This article emphasizes on the kind of consultancy approach a company should adopt to bring about the change. Consultancy can be divided into two broad areas: one that deals with rapid change where in the plant manager work is nearly done once the consultants are hired. The another approach is what the author calls as rapid cycle approach wherein the internal consultants and other top management has to specify the area where the change can be brought and work in tandem with the consultants in a phase wise manner.
There are greater chances of failure in the huge projects are because the internal management thinks that consultants can do some magical work to bring the change. In most of the cases the client organization does not do its homework and lacks requisite implementation skills, the managerial consensus and the motivations necessary to exploit the consultant’s ideas successfully. Any consultancy project, however small it may be, need a cross department involvement to become a success e.g. the consultancy project for Updyke Supply as mentioned in the case involved sales & marketing, manufacturing, finance, information systems and various other groups.
For successful implementation of project, senior management would have to coordinate the various implementation steps. The consulting assignment may require dozen of interrelated change be carried out in an interrelated fashion, a process calling for skills and capabilities and motivation that may be missing.
In the large scale project where in the management is not involved the initiatives have no value unless they are implemented phase wise by the client organization. The case provides the example of consulting firm with a health insurance provider where the process design teams came up with several suggestions and initiatives but the company managers and senior management had very little experience in implementing this kind of complex changes. The company was not able to apply the initiative and the consultancy project was failed. The risk of failure in the titanic projects is greater. For lowering the risk of failure, fundamental paradigm change based on high impact consulting would be better.
The author calls this second approach a high impact consulting because there is a clients involvement in the project and the changes that are brought in a phase wise manner can bring about the change in the faster manner e.g. in New England aluminum-processing company the author with the involvement of supervisors and management team was able to bring 17% productivity improvement in six weeks time. Here the client’s implementation capability is the key to success. The whole project is divided into smaller subprojects whose outcomes are tangible and can motivate the client and consulting firm to take further initiatives in the motivated manner. This rapid cycle successes create the foundation upon which ever larger ventures can be constructed. Here consultants would be available to provide methodological help. This high impact consulting may not require intensive capital investments (hard lever changes) to bring about the change.
The author call the titanic projects a fur-lined mousetrap wherein the management has no pains in the initial stage but the whole practice turns out to be futile. The client organization should make sure its objectives about the change; develop capabilities to bring about the change with consultants.
