Category: Consultative Skills
One of the principles I’ve always tried to follow as a consultant is the Hippocratic Oath – first, do no harm. While it’s been rare, there have been situations where what the client wants strikes me as being against their best interest. In such cases, I’ve felt the only ethical and logical thing to do…
We all know that organizational change is difficult. Of all the forms of transformation, the most challenging is unquestionably culture change. According to research from the Wharton School of Business, the failure rate of culture change initiatives hovers around 80% (as defined by change projects that don’t achieve the stated goals of transformation). One of…
This is a guest blog written by Beverly Doraty, Communications Consultant & Project Manager at Ingenium. Last week I celebrated 11 years of working at Ingenium. 11 years of working for an entrepreneur. 11 years on a team that while small in size, could rival the biggest company in ability, creativity and camaraderie. 11 years…
If you’re a communications professional, I’m willing to bet that you’ve come up against what I call the “Goldilocks effect”. That is, working with internal or external clients who can’t or won’t articulate what they want, but rather will only share what they don’t want. You know the drill: This one’s too hot. This one’s too cold. This is…
“Successful organizations need to be managed as complex adaptive systems rather than as intricate controlled machines” This wisdom is part of Amy Edmondson’s excellent work Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate and Compete in the Knowledge Economy. Edmondson provides a refreshing update on management theory and connects those principles to the realities of leading organizational performance…
As a communications strategist, one of the cold hard facts that I face is that most communications strategies fail – that is, that they never get implemented. And yet, my experience is that a solid communications strategy (particularly one developed through a robust consultative process) can have a transformative impact on an organization`s results. This…
I have been a consultant for my entire career – first, as an internal consultant providing communications advice to the organizations I served as an employee, and for the last 14 years, as a professional consultant in communications and change management. Looking back on my experience as both an internal and external consultant, what strikes…
At the heart of effective consulting is helping. While the helping function is often implicit in producing a deliverable or completing a project, it warrants particular focus. So often, consulting engagements fail to deliver the anticipated long-term results for organizations. The root cause of those less than satisfying consulting engagements may be traced to a…
Communication is about the exchange of information, ideas, and emotions. Use the following tips to maximize communications in your position as a manager: Be Proactive: Take the initiative to reach out. If you don’t have the information you need, find it. 360 Degree Thinking: Consider who would benefit from information broadly – up, down and…
The “curse of knowledge” is an insidious trap of organizational communication. The expression refers to a pattern that we observe regularly – a leader is so deeply knowledgeable about a topic that he cannot see the gap that exists between his level of familiarity with the subject and that of the employees around him. While…
