When the Student is Ready, the Management Consultant will Appear
By Michelle Malay Carter on October 13, 2008
How often do consultants get paid not to do the client’s work but rather?to act more like athletic coaches?? Coaches get to know their players and their competition.? They help clients build a repertoire of knowledge and skills and then lie-in-wait in order to?suggest the right context within which to use those skills.
What is Our Organization’s Intention within Society?? A Great Question!
I spent some fascinating time with some?executive?clients recently.? After several hours of knotty conversation around clarifying organizational intention within the broader society, it was clear that some?common ground was being uncovered and some forward movement?was being made.?
At that point, I surfaced one of the client’s internal documents that captured the ideas being discussed.
“Yes, yes, this will be very helpful”, said all in the room, including the author of the document with a contented smile and a wink towards me.
A Note to Authors and Speakers – Beware of the Authoric Fantasy
The author had written that document a year earlier, he likely assumed that since he had distributed it, that all his colleagues had read it, internalized it, and were using it to frame their work as he was.?
(I do this often with my blog posts.? I think?once I’ve written something, it need not be repeated because everyone was mesmerized by my compelling argument and surely they committed it to memory and were currently “operationalizing” it in their lives.??But every time?I do repeat myself,?people come?along and say they learned something new.? My Pastor sees this same phenomenon with his Sunday messages.)
Just in Time Documentation
It was clear to me that although the executives in the room had likely read the eloquent document a year before, they were not ready to put it to use until that very moment.??With the?memory of the document’s content having faded, my job as the management consultant was to point that out.
A Job Well Done – No Sarcasm Here
Am I making light of my client or my role that day?? Absolutely not.? Yes, athletic coaches get paid to develop knowledge and skills, but they also spend a great deal of time encouraging their players to use what is already inside.? That was my job that day, and I earned my pay.
Have you ever been paid to use your awareness of the the client’s context and content to point out when they should use what they already have?
Filed Under Corporate Values, Executive Leadership, Strategy
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