Management consulting

Box 1.2 Define the purpose, not the problem

The way consultants define a problem is critical to the quality of the solution. If they define the problem in terms of its origin or cause, they will tend to focus on who or what is to blame. This is likely to be a fruitless exercise, and can actually get in the way of finding the best solution. It can also discourage staff from taking initiative, in order to avoid being blamed in the future. Rather, management consultants can achieve breakthroughs for their clients by focusing on a series of incrementally larger purposes to be achieved.

Narrow consulting approaches – focusing on the problem, starting with data collection, copying others, taking the first solution that can be made to work, failing to involve others – create problems of their own. These approaches lead to excess costs and time, early obsolescence of solutions, wasted resources and repetition of work in the consulting process.

Breakthrough thinking provides a more effective approach. It is not a step- by-step process but involves seven ways of thinking about problems and their solutions, based on the following principles:

(1)The uniqueness principle: Whatever the apparent similarities, each problem is unique and requires an approach based on the particular context.

(2)The purposes principle: Focusing on expanding purposes helps strip away non-essential aspects and avoid working on the wrong problem.

(3)The solution-after-next principle: Innovation can be stimulated and solutions made more effective by working backwards from an ideal target solution. Having a target solution in the future gives direction to short-term solutions and infuses them with larger purposes.

(4)The systems principle: Every problem is part of a larger system of problems, and solving one problem inevitably leads to another. Having a clear framework of the elements and dimensions that comprise a solution ensures its workability and facilitates implementation.

(5)The limited information collection principle: Excessive data gathering may create expertise in the problem area, but knowing too much detail may prevent the discovery of some excellent alternative solutions. Always determine the expanded purposes of any proposed information collection before doing it.

(6)The people design principle: Those who will implement and use the solution should be intimately and continuously involved in its development by being involved in the first five principles. Also, in designing a solution to be implemented by other people, include only the critical details in order to allow some flexibility during its application.

(7)The betterment time-line principle: The only way to preserve the vitality of a solution is to build in and then monitor a programme of continual change to achieve larger purposes and move towards target solutions.

Author: E. Michael Shays. A detailed discussion can be found in D. Nadler and S. Hibino: Breakthrough thinking: The seven principles of creative problem solving (Rocklin, CA, Prima Publishing, 1994).

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Nature and purpose of management consulting

to place the client’s problem in a proper time perspective and seek solutions that will not block the path to the future.

Consulting that is confined to corrective measures, aimed at restoring a past situation or attaining a standard already met by other organizations, may produce significant and urgently needed benefits. A crisis may be avoided, negative developments may be arrested and the client’s business may survive. Yet merely ensuring a return to a previously existing situation or catching up with competition gives the client no competitive advantage, and little additional competence or strength for coping with new situations and achieving superior performance in the future.

Identifying and seizing new opportunities

Most consultants feel that they can offer much more than simply helping organizations to get out of difficulties. This has been recognized by many business corporations and other organizations that are well managed, successful and ambitious. While they may at times call on a consultant to track back deviations that have taken place, and find and correct the reasons for them, they usually prefer to use consultants for identifying and taking new opportunities. They regard consulting firms as a source of valuable information and ideas that can be turned into a wide range of initiatives, innovations and improvements in any area or function of business: developing new markets and products; assessing and using state-of-the-art technologies; improving quality; becoming more useful to customers; developing and motivating staff; optimizing the use of financial resources; finding new business contacts (and contracts), and so on.

Experience shows that even strong and important corporations have developed many ideas for action and have seized major business opportunities with the help of consultants. Consulting in e-commerce and e-business is a case in point: its purpose has not usually been to solve existing problems, but to help clients to see and take major new opportunities that can be exploited by adopting new approaches to doing business.

Enhancing learning

“The only work that is really worth doing as a consultant is that which educates

– which teaches clients and their staff to manage better for themselves”, said Lyndon Urwick, one of the main contributors to the development of professional management consulting. In the modern concept of consulting this dimension is omnipresent. Many clients turn to consultants, not only to find a solution to one distinct problem, but also to acquire the consultant’s special technical knowledge (e.g. in environmental analysis, business restructuring or quality management) and the methods used in assessing organizations, identifying problems and opportunities, developing improvements and implementing changes (interviewing, diagnosis, communication, persuasion, feedback, evaluation and similar skills).

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