Combining my practitioner experience, and research, I developed a model for a consulting approach. It is called Connected Participation and deepens issues related to the relationship between client/s and consultant in order to ensure success to change efforts taking place in Organizations.
I will be presenting the model at the end of May at the CBS - Copenhagen Business Schoool Conference.
Here follows the Abstract of the Paper .
Client/s and Consultant in an OD Intervention:
Who are they?
How do they interact as a team in order to reach their common objective?
A perspective from experiences with Small and Medium Enterprises.
Dr. Mario Gastaldi
CEO
Brain Team Consulting s.n.c.
mario.gastaldi@braint.net
Consultants are effective change agents that allow effective and sustainable change to take place in organizations.
The cooperation/relationship between the Consultant and the Client/s in an organization development intervention is the nucleus of the intervention itself.
I propose a model – Connected Participation – CP.
Connected Participation has its foundation in the circumstance that organizational systems cannot be organized, but rather they self-organize. Hence its major feature is the participation of every client type in the organization at different levels, as opposed to a superficial involvement that doesn’t create ownership of the process.
The role of the consultant is one of a facilitator who works on process not on content.
CP allows for the formation of an effective team involving client/s and consultant.
In order to frame the topic I describe the requisites and features of a Successful Intervention,:
• organization learning takes place,
• behaviours change,
• business goals are accomplished.
Within the Connected Participation framework I state clear modalities and criteria that lead to a shared definition and understanding of intervention goals with tools that allow to easily define the degree of accomplishment.
The process commences with assessment, definition of issues, agreement, on issues and agreement on outcomes of the intervention.
The assessment combines appreciative inquiry with more traditional “problem/solution oriented” approaches
The Design phase, that follows, is based on a clear and shared understanding of issues and outcome. The team - client/s and consultant – works in participation to design the intervention.
The execution flows naturally as it is “owned” by the team including the client/s.
I describe the process with the different perspective related to different types of clients, and the way they are involved in order to effectively accomplish sustainable change.
What do you think? Do you have ideas or comments?
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