It has been argued that a consultant (process or other) is "marginal". He
isn't of the organization, and that's an important condition for his
success. Internal consultants tend to have more role complications that
external consultants, because their marginality is compromised.
That makes we wonder about the LO you propose -- an organization in which
everyone can act as a facilitating consultant for everyone else. That may
be equivalent to having an organization full of internal consultants, each
of whom will be taking on a marginal role when effective, and otherwise
having fluid and uncertain roles. I've been in situations where a bunch
of facilitators meet, several bid for the role of facilitator, and you get
the distinct impression that nobody is taking a stand, only being
agreeable to keep the process going, except that the process won't be
going anywhere until the attention gets off the process.
I said wistfully to a consultant friend of mine that I wish we could work
together somewhere. He said that could never happen, that we need to be
distributed among the people who are different from us (and with whom we
often have less affinity) in order that our contribution amount to
anything.
Perhaps an LO is where a facilitating/process consultant is not needed,
not because a facilitating consultant always emerges, or not because all
are acting as consultants simultaneously, but because all are familiar
with being facilitated and can continue without the facilitator (in any
form). That's like the class that can continue going through a lesson
while the teacher goes out for a smoke. Few classes could ever do this,
but some will who are involved and motivated, and who have been prepared
by the teacher for going it alone. In this situation, it would be
paradoxical for a student to stand up and declare that he was acting as
teacher. The teacher prepared the class to continue without him, and this
is the time for that continuation. Insertion of a substitute teacher
represents failure of the primary teacher's program.
Should a consultant use as a criterion of success that he become
dispensible, or become indispensible?
--Kent Myers myersk@us.net
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>