Cooperation, consulting and Fads LO7493

Bill Hendry (sfidba@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us)
Sun, 19 May 1996 08:03:05 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO7468 --

Question to the group re this thread:

So, do you only take jobs which you know you can somehow get to a
collaborative stage with your client? If all clients followed this
approach would any of them "eat"? I have read and teach Bellman and
Block, and would say that their positions now enable them to take mostly
work that is collaborative in nature - rather than the pair of hands or
expert approaches Block talks about. Just because you initially operate
in an expert or pair of hands role does not make you unethical, as long as
you work towards a process of collaboration in the future.

[Host's Note: Good question Bill, but just a warning -- There are a large
number reading here; the much smaller number who reply to this may not be
a representative sample. ...Rick]

On Thu, 16 May 1996, jack hirschfeld wrote:

> But there is no ethical dilemma,in my view. Peter Block has described the
> consultant role vis a vis the client as either expert, collaborator, or
> pair of hands. He places responsibility for contracting for collaboration
> squarely with the consultant, since it is likely that the client is
> looking for an expert or a pair of hands or both -- but usually not a
> collaborator. Geoffrey Bellman has written eloquently of how a
> consultant's judgement might be distorted by a desire to eat regular, or
> in some cases by simple greed. But the ethics of the situation are clear
> to me: a consultant needs to know the answer to Warfield's third question,
> and has an ethical obligation to provide THAT.

-- 

Bill Hendry | work e-mail: sfidba@thpl.lib.fl.us Organizational Development Consultant and Trainer Hillsborough County, FL (813) 276-2727, fax (813) 276-2197

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>