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| Welcome |
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As
the line of cars ahead of me came to a screeching halt,
I managed to stop within inches of the car in front
of me. I braced for the impact of the car behind me.
Fortunately,
I avoided a collision.
Once
my heart rate plummeted from the stratosphere, I spotted
an elderly driver in the lead car that was the cause
of the near-disaster. In a nanosecond, my brain reconstructed
the scenario—an elderly, absent-minded person,
who definitely shouldn’t be driving, almost took
out four cars with one dangerous maneuver.
The
evidence stacked up in my mind for this scenario, but
then I did a double-take when a small dog scurried out
from in front of the elderly man’s car. He’d
only stopped to avoid someone’s wandering pet.
From my interpretation of the facts, I had created a
“story” that didn’t reflect reality.
We
often react that way when we’re solving problems,
especially those involving other people. And the facts
and reality end up miles apart. But there is a way to
navigate through the twists and turns of human interaction.
Beginning
this month, we’re starting a six-part series on
managing communications by Kerry Patterson and his colleague
Eric Patten. Patterson is the coauthor of the bestselling
books, Crucial Conversations
and Crucial Confrontations.
The series begins with a lesson on handling the tough
conversations we all must face as consultants.
In
this issue’s edition of “The Writing on
the Wall,” Alan Weiss bemoans the curse of “gurus”
who wax endlessly on the latest, content-free concept.
Weiss implores us to get real—fast.
Also
in this issue, we talk to Steve Farber, author of The
Radical Edge. Farber’s insights
on management and leadership have been honed from twenty
years as a consultant, and several years as the “Official
Mouthpiece” of the Tom Peters Group.
You’ll
also find articles on how to craft winning mail copy,
build trust among project team members, and on where
the best US beaches are located.
Enjoy
the issue. And send me an email
if you have comments.
Mike
McLaughlin
Editor, Management Consulting News
P.S.
Join me this month for two complimentary webinars:
Tuesday,
June 20th at 11:00am Pacific Time, Primavera Software
is sponsoring my one hour program titled “Understanding
Your New Buyer.”
Wednesday,
June 28th at 9:00am Pacific Time, Microsoft Work Essentials
is sponsoring my one hour program called “Create
Winning Proposals.”
___________________ SPONSORED LINK ___________________
Only
three times a year, Alan Weiss presents this unique
career development opportunity for a select handful
of people. Go to www.summitconsulting.com to find out more.
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| Interview:
Steve Farber |
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Steve Farber, the author of The
Radical Edge, thinks too many leaders
are posers, leading by title or appointed authority,
instead of passion. He challenges us to think about
leadership as an extreme sport, which means learning
to love the fear and exhilaration that’s a regular
part of every extreme sport.
In
our interview, Farber tells us why frequency, inspiration,
and a WUP are at the core of extreme leadership.
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| The
Writing on the Wall, by Alan Weiss |
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 The
Guru
I’ve
seen wonderful human resources work done in some of
the firms I’ve had the good fortune to modestly
assist: Revlon, McGraw-Hill, Chase, Fleet, State Street
Bank, and Textron, to name a few, have made intelligent
and serious investments in developing their human resource
capabilities to be proactive, professional, consultative,
and partners with their clients. It’s been enough
to give this cynic some real optimism.
Yet,
human resource consulting is one of the most dramatically
growing of all fields for the large consulting firms
(source: Kennedy Information, publishers of Consultant’s
News). My own practice has grown significantly
in areas where internal resources have traditionally
been utilized: performance evaluation, succession planning,
coaching, educational designs, and communications strategies.
This
should not be surprising, because I’ve also witnessed,
first-hand, human resources mired in the banality of
the programs du jour and the psychobabble of our times.
I’ve watched “open meetings” become
aimless drifting, and presumed experts actually suggest
that breathing out of alternating nostrils improves
creativity, when it will actually do little else than
make you hyperventilate. I’ve heard people piously
intone that “results are the fourth level of measurement,”
as if any other measurement were important to anyone
in a responsible position. (“Yes, our results
are poor, but I’m extremely happy about our attitude
measures.”)
I’ve
watched “outdoor experiences” take the place
of pragmatic skills building. (A human resources manager
asked on the Internet the other day if anyone had background
“replicating outdoor experiences on an indoor
basis,” since his team couldn’t travel offsite!)
I’ve agonized while a “future search”
burned through $400,000 of corporate salary in useless
explorations of irrelevant information before anyone
had the courage to declare it a failure and cut the
losses.
A
lot of people besides the emperor are not wearing any
clothes.
What’s
a poor consultant to do, bemoan the state of the art,
or regret that he just can’t grok the true meaning
of organizational, human resource life? Am I a stranger
in a strange land? Am I Paul Revere or Chicken Little?
I had the opportunity to appear on the platform once
with a well known “guru” who I’ll
call Carl. I’ve known Carl for twenty years, admire
his intellect enormously, and have used on occasion
his book in one of the graduate classes that I teach
for MBA and Ph.D. candidates at the University of Rhode
Island. While my work has been primarily with line executives,
Carl’s has been highly influential with human
resource professionals, and I was anxious to see what
his take on the state of the art would be.
What
I saw was semi-mystical, nearly incomprehensible, and
mostly dangerous. Carl painted the typical American
organization as a demonic place, where generally malicious
managers were conspiring to mute creativity, deny freedom
of action, disempower at every crossroad, and undermine
the talents of the oppressed masses. He told the audience
that they had to resist this through their own empowerment,
and suggested not a partnership—which was the
theme of the meeting—but, in my view, an adversarial
relationship, in which enlightened human resource people
would stubbornly resist the dark forces of line management.
When
asked for examples (my informal poll revealed that a
quarter of the audience found him “inspirational”
and three-quarters didn’t know what he was talking
about) Carl had the audience change the configuration
of the room, which resulted in minimal change. (He constantly
asked for learning points from this and other seemingly
pointless exercises that generated little enthusiasm,
and from which he received virtually no audience input.)
He gave this as an example of “shifting power,”
although when questioned by some of the astute listeners
about his dictating the exercise, he admitted, “Well,
I really never give up my power, either.” When
a participant stated that he didn’t agree with
Carl’s point, Carl said, “I can agree with
you,” and used this as an example to the audience
that, when disagreements arise, the best thing is to
simply concede and avoid confrontation.
Alan,
please call home.
Carl,
a learned man with solid credentials, went on—sometimes
profanely, by the way—to explain that our organizations
are not established to share power and that such a reality
is both malicious and incompetent in its origin. His
charge was for people to seek “authenticity,”
and to “create power,” and to realize that
we can learn as much from each other as from the presenter.
His empowerment wasn’t based on skills acquisition
or customer satisfaction or anything as pathetic as
profitability, but rather on changing interpersonal
dynamics, taking charge, and claiming “self-authenticity.”
Training doesn’t have to have a payoff or measurable
result, he said, it is intrinsically worthwhile. Why
should we be forced to justify it to those conniving,
malicious managers who really don’t understand
the true organizational dynamic?
Maybe
so, but I think those of us presumptuous enough to mount
a platform and dispense wisdom ought to appreciate that
our duty is to provide pragmatic skills, techniques,
and ideas that the audience can use to improve its lot.
Human resource people, suffering already from fads,
foibles, and fancy, deserve more than gurus profiting
from the equivalent of verbal patent oils and elixirs.
While
I was impressed that some audience members asked some
confronting questions, I was shocked that so many sat
quietly and patiently, assuming they were hearing insights
and intelligence merely because a guru was in their
midst, or perhaps under the foggy impression that the
conversation was simply too deep. The conversation wasn’t
deep, it was delusional.
There
is plenty to do in organizational America to occupy
both internal and external consultants. But if this
trend continues, I’m going to have more work than
I can handle and HR is going to continue down the outsourcing
exit ramp. The sky isn’t falling, but the British
are coming, in the form of good, talented, ethical executives
who have had it up to the gills with knowledge management,
open meetings, left brain/right brain, fractals, INTJs,
future search, and all the other gobbledygook. (Are
there germs of useful ideas in these concepts? Yes.
Do they form a cogent base for a discipline? No.)
Organizations
are not demonic. Management is not malicious. And the
organizational world is run neither from the mountaintops
nor from behind the looking glass. It’s run in
the trenches, and we’d all better be willing to
get dirt under out nails.
You
heard it here, they’re coming by both land and
sea, and please get out of my horse’s way. I have
miles to travel.
`````````````````````````````
Alan
Weiss, Ph.D. is the author of twenty-five books, including
Million Dollar Consulting,
which appears in seven languages. He runs the unique
Million Dollar Consulting™ Colleges three times
a year. You can reach him at www.summitconsulting.com,
where you can also download hundreds of free articles.
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| If
You’re “On the Beach” |
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As
summer in the US approaches, many clients flee their
offices and head for the beach, leaving many consultants
“on the beach” too. It’s a great time
to ramp up marketing programs, catch up on your reading,
or take off to the actual beach.
If
you’re unsure where to go, Stephen Leatherman,
aka Dr. Beach, just published his 2006
Report on America’s Best Beaches. Leatherman’s
top US beaches, with some links to photos, are:
- Fleming
Beach, Maui, Hawaii
- Caladesi
Island State Park, Dunedin, Florida
- Ocracoke
Island, Outer Banks, North Carolina
- Coopers
Beach, Southampton, New York
- Hanalei
Bay, Kauai, Hawaii
- Main
Beach, East Hampton, New York
- Coast
Guard Beach, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
- Coronado
Beach, San Diego, California
- Hamoa
Beach, Maui, Hawaii
- Barefoot
Beach Park, Bonita Springs, Florida
Maybe
it is a good time to trade your Blackberry
and Tumi for some sunscreen.
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| Crucial
Conversations: Getting Back on Track |
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 by
Eric Patten
Have
you ever felt like you’re standing on the deck
of a sinking ship, knowing that land is in sight, but
completely incapable of getting there? For example,
you’ve just presented your change proposal to
the management team and everyone voices agreement, but
after the meeting, nobody does what they agreed to do;
your project just hit a brick wall.
What
do you do?
Read
Eric Patten's article
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| From
the Bookshelf |
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Not
that long ago, some predicted that the “Information
Age” would lead to the demise of the printed book.
But there are more books being published than ever before—so
many books…so little time. Here are four recently-released
books that you might want to consider adding to your
bookshelf.
The
Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn
Training and Development into Business Results
by Calhoun Wick, Roy Pollock, Andrew Jefferson, Richard
Flanagan
For
many executives, investments in organizational development
are like advertising—50% of the investment is
worthwhile, but nobody knows which 50%.
This
book begins with the simple idea that corporate development
programs should have a positive impact on business results.
Using dozens of examples, the authors lay out a roadmap
and a set of tools for optimizing the business impact
of any training program.
Case
Studies in Performance Management: A Guide from the
Experts (SAS Institute Inc.)
by Tony C. Adkins
If
you’ve ever wondered how to help clients implement
an Activity Based Costing or Performance Management
program, Tony Adkins has done a lot of the work for
you.
Adkins
has compiled a series of case studies that illustrate
how leading organizations have tackled the complexities
of Performance Management, focusing on what works and
what doesn’t.
The
Wizard and the Warrior: Leading with Passion and Power
by Lee G. Bolman, Terrence E. Deal
We’ve
all witnessed the accomplishments of great leaders and
the flame-outs of the bad ones. Bolman and Deal have
combed the history of leadership to uncover the fundamental
traits of extraordinary leaders and create a model for
teaching those traits to others.
Head,
Heart and Guts: How the World's Best Companies Develop
Complete Leaders
by David L. Dotlich, Peter C. Cairo, Stephen Rhinesmith
Do
we need a fresh perspective on leadership development?
Absolutely, say the authors of Head, Heart
and Guts. Organizations that rely on traditional
leadership development programs will continue to stamp
out leaders who are ill-equipped to lead in today’s
environment.
Dotlich,
Cairo, and Rhinesmith argue that organizations need
“whole leaders,” not just those who rely
on cognitive skills to lead. Instead, today’s
leaders need qualities in three areas: analytical abilities
(head), emotional intelligence (heart), and willingness
to take risks (guts).
Using
case studies from companies such as Bank of America,
Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and UBS, the authors
lay out specific steps to help organizations move out
of the “leadership comfort zone.”
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| Coming
Attractions |
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 “I
think for the smaller consultancies, the future actually
looks pretty rosy because clients like specialist skills;
they like being able to understand exactly who consultants
are and what they do.” - Fiona Czerniawska
Next
month we’ll ask Fiona Czerniawska, one of the
leading observers of the consulting industry, what her
crystal ball can tell us about the future of the business.
We’ll also ask her about the latest trends in
the market positioning of consulting firms.
Look
for the next issue of Management Consulting
News on July 4, 2006.
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We
all say we want customers to love doing business
with us. Well, we can't expect anybody to love
doing business with us unless we love it ourselves.