Bold Pronouncements LO12636

John Zavacki (jzavacki@wolff.com)
Fri, 21 Feb 1997 05:35:03 -0500

Replying to LO12624 --

Kent says:
> 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.

SNIP of the process leading to this question:
> Should a consultant use as a criterion of success that he become
> dispensible, or become indispensible?

I have been both internal and external consultant and have always worked
toward the goal of my personal obsolescence. As a quality professional, I
have felt for a long time that my "expertise" was needed only because the
organizations in which I worked had failed to develop quality management
as an integrated function of all other disciplines and that my job was
neither to control or assure quality, but to teach and coach the entire
organization in integrating my personal "expertise" into the overall
organizational operating system.

I believe the same applies to facilitation/consulting in other cognitive
and behavioral arenas. When we see them as parallel processes, we feel
the need for experts to guide us. Once they have become integrated,
system-wide, and there use incorporated into the operating system, it's
time to move on, either to a new arena of practice or a deeper
understanding of that "expertise" to begin the next step in the journey.

-- 
jzavacki@wolff.com
John Zavacki
The Wolff Group
800-282-1218
http://www.wolff.com/ 
 

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