Management consultants help companies make strategic decisions that directly affect the entire company. They assess the problems faced by the customer and help them develop action plans for improvement. Consultants can provide an unbiased, external perspective on the problem and devote their full attention to solving it. Consultants who adopt a problem solving orientation often use a linear process in their work.
They first identify problems, then diagnose them, and finally find and implement solutions. At this point, the project or consulting task usually ends. On the contrary, consultants who believe that their purpose is to allow organizations to continuously adapt to change often implement a cyclical process. With each project or task, they generate new information about the organization's culture and what it takes to move toward its vision.
We asked the consultants to analyze how they had carried out the critical phases of the consulting process with what they considered a particularly important client. Since the responsibility for developing and maintaining any relationship lies with both parties, managers must understand how to allow consultants to be more effective. To overcome these obstacles, many of us turn to consultants with experience in the area of change management. Four participants considered that ongoing conversations with their clients, which Juanita Brown and David Isaacs describe as a fundamental business process that contributes to learning, constitute an essential part of their consulting work.
Recent research on the experience of consultants who specialize in organizational learning disciplines suggests that this frustration may stem from the contradictory and tacit assumptions that managers and consultants hold when they undertake an initiative together. While the research focused on consultants, this finding has important implications for managers seeking to use consulting services. This function could include helping managers determine what they should do or helping managers who already know what they want to do implement their plans. The consultants were willing to gain experience by finding practical solutions to the client's immediate business problems.
For example, managers can hire consultants to develop the organization's learning capacity, but reward only those who offer expert short-term solutions to the organization's problems. For example, private equity firms often rely on management consulting firms to help them with specific aspects of due diligence when they want to make an acquisition. Let's start by analyzing a real verbatim statement from one of the leading management consulting firms, McKinsey, about what they do.
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