Summary of the book: Flawless Consulting - Peter Block
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École, étude et sujet
Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)
Business Administration
Consulting Methods (6013B0526Y)
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Week 1
Chapter 1: A Consultant by Any Other Name
SOME DEFINITIONS AND DISTINCTIONS
Consulting: every time you give advice to someone who is faced with a choice
Consultant (indirect): a person in a position to have some influence over an individual, a
group, or an organization but has no direct power to make changes or implement programs.
Manager (direct): is someone who has direct responsibility over the action
Support people: function in any organization by planning, recommending, assisting, or
advising. (HRM, Market Research etc.)
Clients: The recipients of all this advice. The person or persons whom the consultant wants
to influence.
Line managers: clients for the services provided by support people. Have to labor under the
advice of support groups, whether they like it or not.\
Difference consultant and ‘surrogate’ line manager
A consultant needs to function differently from a line manager—for the consultant’s own
sake and for the learning goals of the client. When you act on behalf of or in the place of the
manager, you are acting as a surrogate manager.
End product in any consulting activity is some kind of change:
● change in the line organization of a structural, policy, or procedural nature
○ a new compensation package, a new reporting process, or a new safety
program
● one person or many people in the line organization have learned something
new
Consultation: describes any action you take with a system of which you are not a part
3 kinds of skills you need to do a good job in consultation:
1. Technical skills: expertise (through college or training)
2. Interpersonal skills: put ideas into words, to listen, to give support, to disagree
reasonably, to basically maintain a relationship.
3. Consulting skills: being competent in the execution of each of the 5 steps.
CONSULTING SKILLS PREVIEW
The five phases of consulting:
1. Entry and Contracting
○ Setting up first meeting, exploring the problem, client’s/consultant’s
expectations, how to get started
2. Discovery and Dialogue
○ Who is going to be involved in defining the problem or situation? What
methods will be used? What kind of data should be collected? How long will it
take? Should the inquiry be done by the consultant, or should it be done by the
client?
,3. Analysis and the Decision to act
○ Planning: setting ultimate goals for the project and selecting the best action
steps or changes
4. Engagement and Implementation
○ carrying out the planning of phase 3. Consultant is involved in rather
complicated design work and in running the meeting or training session
5. Extension, Recycle, or Termination
○ Phase 5 is about learning from the engagement. Following this is the
decision whether to extend the process to a larger segment of the
organization.
,THE PROMISE OF FLAWLESS CONSULTATION
Vertical relationships are easier to understand than lateral relationships
If your boss gives you an order, you know that he or she has the right to tell you what to
do. But if your client makes a demand, you don’t necessarily have to obey. The power
balance in lateral relationships is always open to ambiguity—and to negotiation.
Flawless consulting offers the possibility of letting our behavior be consistent with our
beliefs and feelings and also to be successful in working with our clients.
Chapter 2: Techniques Are Not Enough
BEYOND CONTENT
A major objective of every consultation is to encourage you to focus on and value the
affective, or interpersonal, aspect of the relationship you have with the client.
There are four elements to the affective side of consultant-client interaction that are
always operating:
1. Responsibility
○ To have a good contract with the client, responsibility for what is
planned and takes place has to be balanced—50/50.
2. Feelings
○ To what extent clients are able to own their own feelings
3. Trust
○ It is often useful to ask clients whether they trust your confidentiality, whether
they trust you not to make them vulnerable or to take things over
4. Your own needs
○ E.g. you have needs for access to that organization—to talk to people, to
ask them questions.
THE CONSULTANT’S ASSUMPTIONS
The set of assumptions that underlie the consulting approach
● Problem Solving Requires Valid Data. Valid data encompass two things:
○ objective data about ideas, events, or situations that everyone accepts as
facts
○ personal data
● Effective Decision Making Requires Free and Open Choice
○ When people feel that something is important and they have some
control, they will be motivated to exert the effort to make things work
● Effective Implementation Requires Internal Commitment
○ People readily commit themselves to things they believe will further their
interests
, THE CONSULTANT’S GOALS
Our assumptions about what contributes to effective consultant and manager performance
lead to a set of preferred goals for each consulting job
● Goal 1: Establish a Collaborative Relationship. 2 reasons
○ Maximum use of people’s resources—both the consultant’s and the client’s.
○ The way consultants act is much more powerful than their words. To
talk collaboration and behave differently is confusing and self-defeating
● Goal 2: Solve Problems So They Stay Solved
○ Teaching managers the skills for solving a problem themselves next time
requires that they understand that disturbing employee behavior is a
symptom of more basic problems and that they should not ask others to
address problems that belong to them
● Goal 3: Ensure Attention Is Given to Both the Technical/Business Problem and
the Relationships
○ In most organizations, primary attention is given to the
technical/business problem. Consultants, however, are in a unique
position to address the people or process issues productively.
DEVELOPING CLIENT COMMITMENT—A SECONDARY GOAL OF EACH
CONSULTING ACT
Because consultants or support people have no direct control over implementation,
they become dependent on line managers for producing results. Client commitment is
the key to consultant leverage and impact. Building this commitment is often a process
of removing obstacles that block the client from acting on our advice.
ROLES CONSULTANTS CHOOSE
As you consult in a variety of situations, it helps to become aware of the role you
typically assume and to be able to identify situations where this will help or hinder your
performance. Only then can you make a conscious choice among alternatives.
3 ways consultants work with line managers:
1. Expert role: the support person becomes the “expert” in the performance of a given
task
● The manager has elected to play an inactive role. Consultant is
responsible for the results
● Decisions are made by the consultant on the basis of his or her expert
judgment.
● Consultant gathers needed information and decides what methods of data
collection and analysis to use
● Disagreement is not likely because it would be difficult for the manager
to challenge “expert” reasoning.
● Collaboration is not required
● Two-way communication here is limited
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