Stephen Billing’s Blog

Irene Skovgaard Smith’s PhD thesis provokes a reflection on the popular process vs content distinction, which is found wanting. That’s Irene on the left.

It was Edgar Schein who made popular the distinction between consulting on process and consulting on expertise or content. In process consulting, the internal or external consultant is not an expert in the technical content of the work of the group, but gudies the group through aprocess in which the group solves its own technical content issues. Through the process consulting intervention, the client is better able to solve their problems in future perhaps without even needing the consultant.

Schein says that the consultant can’t possibly know the work of the group or organisation well enough to be able to prescribe what to do in a specific situation. The remedies have to be worked out jointly, with the group members providing the content and the consultant providing the process.

However, as a consultant, the process involves knowing when to stop a group, when to let something continue and when enough information has been gathered. And I think that as a consultant my judgement about these things is based not only on my knowledge of group process, but is also improved because of the management experience I have developed as a manager of, and as a member of similar groups accountable for achieving results in organisations.

It is very hard for the consultant to avoid the expert positioning anyway, because the clients define and position consultants that way.

The content and process components are not distinct and different from each other, but are rather components of the same expertise. Consultants are constantly negotiating a constant tension between insider and outsider status as well as process and content. Consultants are dealing with process and content at the same time. They are constantly negotiating their insider/outsider position. Furthermore, the consultant role is the product of the social potential that arises from that constant tension.

Irene points out that to come down on one side or the other is to attempt to do away with the ambiguity of this tension. Do away with this tension and you actually do away with the potential of consulting.

I have just been reading my friend Irene Skovgaard Smith’s PhD thesis on how consultants help in organisational change. She suggests that the consultant’s external knowledge is like a spice that when added to the internal people’s knowledge becomes a ’spiced version’ – knowledge that is new and yet still recognisable.

When I think of the projects I have done where I have worked with team leaders and other subject matter experts, the result has always been very much like this spiced version. It contains the information the experts have told me, and together we have reconstituted it, adding my knowledge of how to order things step by step in a useful way to make it clear for people. 

Doing this recently, the expert was surprised how accurate and comprehensive the material we have developed is. I reminded him "It should be, it’s what you told me." He was seeing what he already knew, but in a different way from what he was accustomed to seeing.

Spicy indeed.

I’ll be posting more in future inspired by Irene’s thesis. She is a prize-winning anthropologist who observed consultants implementing change over a long period of time. If you want to read her thesis for yourself (260 pages), click here.

Change consultants are all the same aren’t they? Change is change. Consultants are consultants.

I think not. In the real world, all consultants are NOT created equal. Consulting is not a commodity like flour or sugar. So much depends on the background of the consultant, specific skills for the job and the chemistry with the client.

Here are ten ways that you can tell if a change management consultant has the technical skills needed for a complex change project. Look for someone who has the ability and experience to do all ten. Your change consultant should be able to:

1. Help you prepare to talk to managers and staff about the change. Your change consultant should be able to help you work out what say, what not to say, and craft your message.
    
2. Facilitate meetings with managers and staff. However, having a consultant facilitate does not mean that you do nothing, nor can you sit back and watch the proceedings like watching a movie. Your participation as leader is still important. But having a facilitator means you can participate as a leader without needing to orchestrate the whole meeting. Someone else can take care of timings, logistics and directing the activities.
    
3. Make sure people have the opportunity to respond. Your consultant should make sure that everyone gets the chance to have a say.
    
4. Deflect criticism. Your consultant should be able to handle it when people are critical about past experiences.
    
5. Assist with formulation of strategy. Your change consultant should be able to lead the establishment of the approach to bringing about the change. They should also be adept at changing tactics in response to emerging events.
    
6. Debrief with you and your team at different stages during the change initiative, for example, after key milestones.
    
7. Explain what is happening in such a way that you and others see the situation differently. When everyone has a different way of making sense of what is going on, when they see things differently, they will be able to respond differently. This means they need to be confident and have enough experience to offer alternative ways of understanding what is going on in the organisation, and in the change initiative.
    
8. Contain anxiety. Help everyone continue to participate and continue on together, especially in the presence of anxiety.
    
9. Help explore misunderstandings. Misunderstandings offer the opportunity for new understanding to emerge. Your consultant should have the capacity to be able to stay with and explore misunderstandings with all players in the initiative so that the group can reach a point of having a different understanding of what is going on. They will then be able to act and react differently with each other.
    
10. Be provocative. At times, providing something to react to can stimulate a shift in people’s understanding of what is going on. Your consultant should have the ability to be provocative.