This document contains a summary of the book Flawless Consulting by Peter Block, a requirement of the course Consulting Methods (6013B0526Y), part of the minor Business Administration: Managing Strategy and Marketing at the University of Amsterdam
Summary of the book: Flawless Consulting - Peter Block
Consulting Methods Final Exam Book Summary - Grade 8.7
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Business Administration
Consulting Methods (6011P0209Y)
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Content preview
Chapter 1: a consultant by any other name 2
Chapter 2: techniques are not enough 2
Chapter 3: flawless consulting 5
Chapter 4: contracting overview 8
Chapter 5: the contracting meeting 10
Chapter 6: the agonies of contracting 14
Chapter 7: the internal consultant 15
Chapter 8: understanding resistance 16
Chapter 9: dealing with resistance 19
Chapter 10: from diagnosis to discovery 21
Chapter 12: discovering gifts, capacities, and possibilities 22
Chapter 13: get the picture 23
Chapter 14: preparing for feedback 26
Chapter 15: managing the meeting for action 28
Chapter 16: implementation 31
Chapter 17: elements of engagement 32
Key
Order of headings
- Bold and underlined
- Bold
- Underlined
- Normal text
Example:
Chapter x: xxxx → Heading 1
Xxxxx → Heading 2
Xxxxx → Heading 3
Xxxxx → Normal text
,Chapter 1: a consultant by any other name
Definitions and distinctions
Definitions
- Consultant: a person in a position to have some influencing over an individual, group,
or organisation but has no direct power to implement changes
- Manager: someone who has direct responsibility over the action
- Clients: recipients of consulting advice
- Line managers: clients for services provided by support people (client)
- Consultation: any action taken with a system you are not a part of
- Staff = support work = consulting work
Goal of consultant → change
- To create change in an organisational structure or policy
- To learn something new in the end
Types of skills
1. Technical → expertise of the field
2. Interpersonal → ability to work with people
3. Consulting → competence in executing phases of consulting
Consulting skills preview
Phases of consulting
1. Entry and contracting
2. Discovery and dialogue
3. Analysis and decision to act (planning)
4. Engagement and implementation (carrying out)
5. Extension, recycle, or termination
Chapter 2: techniques are not enough
Consultants operate on two levels
1. Content
- Cognitive part of discussion between consultant and client
- Analytical / rational part of discussion
2. Relationship
- Generating and sensing feelings about each other
Beyond content
4 elements of affective side of client-consultant relationship
1. Responsibility → should be 50/50
2. Feelings → pay attention to feelings about each other
3. Trust → useful to discuss doubts with client to build trust
4. Own needs → not just service mentality
,Consultant’s assumptions
Consultant’s own beliefs influence recommendation
- Effective consultation relies on consultant’s belief of effective organisation
- Own behaviour should be consistent with management style we recommend to client
Problem solving requires valuable data
- Eliminates uncertainty
- Valid data is
- Objective data about ideas, events, or situations accepted as fact
- Personal data → how individuals feel about situation
Effective decision making requires free and open choice
- Making decisions that people will support
- Allowing people to have some influence on the decisions that impact them
- People will be motivated to carry out work if they feel they have some control
The consultant’s goals
1. Establish a collaborative relationship
- Maximum use of resources
- Ensures consultant behaviour matches their message
2. Solve problems so they stay solved
- Get to the root, ensure that client has the skills and knowledge to solve similar
future problems
3. Ensure attention is given to both technical / business problem and relationship
- Address people just as much as actual problem
Developing client commitment - a secondary goal of each consulting act
- Consultants have not direct control over implementation → depend on line manager
for producing results
- Line manager makes ultimate decision to take action
- Consultant needs to build internal commitment
- Client commitment is key to consultant leverage and impact
Roles consultants choose
1. Expert role
- Manager plays inactive role
- Consultant makes decisions
- Consultant has technical control
- No collaboration required → problem solving efforts are based on specialised
procedures
- Problems
- Consultant uses technical expertise to find solution, but problems are
rarely purely technical
- Studies done by outside experts rarely carry commitment by client
, 2. Pair of hands role
- Manager has control
- Consultant takes passive role
- No collaboration required → manager takes responsibility
- Limited two-way communication
- Manager specifies changes for consultant to implement
- Changes for consultant to implement
- Manager evaluates from a close distance
- Consultant makes system more effective by applying specialised knowledge
- Problems
- Consultant is dependant on manager’s ability to understand problem
and develop an effective action plan
3. Collaborative role
- Consultant and manager become interdependent
- Decision making is bilateral
- Data collection and analysis are joint efforts
- Control issues are discussed / negotiated
- Collaboration is essential
- Two-way communication
- Goal is solving problems to stay solved
- Problems
- Managers with expert expectation may see collaboration as foot
dragging or indifference
- Managers with pair-of-hands expectation many see collaboration as
insubordination
- Collaboration takes time
Collaboration and the fear of holding hands
Fear of collaborating
- Difference between collaborating on technical aspects and on how stages will be
carried out
- Core transaction of consulting is transfer of expertise
- Parties may have the fear of ‘sitting around holding hands with client’ → part of fear is
getting too intertwined with client will dilute expertise
- Collaboration can come across as client and consultant have equal expertise →
consultant will feel they need to dumb down to maintain a 50/50 relationship
Make sure to collaborate on stages, not on expertise
Areas of collaboration Areas of expertise
- Expressing wants of clients - Circuit design
- Planning how to inform organisation - Training design
- Deciding who is involved - Questionnaire design
- Interpreting results - Package design
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