Management Consulting - An Appreciative Enquiry

While studying a Organisational Behavior issue often consultants and managers are balked with the plethora of factors and ideas that come about. How they wish that the small bits of the picture can be put together so that the entire picture (or whatever of it) can be seen properly ! The typical questions that come across when diagnosing an issue are :

What is the issue / What is not the issue ?
How did it come about in the first place ?
What were the long term causes involved in the issue ?
Who is involved in the issue ?
How to handle the issue ?

Management theory, thankfully, gives a few frameworks such as the congruency theory of organisations that are helpful in framing the big picture while assessing such organisational issues. Consulting assignments maybe divided into 3 stages : enquiry, diagnosis and treatment. This article is concerned with the enquiry stage of the consulting business. Particularly we would like to analyse the role of history and philosophy of the organisation in the enquiry stage and how they influence the diagnosis and treatment of the problem.

History is very vital to the management consultant because it teaches us how we reached where we are today. For the management consultant history tells why and how we made the decisions we made in the past. The best example we see in every day life of this are doctors. Doctors are historians. When a patient visits a doctor they first ask for the history of the problem - when it was first spotted out by the patient, its symptoms and probable origins, state prior to the start of the symptoms etc. This is followed by diagnosis and then treatment.

When a consultant studies a management issue on an assignment, the historical approach becomes very important to understand what is the problem. It is the historical process which guarantees success of mapping the problems correctly. Typical sources of historical fact finding include interviews with key personnel, record inspection, cross checking facts. In modern times, sources of records are often on computers and other digitial formats. It also is helpful to cross check with the external environment if facts colloborate. However these sources of history are difficult and time consuming to collect.

A true HRD or ethical based approach always takes into consideration the history of the issue. A consultant I know, did a wonderful job of turning around an organisation recently. However her changes caused quite a lot of heart-burn and bitterness within the organisation leading to an outflow of talent from the company. When I had a chat with some of the people who had left the company it was obvious that their voices and previous suggestions had never been heard. 'We had suggested this long time ago. It wasnt accepted then !'. Apparently those who had taken credit and salary increments had nothing to do with the ones who had genuinely contributed. In other words the past events at the organisation had not been considered at all.

Once the history of the problem has been identified, several clues as to where the problems have started will come to light. Likewise a literature survey and enquiry into similar issues and reports from other organisations from HRD research is equally necessiated in order to

a) choose the latest and most comprehensive set of solutions, not for the sake of being in vogue, but so that we dont repeat the mistakes that have been commited by others.
b) become aware of implementations of solutions at other organisations and the challenges they had to face.

Another vital reality to be borne in mind while diagnosing and answering an issue is the social nature of the organisation which will involve all types of relationships - political, personal, formal, expert levels of people involved in the issue etc. How will the proposed solution affect the relationships within the organisation ? What are the fallouts expected and what are the plans to counter the fallouts ?

Upon thus diagnosing the problem, the appropriate solution becomes evident in terms of systems, procedures, values etc. A few mistakes that consultants and managers make during implementation are :

1) top management often does not share its findings with line staff. Hence the line staff arent as motivated as top management to change. Herzberg's hygiene theory of motivation has a lot to say about this.
2) framing a system takes less energy than implementing it. At the time of implementation, a lot of time and space as well as discipline is required for the new system to merge well with the day to day affairs of the organisation. Several distractions, problems, hinderances crop up which take away the initial energy found at the beginning of implementing a system. Lots of motivation is required at this stage. The ownership of the system also will play a crucial role at this stage.
3) Such pitfalls needs to be countered by noting and celebrating small incremental changes and communicating feedback to the organisation. Also system wide changes will typically be difficult to manage - it is better for overworked HR departments to concentrate on small groups than take on large stakes at the same time.
4) Resistance can come at the level of the individual, group, inter-group or organisation level. The consultant needs to be ready with answers for all these levels. Often the 'splendid ideas' of the consultant, which make so much sense to achieve the bottomline, are simply thrown out by the line staff and managers despite getting approval from the top management. They simply nod their heads to what the consultant says and yet continue with what they were doing in the past. Those who want to follow the consultant's advice are left confused on seeing such a challenge thrown by their colleagues.
At this point the consultant tries to negotiate or rules with an iron hand thereby further lessening the motivation of the employee to inculcate the change. He handles the situation depending on which leadership style he prefers. In the final run it is the motivation of the employee to accept the change and take responsibility for himself that determines the success of the consultant.

The above issues maybe correctly handled only with the knowledge of the past. It is the past that will tell us which direction to take to reach future goals. Hence studying the history of the organisation becomes vital.
The philosophy of an organisation and its key personnel, often reflected in its corporate culture, policies and procedures, is a very vital tool to understand why certain options were favoured or choices made. It is the philosophical world views, assumptions, pre-suppositions that form the shared values of the company. In turn these values form the basis of group and inter-group processes in which management variables such as decision-making, communication, span of control, authority etc are made in organisations.