Consulting-101

Talk with any consultant and they will tell you: The Problem™ is never the problem. That is a short-hand for saying that complex problem solving is always an exploratory and iterative process: both clients and consultants have to be willing to challenge assumptions and to regroup as soon as they find out what the real problem is. So many client-consultant relationships go bad because each part tends to stick to their guns: client are unwilling to change ideas about what the problem is, or how complex it is, while consultants are unwilling to say an out-of-the-box solution they thought they could work doesn’t really fit. ...

The following is an extremely over-simplified, faux-flowchart that runs into my head every time I tell someone that I help companies solving organizational problems and they say “Basically every company has organizational problems so you must be working A LOT…”, implying that every company in the world must be chasing me down to help them solve their organizational problems. That’s not how it works, of course. It’s more correct to say that every company is on a journey in dealing with their organizational issues, but the points of contact between me and those companies are fewer and further apart than most people would imagine. ...