Role of Consultants LO29019

From: Terry Priebe (terryp@dca.net)
Date: 08/16/02


Replying to LO29004 --

Kenny and LOers, hello:

The questions you posted Wednesday were excellent. I hope they generate a
rich dialogue among the LO list members. You said:

KN: " I am slightly confused about the concept of the role of
consultants/outside help in a learning organization. Senge seems to
suggest that you should not invite a consultant into your organization for
an extended period of time, or multiple times because the organization
will become dependent on their efforts instead of figuring out how to
accomplish the tasks with the talents available in the organization."

TP: This is a dilemma that both businesses and consultants face, i.e. how
far is enough. There certainly is a trend toward placing more
responsibility on the consultant ... the outsider who brings with him or
her special knowledge or capability "heretofore unavailable" within the
client organization. If it were available and able to be provided
in-house, the need for outside help would obviously be less.

As a practical matter, I think more and more firms have less and less
internal capacity for "reinventing" themselves by themselves. Many firms
have extensively downsized or lost the skills now provided by consultants.
The external consultant has become a necessity for certain tasks. For
years I shied away from that conclusion, but now I think using
well-equipped external consultants, armed with the philosophies and
practices of Systems Thinking, Organizational Psychology, and importantly
a way to bring together, sustain and grow domain-specific knowledge into
the dialogue is the way to go. Consultants can uniquely provide these
skills and techniques for the organizational members who ultimately must
do the work of the business.

KN: " In relation to mental model modification training, I would argue
that the consultant is "re-wiring" the brain of the managers, helping them
get through mental blocks that inhibit them from working to their
potential. This type of outside help seems to fully benefit an
organization, not detract from it. "

TP: A constructive transformation occurs if the re-wiring "takes". The
permanence of such modification is ultimately within and up to the
recipients themselves. It also depends upon being designed in such as way
as to sustain the membership's "working to their potential". If the change
can't be sustained, what may have been created is a dependency upon the
consultant (as you said Senge suggested), possibly not initially
recognized for what it is, but when it is recognized, then resentment,
backsliding, etc.

KN: "To parallel this concept, the mental model modification work will
enhance the production of the managers, which will throw off the balance
of the system. If managers and employees have formed behaviors based on
the level of work performed by each, improving the ability of the manager
will cause a need for calibration for the organization to realize the
benefit of the new ability. "

TP: I agree that at least part of the system will likely change. If only
the managers have been "re-wired" by the consultants, the managers,
looking at the current state of the organization, will probably interpret
what they see differently than before. They then will act upon these
insights and some amount of "recalibration" will happen. I think it would
depend on the readiness of the rest of the employees to interact with this
calibration as to whether or not an unbalance occurs.

KN: "Does this idea run consistent with, or contrary to the concepts in
the Learning Organization?"

TP: Kenny, in this hypothetical case, I'd say "re-wiring" the managers
would be insufficient. What about the non-managers, the rest of the
will-be-affected organization? Have they had the benefit of being
"enlightened" by the consulting experience? Or, are they already prepared
for the changes that will occur? And then, a probably most important, is
the organization designed to encourage and sustain the group's
enlightenment? Will whatever kind of new and good insights and patterns
created by the consultants or change agents have an unfortunately short
half-life? Will the organization have a good chance of going back to a
much less desirable state of operations?

KN: "I seem to understand that expansion of knowledge or improvement of
skill will always enhance a learning organization, is this accurate? "

TP: From an LO's point of view, I don't think this is true. Why? Because
unless there are effective ways to incorporate improved knowledge and
skills into the workflow required for the purpose of the organization,
that creation of additional "capacity" can't or won't be used to support
that purpose. In fact, this new knowledge may cause the employees (and
managers, as well) to be less a "participant" in the workflow of the firm
because their interests may now be focused elsewhere.

KN: "In applying the concepts of a Learning Organization to consulting
work, would a consultant be wise to introduce specific ideas to the
clients, or would they be better off having the clients read the book and
do a mini seminar on the ideas of the Learning Organization?"

TP: Most persons respond well to hearing about the concepts of Learning
Organizations. Most would love to be a part of one, and most would work
very hard to improve the chances of their businesses to be one. Many
people already have a "patterning" for the groundwork of a LO within them,
so the consultant would logically design an approach to bring this out, to
get people talking, to create a dialog.

The Systems Framework is a splendid and understandable method for getting
people, your potential clients, to talk about how things currently "work".
They have a chance to tell their stories and listen to others tell theirs
.. straight OD stuff, but very essential before moving on. Once engaged in
dialog about something they have in common - how they view their job
functions, for example - then they would be more ready to "hear" and
understand analogies of archetypes and concepts about an LO that apply in
their interests.

I'd guess few consulting engagements are specifically designed to create
an LO. I think of an LO as the result of preparing the members of an
organization for such an eventuality by study, practice and support. I
suggest that the consultant or change agent keep the client's focus on the
desired 'future state of the organization' and weave in the aspects of the
LO to support that accomplishment .. not the other way around. Why? So
that each practice and action can be directly connected to the work that
must be done in the days and weeks after the consulting engagement is
over.

By the way, the change-agent can be anyone, a outside consultant, a
manager who's inspired by a conversation or observation, an employee who's
"had enough" and demands things change. Each of those agents has specific
ideas they may wish to be introduced, considered, or (if they're
half-baked) more fully developed. My own experience has included a bit of
all those as well as seminars and books on LO's. They collectively helped
to prepare me for potentially working more effectively within an
organization as well as, over time, figuring out what's necessary to
create and sustain the LO.

KN: " Culture change is not a quick thing, so what would you suggest as
the first steps for the organizations to take? "

TP: Two issues: "low hanging fruit" and "half-life"

Yesterday I had a discussion with a seasoned consultant. He said he is
increasingly awed by the amount of "low hanging fruit" he finds, i.e.
those" issues" that may be easily apparent to an outsider but completely
invisible to those working within the business. ("Issues" are those
situations that if corrected will make everyone happy, more efficiency,
higher quality, better working conditions, etc.) Quick to fix; and the
consultant becomes a hero. Easy? Maybe, but without that unhindered
perspective, the fix wouldn't have been possible.

Important to note, the ability to make such valuable improvements relative
to the current state of business may diminish the energy ... on the part
of both the client and the consultant ... to go beyond a level of
potential consultation. It really depends on the level of "preparation" of
the organization that the consultant encounters as well as the resources
and commitment both parties have. As At deLange and others have written
about, a certain amount of dwell-time is needed to prepare for the next
stage.

Now, about the half-life of the organizational changes inspired by
consultants

There is a continuing discussion among many LOers about "sustainability".
If an organization and its membership goes to the time and expense to
become knowledgeable, for example, in philosophy and methods that will
improve performance and achieve satisfaction (to name a few desirable
outcomes), those involved would like to have the benefits last as long as
possible.

When the issues become complex, lots of issues, lots of people, lots of
causal-loop diagrams that apply, etc., most of us have difficulty grasping
the information and insights contained, therein. There are just too many
relevant things that we know are important, that our decision processes
believe necessary to "move on". Essentially, we're stuck having to either
disregard many of these points or just setting the possibility of analysis
aside. Here I'm speaking of issues that have significant quantitative or
qualitative dimensions.

Reluctance has developed over the past decade to consider what I call a
more balanced approach to improve the staying power of LO and System
Thinking (ST) when dealing with the increasingly complex problems faced by
all types of business and societies. One approach is an intentional
combination the aspects of LOs and ST with information technology designed
to handle the data needs in this arena of decisions. Most of us, and the
organizations of which we're a part, struggle without a way to leverage
our individual capacities to grasp the significance of the current and
possible future states of our organizations. My own software development
group has worked years to bring about such a concept that has taken the
form of a financial performance simulation technology. This is a system
called DeSASim (http://www.desasim.com) that performs a life's worth of
relationships with behavioral outcomes easily explored, shared, built upon
as is determined to be important by each person using it.

LOs have been shown to be open-systems. Therefore, the technology
supporting an LO should also be open, permitting the organization's
membership to relate to the knowledge these systems contain as "the spirit
moves them". It must be fast, it must be adaptable, it must be relevant,
preferable prebuilt, and it must also be economical to create, operate and
maintain. Organizations do not have time (and in most cases, the skilled
resources) to do this themselves, so they must rely on software developers
to create this technology. The systems should also have a reasonable
learning curve, i.e. a rapid pay back, a minimum of time required to set
up and engage.

Kenny, my observation is that there are very few of these systems today.
Ideally, consultants would use them extensively as consultants are logical
purveyors of such systems. Consultants would use them as part of their
"tool kit", with pieces left behind with clients, applications to aid in
the sustained implementation of those evolving LOs and also as
applications that support subsequent consulting engagements, i.e.
minimizing having to "reinvent the wheel".

I hope these thought have been helpful as you consider setting up your own
practice. I also look forward to other responses... excellent questions.

Best Regards,

Terry Priebe
DeSA

Decision Support Associates, Inc.
29 Hill Road
Wilmington, DE 19806 USA

302-654-1673 (voice)
302-654-1783 (Fax)

terryp@dca.net

-- 

"Terry Priebe" <terryp@dca.net>

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