Mirror Post #3: Heros and ah hah moments

Last night with the Hero's exercise I had each of you do in small groups, I neglected to share completely what my point was. Consultants often times are sterotyped as being heroes. Despite the fact that consultants can save the day or help with an end result, by no stretch of the imagination are they the be all. Block points out to us through out the readings that the relationship between client and consultant is 50/50 and that a mutual collaboration is paramount to a consulting intervention ending successfully. Maybe to be a real hero, one must look with in and take a real risk and say no. We'll see then who the real heroes are and who are the thrill seekers!

I had a real ah ha moment concerning consulting. I touched on it briefly last night when I said, "somedays I feel like an internal consultant here at my job." In truth, in fund-raising we dealw ith rsistance all the time and it really does come in many forms.

I appreciate everyone participating last night. Thanks for another good class!

A video to help us learn

I thought this video was appropriate relating to our conversation from Monday night concerning communicating. The link is a you tube video of 5 commercials for Ameriquest.



We discussed how various factors may impede the ORJI cycle, but in this example we see how witnessing an external event can be judged without knowing all the details.

This video helped me to understand that we do sometimes jump the shark and without really knowing the whole story, jump to conclusions. Our discussion Monday gave me much to reflect upon when dealing with my own home life. When I hear my son cry in the next room, I automatically assume my daughter has done something to make him cry. After Monday, I learned not to judge so quickly or react too dramatically. Tuesday evening, the both of them got into it in the next room. I went in to find my son crying. Instead of reacting or judging to quickly, I decided to try a little active inquiry. What I discovered is my son hit my daughter first. When she retaliated he learned by my reaction that if he cries she gets in trouble. In this particular case I was able to observe and obtain a better description of the situation; react appropriately to the whole story; evaluate and make a correct judgement; and finally intervene and make a better decision.

Flawless Consulting isn't just for the work place senarios. We can apply it to everything we do. Parenting sometimes feel like a process consulting job in that everyday one is a parent, more of the proverbal onion gets peeled back. It's a big onion, yes and sometimes it will make you cry. Thanks for reading!

Mirror post 2: Is it just me...

So it has taken a few classes, but I think I get this process consulting concept. Two weeks ago, I thought Block was wrong in his assessment that each step throughout the consulting intervention should be 50/50. That didn't make since to me. I thought about it from the 35,000 feet approach and said, maybe it could be 50/50 as a whole and that some accepts of the project would be more client and others more consultant. That really doesn't work either. I think the point that Block makes is that the project or intervention is just as much the client's as it is the consultants.

Take for example the time my division enlisted the help of a consultant. We spent about $25,000 for this individual to audit our back end processes. What was interesting is we spent all that money for the guy to tell us what we already knew. I don't discount what the gentleman does, but his approach was not so much to really us, but rather affirm what we knew. Knowing a little bit more about Block and understanding that to achieve a satisfactory result, a full investment from both parties is essential.

In this specific example, you can see that neither the client or the consultant had very much of a clue as to an end result. For $25,000 I could have said the same thing. What we needed on our team (client) was an individual with a good understanding of process consulting or a consultant who could help us help ourselves. I think that's what Block is trying to get at is working with the client to help them solve an issue. I love it when the light goes on upstairs.