Management Consultancy - Consulting Process of Cockman - Case Study Example

Management Consultancy Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Part – I 4 Consulting Process: Cockman 4 Critical Analysis of the Consultancy Project 6 Part-2 8 Conclusions 12 Bibliography 13 Introduction The business firms and the corporate houses across the world are facing the difficult challenge to match up with the continuously changing environment of today. Since the business houses are getting less time to cope up with the changing demands and take steps accordingly to overcome it, it has been found that they often lose out even on their core competencies. Consequently, the necessity of management consultants is felt increasingly. The management consultant advises the business organisations on the ways they can adopt to solve their problems and help them to improve their performance. Management consultants provide the distressed business organisations with strategy implementation, technology implementation, change management, turnaround management and other related and relevant matters. Part – I Consulting Process: Cockman In 1999, Peter Cockman defined business consulting cycle as a journey. He developed a business consulting model for the purpose of client-centred consulting. The model essentially had eight steps: Start the consultation – The first step is all about getting introduced with the client and building relationship with him. The consultant must have a relation of mutual trust and respect with the client. The client as well as the consultant is supposed to have certain queries regarding the abilities and the functioning of each other. All such matters should be resolved in this step itself. The first step is also known as ‘gaining entry’. Contracting – This is the next step of the business consulting process model, the roles to be played by the client as well as the consultants are expected to be settled. The responsibilities of both the parties should be explicit and they should know what is expected from them during the entire process. Collecting the data - After the successful completion of the first two steps, the third step is about collecting the data. The consultant needs to understand where the problem of the client lies. And on the basis of the problem, the consultant needs to collect the data. Many of the reputed consultants maintain their own database. Also the consultants have discussions with the people concerned with the processes. They may also resort to the facts available at the client’s office and can contact the internal and the external customers. Making sense of the data (Interpretation) – In this step, the consultant tries to get into the core of the problem through the data collected. The consultant devotes significant time to the client to analyse and discuss the data with the client. It might so happen that the data collected are insufficient. In such a scenario, the consultant should resort to other sources. If the data collected is very large, the consultant must select only the useful ones. Generating options – After the problem has been diagnosed and relevant data selected, the next important step for the consultant is to generate maximum possible options for the client. The consultant must also advise the client on the feasible options. But while doing so, the organisation must keep in mind that the consultant cannot be held for the decision the organisation takes. If client wants to adopt something mediocre (but feasible), the consultant must be fine with the idea. Implementing the plan – Over the years it has been observed that most of the consultants leave before the plans are implemented in the business organisation. However, the best way to have successful implementation of the plans laid by the consultant is to be present on the location. The consultant should monitor and mentor the entire implementation process. Also, they should confront all the hassles that come up while implementing the plan. Again it must be remembered that the consultant should not own ownership for any of the action, however tempting it might be. Disengaging – Once the implementation of the plan is done, it is the obligation of the consultant to oversee if the entire system is processing as expected. He should ensure that the old way of doing thing has been replaced by the new plans that have been laid out. If this is done, the consultant should take steps to disengage him from the process. If not, the consultant should ideally continue the consulting cycle again until it is done. Follow-up – After the disengaging part is done successfully, the consultant should take proper steps to ensure that the client is not faced with any major difficulties because of the newly laid steps. The consultant should be in touch with the client for any such requirements. Critical Analysis of the Consultancy Project Carefully analysing the consultancy project, it is found that the project report commences from the step of interpretation. The SWOT analysis is done to interpret the data collected regarding Motive8. Therefore, it is assumed that the three introductory steps have been completed earlier. The analysis of strength, weakness, opportunity and threats of the firm provides a proper knowledge about the merits, demerits and the future challenges of the company. It is observed that the company is expanding and is in need of quality people. Also it is found that there is no clearly defined structure of career growth for the employees. The consultancy project provides with the new recruitment policies of Motive8 and induction policies. This can be viewed as generating the options. The step includes development of database for the prospective employees of the company. It also advises the organisation to have structured interview questions and to devise a new form for the purpose of feedback. Apart from this, the consultancy project also lays stress on the in-house recruitments. It also opines that the company should come up with a dedicated page for careers at their website. Also, the recruitment project advises Motive8 to have a well defined induction programme. It says that the new recruits should be adapted with the organisational culture. The new employees must be aware of the background of the company apart from the skill training. So, proper induction is a must. The consultancy project advises the company to have a proper and clearly defined recruitment policy and an induction strategy as a part of the implementation process. In addition to this, a recruitment audit is advised. If such a policy is undertaken, the project hopes that quality people will be attracted to the company and the high performing employees will be retained. As a measure for follow-up, the project advises the client to keep a track on the experienced persons of the industry, in case the implementation of the recruitment policy and induction strategy fails. It is believed than an experienced person will fit into the scheme of thing much faster than a non-experienced. Part-2 The term, with reflective observations are analysed as follows: a) Consultancy Process – Consultancy refers to the advisory service that is provided by one party (the consultant) to the other (the client) with an objective to help the client. Generally, a consultancy is asked for when the client cannot manage the circumstances that has erupted in his organisation, internally or externally. Consultancy process includes various steps like: Commencement of consultation – Here, the client and the consultant come together to build a relationship based on mutual respect. Contracting –This step explicitly defines the need and expectation of both the parties from each other. Collection of requisite data – The required data is collected by the consultant from the client as well as from the external sources. It may be facts, opinions or attitudes relevant to problem solving. Interpretation of data – The collected data is interpreted along with the client and his views are also taken into consideration. Generation of options – The consultant develops a number of feasible sets of options to overcome the problem. They also determine the planning process. Implementation of the selected options - The consultancy that has been engaged monitors and motivates the implementation of the laid plans. If any problem arises during implementation, they solve it. Disengaging from the client – After the successful implementation, the consultant disengages itself from the client. The consultancy process virtually ends here. Follow-up – Though the process of consultancy ends in the previous step, yet if any hassle arises with the client regarding the plans laid and implemented, the consultancy follows it up and helps to restore the efficient functioning. b) Team Work – Team work is one of the most important aspects of the present day organisation. As the business are changing continuously and also expending, it is almost impossible for a single person or a group of persons, to manage the entire happenings. So, teams are formed for efficient functioning of the business generally on the basis of skills of the members. In case of consulting services to a business organisation, there should be excellent coordination between the consultant and the client. The needs of the client should be felt unambiguously by the consultant. Today, successful implementation of the laid plans in the clients’ organisation vastly depends upon the team effort of the client and the service provider. c) Project Management - A project is different from a process as it has a specific starting date and completion date. So, projects are always finite and they are undertaken to add a certain value to the existing product or service. Management of project essentially involves the steps like planning and organising the available resources optimally so that the completion dates can be maintained while adding value to the product or service. Today, as the business organisations are growing with a fast pace, different projects are assigned to different persons who are authorised to take all the required steps to make it a success. The various functions of management consultancy are different projects by itself. d) Analytical and Creative Problem Solving – The management consultants are generally called by the clients when the problems they face go out of their hands. So, the function of management consultant revolves around efficient problem solving for the clients. The generation of options by the consultant should be analytical in nature. It should assess all the facets of the problem. The development and the implementation of the strategies to meet the problem should also be creative in nature. The consultant should develop the plan considering the culture of the client’s organisation. e) Consulting Modes – The consulting modes vary from consultant to consultant. The modes become a crucial factor in case of data collection. The consultants may only resort to the formal modes like the factual information available from the client. The consultancy might also involve the informal ways of colleting data like the feelings or opinions of the concerned persons, meeting the internal and external customers and other such means. Also, some of the reputed consultancies maintain their own database. Ideally a proper mix of all the modes is followed by a consultancy. f) Confrontation and Conflicts – As the organisations are becoming exceedingly large, so the scope of conflicts and confrontations are also on the rise. The conflicts in an organisation may rise because of several factors like culture, politics, performance and others. The organisational conflict may be solved by the ways like avoiding the conflict or mediation or arbitration. People are generally hostile to changes. As the consultancies often provide for new plans and new way of looking things, they are often faced with stiff challenges. For this purpose, the consultancy should not disengage itself from the client until the plans are implemented in due order. In the case of any confrontation, the consultancy should ideally provide with the mentoring or training facilities. But the consultancy should be cautious enough not to own any responsibilities. g) Ethical Issues – Ethics is inter-related to the successful functioning of any business. Ethical issues in management consulting include proper usage of resources, efficient decision making and the related matters. The management consultant should ensure that the growth of its client is sustainable on a long term basis. In addition to this, the management consultant should not disclose the details of its client to other parties. Conclusions The terms were discussed with analytical and reflective observations with respect to the theories of management consultancy. The project report was also considered with due seriousness. The analysis and the interpretation were based upon the business consultancy model as discussed by Cockman. It has been observed that to have a successful consultancy service in place the model has enourmous importance and should be followed to the best of the possibilities. Bibliography Bennett, N. Glatter, R. & Levačić, R. (1994), Improving educational management through Research and Consultancy. Illustrated. s.l.: Sage. Ethical Management Consulting ltd. No Date. Ethical Management Consulting. [Online], Available at: http://ethical-management-consulting.co.uk/ [Accessed 20 May 2009]. “Health and fitness redefined”, (2009), Insidetrack. Motive8, [Online], Available at: http://www.m8group.net/admin/Newsletterpdf/HomepageNewsletter.pdf [Accessed 20 May 2009]. MIT. (June 2006), IS&T Project Management: Project Management 101, [Online], Available at: web.mit.edu/ist/pmm/presentations/pm101.ppt [Accessed 20 May 2009]. Read More