Here I am in my attempts to catch up with 2 weeks of missed blogs! Between Edublogs being down and my boss being out of work for a while, I’ve fallen off of the blogging wagon, so to speak, but will try to catch up.
I wanted to post some thoughts based on the article “When Consultants and Clients Clash” (read it online here: http://www.harvardbusinessonline.org under Human Resource Management articles). After reading part 1 of the case study, my Consulting Skills class was given a chance to act out how we envisioned the story’s upcoming status meeting going. The enactments were pretty darn funny and difficult, and we had a lot of discussion on all that we were not sure about: who should be at the meeting, who should do the talking, how we thought the actors would really be, what the “ideal” meeting would’ve looked like, and so on. Later, we read part 2, which collects the opinions of 4 “experts” who offer their suggestions on how the meeting should’ve gone.
In part 2, the author mentions that 2 of the experts were responding as if they were working for the client (Royce) while the other 2 responded in terms of what the consultants should do. This was a great way to look at it, because while I read over the story, I hadn’t considered what I would’ve told Royce to do, and some of those recommendations were the most useful. I was also struck by the idea of the first expert, which was for the 2 consultants to come in armed with outside information about mergers. If the consultants’ boss had not been at the 8 am meeting, including this extra information may have given the consultants at least a sliver more credibility.
The article really just reminded me to think outside the box, and to think before you act. In class, we worked more or less under the assumption that we only could plan what we would say in the meeting. We didn’t really consider what research we might want to do before then, or that we might approach things from Royce’s perspective. It was all very eye opening. It reminds me that you can’t be a wimp in consulting. You have to look over your information, know your stuff and be authentic. As always, the lesson for me seems to be the perpetual reminder that I will always need to slow down and think before I act. I tend to rush right into things, and in every reading, case study and class discussion, I am continually seeing that my greatest challenge will be to take my time and think out each situation. Although contrary to my nature, it will definitely be a GREAT habit to form…
