the basis for capitalism.

It’s a favor, a benefit, to the potential client to know that the consultant’s help has value and should be paid for. It helps the client to appreciate and respect the consultant. It helps the client know the true costs in successfully operating his or her organization. It also avoids the client being hurt from the delusion that free help should always be readily available during a crisis. There is no ongoing entitlement.

Basic Guidelines to Quickly Gain Credibility, Get Projects – and Be Paid

First Clarify Desired Results

Actually, it’s best to work with the client — not at the client — to get him or her to describe what success looks like. Ask the client “What would be a successful project for you?” Is it decreased employee turnover, increased profit or successful operation of a technical system? What would that success look like to the client?

Then Explain the Nature of How You Work

For example, explain that, 1) during the project, you always ensure the client can solve those types of problems by themselves in the future; 2) always keep the client’s information confidential and 3) stay in constant communications with the client.

Then Suggest an Overall, Problem-Solving Framework

Briefly describe what has been a successful, overall approach for you in the past. Describe the overall steps or phases. Make it simple. Describe general guidelines, but not procedures. For example, if you were explaining to your child how to go to the store, you’d tell him what sign-posts to look for and how far between them. You wouldn’t tell him to put one foot in front of the other or the color of each house to go by.

Tell your client, for example, that: 1) you first clarify the problem’s cause from its symptoms; 2) you have several different approaches you can use (you might simply list them), 3) you implement the best approach and 4) verify that the approach worked.

Don’t describe the detail of how you do that work, for example, don’t explain, “Do this and then do that. If that doesn’t work, then do that instead. It’s easy.”

Don’t Ever Say “It’s Easy”

If it was so easy, then your potential client wouldn’t be calling you. “It’s easy” might make the client appreciate your consoling and assurance. However, it also might convince the client that you’re only needed for a few phone calls. Or it might convince the cash-poor client that you’re really not needed after all. It might convince the client that, if you are hired, you won’t be needed for long and that you certainly shouldn’t be paid much. (If the project later turned out to be harder than you thought, you would have hurt your credibility by having said earlier, “It’s easy.”)

Always Quickly Follow-Up With a Proposal and Contract

If you’ve followed the above guidelines, then a proposal (or Statement of Work) should be easy. It’s not uncommon that the focus and scope of projects change when implementing the projects. Project managers call it “project creep.” Rarely do clients want to pay more for the consultant’s additional work from the changes. So it’s important to be real clear in the first communications with clients. Proposals can do that. (One of the best ways to know what to say in a call with a potential client is to look at the content of proposals. See Proposals.)

So that’s when I really start ratcheting up my focus on formalizing a project, e.g., I’ll say something like “I’ve got some other “formalized” projects to attend to, but let’s turn this into a project for you, too, so I can really focus my attention on your situation. What do you think of the proposal I sent you?”

Always have a contract, especially about the roles and ownership of the client and you. In today’s litigious society, clients often want to own what the consultant brings and develops for the project. Be clear about what you own. A simple search on the Web will give more suggestions about the content of proposals and contracts.

If You Really Want Your Services to Be Free, Then Say So

If you feel you really have to give away some value for free, here’s how to do it. Always say, “I’m going to give you some free advice here.” Help the client understand your services are very valuable and, if the client contracts with you, the client will be getting a highly valued asset — and that you respect the client and yourself enough to acknowledge that asset.

Also See

1. First Set of Questions to Ask Your Potential Client
2. Proposals
3. Contracts
4. How to Start a Consulting Business
5. Consulting
6. Organizational Development

—————————–

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

(See Part 2 of 3)

Warren Bennis taught me to ask three questions:

1. What’s So?
2. So What?
3. What Now?”

How we handle uncertainty and how we deal with it personally is critical in how we manage change. Given the uncertainty and complexity in our organizations, dealing with ambiguity is a critical skill for consultants. This has been my self-development path for sharpening my consulting skills. Sometimes I have to push myself into this Land Of I Don’t Know because it helps me retain my edge. I have learned not to get too comfortable and certain in my world-view. In consulting, what I think I know always gets me in trouble because it is usually not accurate in the moment. I have a little slice of the picture and recognizing that I can stay open (and I don’t use that word lightly) I can stay open to the moment and there-by access more information.

We learn about our work as OD Practitioners, when we step outside our culture and collaborate with other kinds of communities. Learning and change occur at the boundary between the known and the unknown. We clarify values and beliefs and assumptions, as we see the boundaries around our own thinking and we incorporate those learning’s into our practice. The clearest place to see ourselves is when we step out of the routine and all the assumptions that go with it. As Nevis says in Organizational Consulting: A Gestalt Approach we have a long tradition of marginality that includes neutrality, open mindedness and flexibility. We thrive on conflict, ambiguity and stress. We often facilitate a bridge between systems having differing values and norms which demands a slowing into the awareness moment to allow learning and reconfiguration of the meaning before closing to action. This is imperative learning for OD practitioners.

Sometimes we lose the basics in the “press” of our work. The moments of truth, as practitioners, when we are indeed living our values on the edge are those moments when we see the path to “good practice” and have the courage to move the situation. As OD practitioners we are always pushing ourselves to stay on the cutting edge of our practice and keeping our own character growth in movement because we see this as the foundation of our practice. On the other hand, we have been in this field for 20 years. There isn’t much OD work we haven’t touched. Staying on our own cutting edge means getting way outside our comfort zones. We had to find our own edge, our own frontier, we had to venture into, what for us was a wilderness, never mind that the wilderness was into cultures many thousands of years older than our own. Kierkegaard said that to venture causes anxiety; not to venture is to lose oneself.

By putting ourselves “beyond the edge” of our comfort zone, beyond the edge of what is known to us, we have discovered assumptions we are carrying that no longer serve and core assumptions that guide our practice. What appeared to be an outward journey, to seek out new lands, new projects, turned out to be an inward journey of the heart, mind and soul. We went to celebrate the unknown and learned to appreciate the unknown in our own spirit. We found new aliveness at the edge of discovery and growth.

When one crosses from the land of I know into the land of I don’t know they have to attain a beginners mind, to be non-judgmental and to go into situations admitting that they know nothing at all. ” Experiences like this helps us understand what is of real value to us. These life experiences reframe who we are, and create a space to re-examine everything and discover those moments when we can’t take anything for granted and through those moments we are changed. We say we are change agents, and we are all the time leading people into the wilderness. We take clients into the unknown all the time and we need to foster a direct experience of it ourselves.

Venturing into developing nations or any form of the unknown is a robust methodology for developing servant leadership, understanding the formation of groups, the nature of intact community, the power of reflection, dialogue and journaling and how it reveals core values about our work and purpose. It certainly has deepened our appreciation for our client’s courage to go into the unknown with us.

—————————

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

———————————————————————————————————–

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

(See part 1 of 3.)

The personal development lessons come from putting myself into what Richard Leider called “The Land Of I Don’t Know. “ Putting myself into a total situation where I literally do not know how to survive on my own or I literally do not know what is going on half the time, or how things work. Imagine putting yourself in a small village in Western Kenya for a month. Living without electricity, getting water from a well, or rainwater collected in tanks. Imagine you do not know how to cook without poisoning yourself and your comrades. Most of the food in the local market doesn’t look much like what you are use to and the bed sags and the rooster wakes you up too early to imagine.

And also imagine that you are in a loving tribe whose physical space is in your face and touching you to see if that color rubs off. You are in a world of children and adults who beam to see you and greet you and bless you and want to hear and learn from you. It is a world where no one passes on the road without shaking hands and greeting each other as if it has been years since we saw each other yesterday.

It would sharpen your perceptions. It would help you to get clear about who you are and who you are not. You would extend your physical and mental antennae to not miss a cue that might be a clue as to how to operate successfully as a stranger in a strange land. You would spend a lot more time making sure you understand and are being understood. It would teach you a lot about yourself.

To Live In The Land Of I Don’t Know is to question assumptions in uncertain situations, where we experience every now and then moments of insight into the ambiguity of it all. Stepping into this land requires social sensitivity and behavioral flexibility. You have to be able to “read” what’s going on and respond appropriately. You have to work hard for communication clarity and getting at what’s behind the words. You have to hear the words and “dwell in” the non-verbal meaning. You have to make the environment your own – even if you are scared. Oh of course, we don’t get scared- we get anxious. Who wants to admit to being scared? But then what do we do when we get anxious? What do we do (behaviorally) when we feel like we are losing control? Do we deepen our listening or do we get in our own way.

—————————

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

———————————————————————————————————–

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

(Part 1 of 3)

I have been in Africa for the past month. I am still in re-entry. About once ever 12-18 months my partner and I take teams of people into developing nations to work in villages to build clinics, or schools, or other projects to assist the local community as a whole. We have been doing this for over 15 years. There are consulting lessons in this work as well as personal development lessons for people who hope to do consulting. This is the subject of my next three posts here.

The foundation for this work is an organization called Global Citizens Network. GCN is based in Minneapolis and works in 20 countries around the world. The vision of the network is a network of people committed to:

• The shared values of peace, justice, respect, cross-cultural understanding and global cooperation;
• The preservation of indigenous cultures, traditions and ecologies;
• The enhancement of quality of life around the world.

The consulting lessons are a part of the agreement (the contract), which we make with the village as a whole.

First, we are there to provide help to the village as a whole, not to any particular person or group.

So we define the whole system, as best we can define it, as our client.

Second, we only do work that the village elders or committee has defined as their need.

We do not go in and say, “This is what you ought to do.” We are driven by our client’s needs, not our desires to make it all better, or do what we are interested in at the time. This is our content goal. The goal is owned and driven by the village and so is the technology of the work itself. We use local masons to perform the work in a way that is consistent with their culture and methods. We do not tell them we know a thousand way to make this work better, cheaper, less labor intensive or what-ever; we go in to work with them where they are not where we wish them to be.

Third, if we bring 10 volunteers to work, the village has to provide an equal number of volunteers to work along side our team.

The idea of course is to maximize interaction with the local folks. For our work the clinic is a vehicle for the mutual understanding between people, which is our process goal. We are working to build trust and to support local self-organizing and sustainable development.

In my next post I will look at the personal development lessons of this experience.

—————————

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

—————————————————————————————————–

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

Consulting books often suggest a sequence of steps or phases that a consulting project goes through. The nature of the sequence depends on the perspectives of the authors of the books. The initial phase has been referred to by a variety of names, for example, Start-Up and/or Entry. (Some books even mention these two terms as two different phases in the sequence.)

Regardless of the name of the step or phase, the consultant can learn a great deal about the client — and even get a sense for the likelihood of the client’s participation in (and thus, success of) the project — by asking useful questions when first meeting the client. The questions can also impress the client with how thoughtful and thorough you are. (The questions are NOT to discern whether the client is ready for a project — those are a different set of questions). Here are some questions that have been useful to me over the years in order to learn more about the client and the potential project.

(NOTE: The client might refer to the need for the project as an “issue,” if there is a current, major problem, or as a “goal,” if the project is to make good things even better. When asking questions, use the term that your client uses. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, most of the following questions use the term “issue.”)

1. Is the situation a problem or issue?
   (If it is a “remedial” situation, then there’s a much greater likelihood that the client will be very energized to participate in the project.)
2. Or, are things OK now, but the project would make things even better?
   (If this is the case, it might be a challenge to keep the client energized.)
3. Who first asserted the need for a project, or for change? External stakeholders, such as investors or customers?
   (If so, then the client might be very motivated to move things along in the project. If external stakeholders were involved, then they might want to be on a Project Team during the project.)
4. Or, did internal stakeholders suggest the project?
   (If so, it will be even more important to cultivate strong buy-in of organization members.)
5. Did the need for a project suddenly arise or has it been planned for a while?
   (If it suddenly arose, there might be more likelihood of stronger client participation in the project.)
6. How long ago did the need for the project arise?
   (If it was recent, then there’s more likelihood that the client will show stronger participation in the project.)
7. Did your client try any strategies to address the issue before?
   (If so, what did they try? Training? If all they tried was training, then they might have a very short-term view of how to fix things.)
8. What did your client want to accomplish in their previous efforts to address the issue?
   (It’s extremely important to understand what they consider to be “success” for now.)
9. How did your client decide what to try?
   (The answer to that question will tell you how your client makes decisions — by one person or by consensus. )
10. What were the results of their efforts? How did your client measure success?
    (Did they take a systematic approach or an impulsive approach? The answer to that question tells you a lot about whether you’ll need to persuade them to be more methodical or not.)
11. Did your client make any effort to manage change, when addressing their issue?
    (That question starts to alert them to the need to carefully manage change, and opens the door for you to start teaching them.)
12. How did they decide to seek assistance?
    (The answer to that question will reveal how they made decisions, but also why they are considering you.)
13. Did your client establish criteria for selecting a consultant, for example, do a Request for Proposal?
    (If they did an RFP, they very likely are quite thorough in analyzing their issue and in ensuring they get the best consultant. They probably will be the same way with you.)

Also see

1. The topic Consultants in the Free Management Library.
2. Phase 1 of the consulting process.
3. Assessing Client’s Readiness for Change.

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

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?

• Are You Really an Entrepreneur?
• Preparation for Starting a New Venture

Starting a New Organization?

• Should You Start a For-Profit or a Nonprofit?
• Starting a For-Profit Organization
• Starting a Nonprofit Organization

Planning Your New Organization

• Strategic Planning
• Business Planning

Deciding the Legal Structure of Your New Organization

• U.S. Enterprise Law — Forming Organizations

Or Expanding a Current Organization?

• Business Development

Or Starting a New Product or Service?

• Product Development

Marketing Your Organization, Product or Service

• Marketing
• Social Networking
• Authentic Marketing vs. Self-Promotion

Getting and Keeping Clients

• Sales
• Customer Service
• Customer Satisfaction
• Close More Business (Get More Clients)

Getting Paid

• Getting Paid What You’re Worth
• What To Do When A Client Can’t Pay

Dealing With Clients

• Types of Clients (to answer critical question: “who is current client?”)
• How to Fire a Client (Without Killing Your Business)
• Defining Success Between Consultants and Clients

When to Bail from a Project

• When to Bail from a Consulting Project

Minimizing Risk

• When Should Consultants Buy Liability Insurance?
• Minimize Consulting Liabilities and Risk
• Risk Management

Staying Centered as a Consultant

• Work-Life Balance
• Personal Wellness

————————————————————————-

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

The news is filled with the exploits of more than a few examples of dishonesty and greed, leaders who purposefully worked in their own behalf, rather than from a sense of responsibility for institutional integrity. We know the list and it keeps getting bigger.

For the last 50 years it has not been fashionable to talk about moral development, yet the subject of moral development is all about being a grown up. Our children and the youngest workers among us learn from watching and experiencing what it looks like to get ahead and what is permissible, indeed what is expected. The world needs more “grown ups.”

Becoming a grown up does not happen all at once, indeed there are lots of people that it never happens to, and at best, it is a life time endeavor. There seem to be a series of moral plateaus or stages. In a sense, each of the major stages represents a point in time and space at which a person has stopped in their developmental process. A stage represents the way a person looks at and copes with the world. Each stage or ego level is characterized by distinct emotional preoccupations, cognitive styles, and manners of behaving towards others. (J. Loevinger, Ego Development. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1976)

1. The Impulsive

The impulsive/controlling character does not recognize rules or see an action as bad only if they get punished for it. The impulsive is always treating people as a means to an end and they have a mindset that is simple and dichotomous, concrete and egocentric.

2. The Self -Protective

These people know the rules but obey them only when it is to their advantage. This is a person of expediency, it is bad if they get caught, and then they blame others. These people are manipulative, distrusting and opportunistic. These folks play a zero sum game and they have a mindset as self-centered as the impulsive.

3. The Conformist

These people have internalized the rules, and obey them without question. These folks are all concerned with the “shoulds” and they feel shame at consequences. For the first time the idea of reciprocity and trust emerges. They want to belong to an in-group and they distrust others. These people think stereotypically and have little need or capacity for introspection.

4. The Conscious

They operate from self-evaluated standards. They tend to feel guilt at consequences. They have a sense of responsibility and mutual obligation and can communicate differentiated expressions of feeling. They are conceptually complex with a sense of consequences and priorities. They understand contingencies and sees alternatives. They also see themselves in the context of a community & society.

5. The Autonomous

These folks build on the insights and skills of the Conscious; they have in addition, a sense that behavior is an expression of moral principles. They want autonomy in relationships and they are a catalyst in helping others. They are tolerant, respectful of others; they can see paradox and live with uncertainty.

6. The Integrated

They have all of the characteristics of the conscious and the autonomous, plus they can truly reconcile their inner conflicts with external demands. They can renounce the unattainable and they cherish individuality and justice. These folks have an integrated sense of their own identity and a sense of themselves as a part of the flow of the human condition.

It is not hard to look around and see that our organizations are filled with people at all these various plateaus. In fact I think it is fair to say in our systems-based world; that people at all of these plateaus create our organizations, and at the same time our organization reinforce people on all of their various plateaus. I am sure we have all seen groups operate from these various stages, or plateaus. We can observe groups operating at various stages of moral development in their assumptions and behaviors. Some organizations are just more highly evolved than others.

Consciousness is the entry-level to being a mature grown up and it is the gateway to becoming a more mature group. The conscious operate from a self-evaluated set of standards. They know they have choice and they feel a sense of responsibility both to themselves and others. At the same time they understand different viewpoints and options in a social context.

Isn’t this what practitioners of organization development are trying to help organizations do? To build into people’s muscles the capacity to examine reality and make conscious choices. That’s what organization effectiveness is all about as a field of study and practice.

• Here’s more information about leadership development and ethics.

—————————

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

——————————————————————

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

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?

—————————

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

————————————————————————-

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

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.

—————————

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

————————————————————————————————————————–

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

Part 1 of this series is What Do Consultants Do?, which defines a consultant (as Peter Block puts it) as someone who is trying to change another person, process or organization, but who has no direct control over what they are trying to change. That post also listed numerous roles that a consultant might play. Part 2 of the series described some overall approaches that consultants follow when working to help clients in a consulting project. Part 3 described the overall working goals and assumptions that a good consultant should work from. This part 4 describes the major types of consultants.

They usually provide highly specialized content expertise regarding certain specific systems and processes in the organization, for example, computer systems, financial and accounting systems, market research or facilities management. Many organizations hire technical consultants. The types of services provided by these consultants are often referred to as technical assistance.

2. Management consultants

They help leaders and managers be more productive at planning, organizing, leading and coordinating resources in the organization. Applications for their services might include leadership, management and supervisory development. The types of services provided by these consultants might be referred to as either technical assistance or organizational development activities (see the next paragraph).

3. Organizational development consultants

This type of consultant helps organizations improve performance, often by focusing on changing a significant portion of the organization or the entire organization itself. These consultants often use a wide variety of approaches, tools and techniques to affect various systems and functions across the organization, for example, technical assistance, coaching, facilitation and training.

There has been some confusion about the focus of organizational development consultants. Some people assert that these consultants focus mostly on “soft” skills regarding peoples’ beliefs, feelings and perceptions, and less on “hard” skills regarding organizational structures, processes and operations. Other people assert that organizational development consultants focus on both the “soft” and “hard” skills. (This author follows the latter assertion.)

Many people believe there is a difference between the phrases “organizational development consultants” and “Organization Development consultants.” These people might use the latter phrase to refer to consultants who adhere to certain working assumptions and values commonly associated with the field of Organization Development.

Generalists and Specialists

Some people refer to specialists and generalists as overall, major types of consultants. They might refer to technical consultants as specialists. Many people would consider organizational development consultants to be generalists.

Whether management consultants are generalists or specialists depends on the nature of their services. The more specific the nature of their services, the more likely they would be referred to as specialists.

Functional or Focused Services

Recently, the terms “functional” and “focused” have been used to refer to servicing a specific system, function or process, for example, marketing systems, financial systems or information technology. Functional and focused activities are considered similar or the same as technical assistance.

Types of Consulting Can Overlap

The distinctions among the types of consultants can be blurry. For example, a management consultant or technical consultant might operate as an organizational development consultant if they work in a manner that affects a significant portion or all of the organization.

Also, each type of consultant might be needed at various times in a project. For example, if you are an organizational development consultant, you might work with a client to identify the most important problems in an organization. Later on, you might function as a management consultant to train and coach various leaders and managers during the change effort. You might also bring in various technical consultants to contribute their specific expertise to the change effort.

What do you think?

—

Look for the articles in this series, including:

1. What Do Consultants Do?
2. How Do Consultants Work?
3. Most Important Goals and Working Assumptions of Consultants
4. Major Types of Consultants
5. Internal and External Consultants
6. Good Reasons – and Poor Reasons – to Hire Consultants

—————————

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

Information in this post was adapted from the book Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD. For training on consulting skills, see the Consultants Development Institute. For more resources, see the Free Management Library’s topic All About Consulting .

—

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