Greg Baker, on February 15, 2022
Using science to move work forward and drive change is at the heart of the Consulgetics approach. It addresses two of the biggest challenges consultants face. How do we know what those are?
Whenever we deliver our consultant development workshops we ask the participants to list the biggest challenges in their daily work. Two things always make the list. First, they say they have trouble moving work forward. Progress stalls when clients don’t do what they’re supposed to do for the project, when needed resources aren’t available, or when obstacles get in the way. Second, they tell us that driving change in their client organizations, and their own, is difficult and, at times, seems impossible. For example, systems are implemented but people don’t fully adopt them, new processes are defined but people are more comfortable with the old way, or a faction of resisters has formed to undermine the whole effort.
If we could just solve these two problems, they say, life as a consultant would be so much better! And you know what? They’re right! Solving these problems is arguably a holy grail of consulting. But how do we do it?
First, we need to recognize that the way we’ve been approaching these problems simply isn’t working well. Then we need to find and adopt the new approaches that will give consultants the power and ability to meet these universal challenges. This article will give you a window into those approaches and a path to the details of using science to move work forward and drive change. Let’s take the challenges one at a time.
Greg Baker, on October 19, 2021
I’d like to tell you a little story about two consultants. It’s based on a situation I’ve seen several times in my career where management and organizational problems are unfortunately misdiagnosed. This is not a little thing. It happens often and, when it does, it hurts the business and the people involved. What makes this situation so common and how can you make sure you aren’t contributing to the problem? Read on to find out and decide which kind of consultant you want to be.
Two consultants from different companies walk into a Restaurant. They had been summoned there at the same time by a potential client. As they scanned the room they spotted the vice president with whom they would meet sipping her club soda. The consultants made their way to the client’s table and sat down. After brief introductions the client said to them, “I’m having trouble with two of my department managers. They seem to be at odds constantly, always picking at each other. I’ve talked with them both but to no avail. I don’t know what to do.” She went on to say that she wanted to give both consultants a chance to win her business. “You each have 24 hours, she said, to evaluate the problem and tell me the solution.” Both consultants eagerly accepted the challenge and all agreed to meet back in the restaurant the next day.
Greg Baker, on June 29, 2021
Consulgetics is our latest achievement in the advance of consulting skills development for both internal and external consultants. Born of our many years of consultant development for companies and agencies across the globe, Consulgetics combines the best of our traditional consulting skills training with the power and insight of managing energy to get things done.
Consulgetics is based on the recognition that at the heart of everything we do as consultants is energy. As consultants, we harness and align energy to optimize the impact and outcome of our work – whether we recognize it or not. So to give this reality a name we combined the words consulting and energetics to create Consulgetics, the practice of using energy to inform and power consulting.
Greg Baker, on March 30, 2020
As the world slows and hopefully puts an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses will be left to deal with the fallout. Yes, there has been a great deal of disruption and, frankly, many things will never be the same. But that’s not all bad. As is often said, there is opportunity in crisis. Perhaps many of the things that will never be the same, should never be the same. Perhaps the way they were was never the best solution. If we can gracefully let the outdated and inadequate fall away and focus more on the way things could be, we just might uncover a golden opportunity. In these times I’m inspired by the lyrics from the song Beautiful City.
“Out of the ruins and rubble
Out of the smoke
Out of our night of struggle
Can we see a ray of hope?
One pale thin ray reaching for the day
We can build a beautiful city
Yes, we can, yes, we can
We can build a beautiful city
Not a city of angels
But we can build a city of men…”
— From the musical Godspell
We can build a beautiful business too, and uncover rich opportunities. It’s not too early to start looking at that. But how do we know what to let go of and how to position for opportunity?
Greg Baker, on March 10, 2020
It is truly amazing to me how often companies, schools and government agencies misdiagnose their organizational problems and needs. Incredibly, misdiagnosis happens most of the time. The reason is that our typical view of a business, (what we can see at the surface), and our understanding of how it works, (a surface-level understanding), is very limited. Managers and change leaders do the best they can with what they’ve got. Unfortunately, however, their limited view usually leads them to conclude that the symptoms they see on the surface are the problems to be solved. They seldom identify the real root cause problem – the deeper organizational diagnosis.