Life of a Business Principal in Consulting

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is best known for its quote on the survival of the fittest. The accurate Darwinian quote is as follows: Survival of the form that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations. In Consulting , when we facilitate large group conversations, It becomes very difficult to herd every one together and try to channel their thoughts and ideas to one single conclusion.  Similarly , when we run large programs of works, it becomes very tricky to introduce change and make it stick. My experience has been to use the most famous and least understood idea of the “the survival of the fittest”.

It is recently that I have consciously started practicing Inquiry. Let me explain. I am a consultant who constantly looks at the situation and comes up and implements the solution to progress from there. While I do that, I constantly use Inquiry as a means to progress - one of the key facilitation technique specifically in multiple stakeholder situations.

Large enterprises have started their IT journey in earnest. However, they are miles behind what is happening.  Some of them have been trying to learn faster by creating research programs or separate business unites to try out and learn a few exotic ideas that have not yet gained acceptance in the industry or enterprise. Enterprises have moved record collection and data to IT long back and were pioneers in that. However, since the advent of personal computers, they have been left behind. Internet and mobile have left them far behind. For example, Network security, big data, mobile apps. social applications are solved problems that the enterprise choose to ignore. 

Policy Making is a very good instrument that any organization can use to communicate to its participants and help further the organization's goals. Policy - in a nutshell - is the course of principle of action proposed by the organization or entity. Why do we care Consulting, in a lot of ways, has to deal with processes. There are processes that as consultants, we need to be aware of and respect in our client organizations. There are processes that we have to work around and eventually suggest replacing or retiring. All of these are a lot simpler if we understand policy making better. Under what constraints or conditions was a specific policy made? Why is it still relevant? There are many more questions that we need to ask as consultants. Organizational structure and Policy Making

The other day I was working on a strategy document for one of my consulting assignments. What was strange was that I had access to all information but I was not sure how to present it in a clear way that would mean action from the stake holders. As consultants, the reason we present the strategy and tactical plans is because we hope the stake holders can gain value. However, we always have impediments in terms of selecting the right information to present, providing the right context and suggesting the right set of next level activities. Frameworks for Decision Making Let me start with a simple decision framework that I used to get the strategy document presented.