Tag: The Consultant School

The Soul of A Business by Tom Chappell

Business is all about meeting a need.  (purpose)

• Why are you in business?
• What are you here to really do?

If you meet a need and meet it effectively, finance will take care of itself. 

The soul is what exists when everything else goes away. 

All other elements of an organization should serve the soul. 

Health = Alignment between what is happening and what the organization is about. 

Most organizations make decisions based on personality, rather than their mission statement.

Dysfunction happens when people make radical decisions and go in different directions.  When an organization is driven by the market, it could be in danger of losing the soul. 

KEY QUESTION:

How congruent is this opportunity with what we are in business to do? (mission and purpose)

POSSIBLE ANSWERS AND INFORMATION FOR THE ORGANIZATION:

YES: (opportunity is congruent with what we are in business to do) DO IT! Move forward.

NO: (opportunity is NOT congruent with what we are in business to do) 

1. Turn down the opportunity because we are in danger of losing our     soul (integrity/identity) with this opportunity.  If we say yes, we run the risk of taking the organization too far off course.
2. Reevaluate and change the mission and purpose.  (Mission is the strategic, guidance system of an organization.  All decisions should be rooted in the core identity ie: mission, and purpose)

Mission, Purpose, and Values should be in the room where decisions are made. 

KEY QUESTION: How is this decision aligned with who we say we are? 

Any time there is a leadership change, the mission, and purpose of an organization is at risk. 

Mission Statement

• Anyone should be able to memorize and repeat. 
• Very succinct and noticeable.
• maybe bigger and larger, but the mission statement should be a short, memorable phrase. 

When assessing the health of an organization the following are key questions to ask about the mission (purpose and values too!)

• How many people understand the mission statement?
• How is the mission statement used?
• Is it functional?
• How is the mission statement use and reinforced?

As people are becoming more personally interested in meaning and purpose the value and importance of organizations having clear mission, purpose and values is increasing. (People want to work where they understand the impact) 

Purpose is the WHY 

• Why are we in business?  
• What are the needs that we serve? 
• The purpose is foundational to the mission statement. 

Mission is the WHAT

• What do we do?

Values are the HOW 

1. How do we carry out our mission and purpose?
2. What beliefs guide the organization?

In this episode Ray (Chief Learner) and Amy (Chief Question Asker) talk about the NEW name, NEW focus and NEW direction for the podcast:

We feel the consultant school:

• More accurately reflects the conversations and tools that are shared. 
• Ray is a born educator and we heard from our listeners that the podcast felt like attending a class. (in the best way!)

Power of Questions:

• Help us know what we didn’t know that we knew. 
• The way we learn

Heart of Consulting is Learning To Ask:

•  What do I have to learn?  
• What do my clients need to learn?

What can The Consultant School listeners expect?

• Learn from Ray’s 40 plus year of work as a consultant.
• Discussions about the questions that have emerged that have yet been answered.  
• Identifying new understanding and tools.
• Become a part of a larger community of learning.

TOOLS & TIP FOR CONSULTANTS (from this episode):

• Organize meetings (board meetings, team meetings or family meetings) around questions.  When meetings are organized around questions it creates (and invites) people into thoughtful conversations and engagement that they might not have otherwise considered with a bullet point list. 

• Every conflict is an opportunity.  
• Approach conflict with the questions: 
  • What do I have to learn from this conflict? 
  • What does my client have to learn from this conflict? 

• TO/WITH Framework

• • When we approach clients with a “to” mindset we make them into objects
  • When we approach clients with a “with” mindset we build a relationship that is dynamic and humble.
  • No one has all the answers and a “with” mindset sets a tone that we are learning and exploring with our clients. 

• The Role of a Consultant

• • (with) Come alongside organizational leadership to address their challenges, seize the opportunities and navigate the change. 
  • (with) The most successful consultants view their role as helping the one in charge. 
  • The consultant gives help, insight, and knowledge to the leaders and lets them use it how they see fit. The consultant doesn’t set out to control the outcome. 

The Consultant Question:

• What questions do you need to ask yourself? 

• What do you know that you need to be aware of, and what do you need to do with that knowledge?

Resistance to change.

What is the source of the resistance?

• There is a natural resistance to change that happens. Change creates disequilibrium and we naturally don’t like to be out of balance.

Another explanation in organizational context

• Organizational dysfunction: The organization isn’t able to change because of the problems that are at the heart of how the organization function.

Organizations operate by the same principles that Humans do in their development.

The Living Company by Ari De Geus

De Geus studied companies that lasted over 100 years. He found that organizations that lasted over 100 years viewed themselves as a living organism, which embraced change.

Where organizations are effective, they are healthy.  

When organizations are not effective, there is dysfunction somewhere.

Reframing Organizations by Lee Bolman & Terrence Deal

Frames outlined in Reframing Organizations

• Structure (how an organization is organized)
• People (human Resource)
• Organizational Politics (decision making)
• Symbolic (meaning symbols, stories, rituals, activities, logos, etc.)
• Process (how things are done)
• Soul (mission, purpose, values, vision=essences of organization)

Each frame can be functional or dysfunctional.  It’s the role of a consultant to help the organization identify where health and dysfunction is in these frames. 

Built to Last Jim Collins  and Jerry Porras

Organizational Health must look at each one of these frames.  Status of health will have a direct impact on the success (or lack there off) of any consulting work.

What do we need to pay attention to?

Intuitive Questions that a consultant would ask about an organization:

• Are they clear about their identity?
• Are there issues about how they are doing things?

Organizational Decision Making (Clue to Organizational Health) 

• To what extent is the way the organization makes a decision (or anyone of the organizational health framework) congruent with organizational values?
• Most organization decision making is personality centered rather than organizational centered which results in no accountability.
• Most Organizations practice the golden rule:  who has the most gold, rules. 

Organizational Framework is an important tool for consultants to help create better results.

The guiding question for consultants:

• What is the status of their health? (However, you define that)
• If I engaged with them, to what extent can I help them to increase their health, rather than enabling their disfunction.

Intuition Questions:

• What do I know?
• What am I going to do about it?

The most dangerous thing for a consultant is to be in denial about the health of the organization.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Reframing Organizations by Lee Bolman & Terrence Deal

Built to Last Jim Collins  and Jerry Porras