How Consultants Can Sure That Their Clients Receive Full Value from the Work They Do for Them - Assignment Example

Question 1: "I do a fair amount of corporate culture consulting – it is one of the more legalized ways of stealing in the nineties." (Tom Peters) Critically appraise the above comment, drawing on theory and example from organizations, and identify how consultants can sure that their clients receive full value from the work they do for them. Answer 1: You are being asked to provide your own view of Tom Peters rather cynical remark about the consulting profession. So you should indicate to what extent you agree/disagree with what he is saying. You must justify your view, and this is where we expect you to make use of "theory and example from organizations" to support your argument. I disagree with the view of Tom Peters saying that “I do a fair amount of corporate culture consulting- it is one of the more legalized ways of stealing in the nineties”. First, the definition of consultation and the role of the consultant has changed significantly since its inception. Early definitions presented the consultant primarily as a one on one content expert. Later developments influenced by Caplan (1970) and Schein (1969) suggested that the consultant must also be a process helper. From these beginnings emerged today's definitions of process helping and collaborative consultation. In a recent centennial issue of the Consulting Psychology Journal (1992) seven "experts" in the field of consultation were asked to define consultation. Although the authors represented many different disciplines, their definitions were surprisingly similar. There were differences, however, that were highlighted by each author. One statement was selected from each definition as a way to show the uniqueness that surfaced in each. These are (a) provide information, advise, or help; (b) provide an outside gestalt; (c) provide a theory of process and organizational functioning; (d) rely on the use of multiple models; (e) require a strong conceptual process; (f) create a foundation for understanding interrelationships among the different ways to view organizational phenomena; and (f) show how generic knowledge is transmitted from consultant to the consultee system. In general, consultants help consultees to think of their immediate problem as part of the larger system, and not only to understand how problems are solved but also to understand how they were developed, maintained, or avoided (Kurpius and Fuqua,1993). Therefore, as a consultant, one should never steal the client’s property and should abide to ethical standards. Second, Tom Peters has a record of unethically making up data in his best sellin g book, namely In Search of Excellence last two decades ago. The book was authored by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, McKinsey & Co. consultants and it became immediately one of the best-sellers list. The book is a must-to-read for every one in the discipline of management. They became gurus in those days and their philosophy still remained in an era of management gurus, management fads, and popular business books. Now Peters, 59, shockingly admitted that underlying data in their breakthrough book was falsified. It has been for many years that many researchers and academics in the management disciplines assumed that the authors genuinely employed standard research methods in order to screen the excellent companies from the database. However, they now admitted that they simply asked their McKinsey colleagues and other smart people for the names of companies doing cool work. They obtained a list containing 62 organizations for financial performance over a twenty year period. Among the companies included in the list, 43 companies ranging from Johnson & Johnson to Intel Corp were whittled. Academics sniffed that their work in the book was superficially done and it obviously lacked rigorous research methods. It was evidenced that many of the companies which were extolled as best fell on hard times as soon after the book was published including Amdahl and Data General (Business Week, 2001). Therefore, I do not feel comfortable to listen to his words as “"I do a fair amount of corporate culture consulting – it is one of the more legalized ways of stealing in the nineties." These words might have been falsified and they might not be worthy to pay attentions and considerations. Third, similar to findings in the studies on consulting for the past, the words of Tom Peters do not reflect the adhering to the ethical standards. According to the study of Gross and Robinson (1981), it is difficult to understand the lack of attention given to the area of ethical standards for consultation when one reviews consultation practices from a historical perspective. According to Kurpius anti Robinson (1978), consultation traces its early beginnings to the post World War ll era of file late 1940s and early 1950s. Its early emphasis was on providing direct service to clients or client systems wherein the consultant, once employed, directed his or her attention to the conflicts identified with little interaction with the consnltee. By the late 1950s the consultee had become active in the process. . In summary, Glaser (1981), commenting on the published literature on organizational consultation, stated: “Most of the published literature on organizational consultation deals only briefly, if al all with ethical issues in a direct sense. Many authors write about what strategies of consultation result in effectiveness or success but few move on to discussing the ethical pros and cons of certain alternatives in the consultant's behavioral repertoire (p. 14)”. Therefore, the consultants should adhere to the ethical standards in providing helps to their clients. In conclusion, the definition of the consultation includes providing helps to consultee. Therefore, stealing or unethically mis-using the information of the consultee is in appropriate. In addition, the words of Tom Peters might have been falsified as he has the records of producing superficial work in the past. Therefore, I do not agree with the words of Tom Peters. Question 2: The question also asks you to "identify how consultants can ensure that their clients receive full value from the work". You will have to explain what approaches or processes consultants might employ, or how they might go about ensuring that clients gain value from their interventions: this could include, for example, obtaining feedback, building in organizational development plans, and so on. Answer 2: How consultants can ensure that their clients receive full value from the work depends on to what extend consultants are aware of the following elements: 1. Real clients 2. External vs. internal clients 3. Mode of consultation 4. Ways to intervene 5. Level of interventions, and 6. Kids of cycle breaking interventions. 1. Real clients It is important for a consultant to determine who the real client is. The social context of an intervention is determined by the client toward whom the consultation is directed. An individual may be the client. Another context may be a group or team whether a husband wife team, a family, a small working group, or some larger group whose members share some basis for continued association. Still larger units of change are the relationships between two or more groups that interact, for example, the manufacturing and marketing departments. A fourth possibility is an entire organization, such as a government agency, a school, a church, or an entire corporation. The fifth category comprises larger social systems, such as a community, a city, a group of states, or even a nation (Blake and Mouton, 1976). 2. Internal vs. External Consultants Especially in larger organizations, the consultant is often a full time member of the consultee organization. Although there are significant differences in serving as an internal consultant, it is often difficult to convince internal consultants that most of the principles and processes do remain similar for internal and external consultants. Lippitt and Lippitt (1978) delineated 14 key differences between internal and external consultants. Specifically, internal consultants are recommended to study Lippitt's ideas regarding this role. For example, the internal consultant may have vested interests in presenting problems, cannot exit the system on termination, and has an established image that may or may not be helpful. The external consultant, on the other hand, may be perceived more readily as an expert and as an outsider, and usually requires a greater financial commitment from the consultee. Furthermore, the internal consultant typically "comes to the table" with extensive background information not available to an outside consultant. It can be readily seen, then, that there are advantages and disadvantages in both internal and external consultant roles. It is here that we call special attention to a dimension of consultation that frequently needs to be considered in operationalizing the role of consultant (Kurpius and Fuqua, 1993). 3. Mode of Consultation The term consultation includes a wide range of services that can vary substantially. Globally, a common distinction has been made between expert consultation and process consultation, and this distinction has profound implications for how one operationalizes the consultation relationship (Kurpius & Robinson, 1978). In the "expert" mode of consultation, the consultee typically contracts for the provision of an intervention or problem solution (Kurpius, 1978). Depending on the content expertise of the consultant, some service or product is developed and supplied by the consultant. Operating from the "process" mode, the consultant is a process expert who actively works with the consultee to implement some planned change process (Schein, 1978, 1991). Certain obvious distinctions exist between the expert and process modes of consultation. The expert mode includes heavy responsibility for the consultant for the design, implementation, and success of an intervention. The process mode emphasizes shared responsibility between consultant and consultee and provides for the consultee to internalize the planned change process as an acquired capability. Both of these consultation modalities can be effective in helping individuals and organizations change, develop, and adapt, but they are different on several dimensions (Kurpius and Fuqua, 1993). Kurpius (1978) reviewed four generic modes of consultation and described them as follows: 1. Provision. The consultee identifies a specific need and contracts with the expert consultant for the direct provision of services or products. 2. Prescription. This mode is most like the doctor patient relationship. The consultant collects information (usually from the consultee), makes an expert diagnosis, and gives directions (i.e., a prescription) to the consultee for treating the diagnosed condition. 3. Collaboration. The consultant works as a partner with consultees in defining, designing, and implementing a planned change process. Responsibility for the process is shared on a negotiated basis. 4. Mediation. Applied less frequently in most settings, the consultant initially identifies a need for planning and change, gathers data from the system and initiates an informational meeting, and shares relevant observations and data as a means of focusing the consulting effort. Examples of mediation in practice are, perhaps, more applicable to internal consultants (Kurpius and Fuqua, 1993). 4. Ways to Intervene Counselors may operate as change agents in four basic ways (Havelock 1973). 1. Energizing the system to change, prodding the system to do something about its problems, is a very useful function counselors can perform. Identifying unmet needs and speaking to incongruities between system and goals as well as deliverance on those goals can motivate a system to change. 2. Counselors can display insight regarding needed changes and offer solutions. Counselors can generate a number of alternate solutions and help the system to realize that there is a choice. 3. Many times systems are static because they lack the resources necessary to effect change: informational materials, financial backing, diagnostic skills, and knowledge regarding the process of change. Counselors can help by acting as resource linkers, persons who know where to obtain the human and physical resources pertinent to the system's needs. 4. Both by attitude and experience, counselors are uniquely qualified to perform as process consultants, assisting the system in problem solving and in learning how to develop the capacity for self renewal. Because they are counselors, they may already be performing a number of consultant functions. Expansion of counselors' consultant roles to include the change process may in many instances broaden the scope of counselors' consulting rather than dramatically change it. Although in practice counselors may at various times perform all four change agent roles, it is the process consultant role that we have emphasized in this article (Walz and Benjamin, 1978). 5. Level of intervention Kurpius and Fuqua (1993) aruge that most practicing consultants would report at least moderate interest in improving human systems, but there are situations where consultation appropriately focuses on intervening with individuals (Fuqua & Newman, 1985). Requests for consultation, in fact, come from units of varying size and complexity. Most authors recognize, in one form or another, that the level of units targeted as consultees varies considerably. Blake and Mouton (1976) identified a comprehensive categorization of unit levels that may serve as consultees: (a) individual, (b) group (team), (c) intergroup, (d) organization, and (e) social system. Depending on which level serves as the consultee in the relationship, the consultation goals, processes, dynamics, and methods can vary dramatically. Consequently, the level or unit of change is yet another factor that bears heavily on the conceptual and operational dimensions of consultation. Perhaps at some future time theoretical development of differentiated conceptual models will be developed for each level. Unfortunately, this has not been accomplished. Still, one of the great advantages of consultation models is the characteristic of principles and concepts that are easily adaptable across contexts. For example, the concept of structural change as an alternative to behavioral change is as useful in consulting with individuals as it is with large organizations (Kurpius, 1985). 6. Cycle Breaking Interventions According to Blake and Mouton (1976), an intervention occurs whenever someone does something to someone in the context of a cycle breaking endeavor. Of course, who does what to whom for what purpose involves a whole spectrum of interactions. But there are only five basic interventions. 1. Acceptant. The intention is to give the client a sense of personal security so that when working with the consultant he or she will feel free to express personal thoughts without fear of adverse judgments or rejection. The client may thus be helped to sort out emotions in a self reliant manner and thereby get a more objective view of the situation. 2. Catalytic. Catalytic intervention assists the client in collecting data and information to reinterpret his or her perceptions as to how things are. In this way, the client may arrive at a better awareness of the problem and how to handle it. 3. Confrontation. This intervention challenges a client to examine how the present foundations of thinking usually value laden assumptions may be coloring and distorting the way situations are viewed; that is, the client may screen off one or more alternative options that, if he or she were aware of them, could lead to the selection of more effective actions. 4. Prescription. The consultant tells the client what to do to rectify a given situation or does it for him or her. This consultant takes responsibility for developing the evidence for the diagnosis and formulates the solution as a recommendation to be followed. 5. Theories and principles. By offering theories pertinent to the client's situation, the consultant helps the client internalize systematic and empirically tested ways of understanding. When learned so well as to be personally useful, these principles permit the client to view his or her situation in a more analytic, cause and effect fashion than had hitherto been possible. Thus the client becomes able to diagnose and plan how to deal with present and future situations in more valid ways. From the outset, he or she can specify how to rectify the immediate situation and further improve matters by choosing from alternatives. References: Read More