posted 28 June 2000 08:36 AM               

Scenario

You are a consultant working on a fairly diverse Change Management Project involving a company with 250 people spread across 2 locations.

This company has many different problems, particularly at management level, and you elect to go ahead and do a climate survey to see what the employees feel.

The employees surprisingly say that...'the company has many different problems, particularly at management level..' . By far the worst score was Teamwork at Management level.

The employees are not unfairly waiting for a response from the management, and your initial discussions with the managers so far have revealed;
A. Manager A sympathises, but the problem sits with the other 2 managers.
B. Manager B cannot understand why Teamwork should be an issue at all. In his own words, if the others did what he told them there would be no problems and no need for teamwork (Honest, he said that).
C. Manager C derides the result (..they would say that wouldnt they..) and attempts to ignore it.

What would be your next step as the consultant involved?

posted 28 June 2000 01:22 PM               

Ethics aside, keep taking the paycheck in hopes that it might turn for the better. Worse case scenario: the laughs Randy points out, gained experience, and the bills paid.

Marc's comment on getting management together is a good idea, especially if you are trying to pull off this near miracle. It is the right thing to do, but will probably have limited positive impact. Lots of blame laying between managers A, B, and C and there is suggestion of the Caretaker's Syndrom as well. I am skeptical of the success a consultant will have.

Back to the group....

posted 28 June 2000 02:37 PM               

Come up with a good improvement plan to present and then do so. When the plan is rejected, give them the same plan again, but change the words around, break out a Thesaurus and get some other words, play buzz-word bingo with them. Invent words that you can hyphenate or string together. Let them see that you are really trying to do them a service and earn your pay.

posted 29 June 2000 02:40 AM               

In my heart i know you are all right, one of the things I notice about consulting as an independant is that it can be a little lonely.

I left full-time employment after 18 years with two blue chip companies mainly because i wanted more freedom to be able to develop companies properly and say what i want without fear of long-term reprisals.

If this is really my intention, then i should go back to the managers and harass them until they do something, or go back to a 9 til 5.

Actually what i notice is that a good consultant (internal or external) rarely supplies some magic expertise that nobody else in the company has. Instead he/she is relied upon to supply bags of motivation, a can-do attitude and a terrier like approach to difficult problems. Although this annoys the managers in the short-term they seem to respect you more in the long-term.

How i plan to deal with this is request a meeting to discuss a process problem involving the planning and launching of projects. I hope to be able to deal with the issues of 'management teamwork' without actually mentioning the word teamwork itself.

Ill let you know what happens

posted 30 June 2000 02:28 AM               

Why on earth did they hire you? That they in fact did so would indicate that they realize that a problem exists.

It's their problem if they can't accept your findings. Your problem may be to protect your bottom long enough to be able to get through to them.

The defensive screen they put up indicates that they probably know deep down that you're right. Facing the fact is another story.