By Carter McNamara on January 30, 2012
Why It’s Important for Us to Know Our Paradigms, Theories and Models Paradigms, theories and models – we all have them and work from them. Many of us don’t know it. But we really should. When we practitioners in human development (consultants, coaches, trainers, etc.) come to conclusions about our clients and their organizations, we [...]
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By Carter McNamara on December 10, 2011
In a project, whether you are conducting a formal, systematic assessment or just doing a rather informal assessment, your natural approach to gathering and processing information will influence how you work. The Myers-Briggs folks provide some useful dimensions to consider. (Myers-Briggs is a registered trademark of Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.), Intuitive Versus Sensing Approaches to [...]
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By Carter McNamara on November 16, 2011
As a consultant, you work with clients to solve problems. Or, perhaps your philosophy is to help them address “priorities,” rather than “problems.” In any case, it’s extremely important to understand your own approach and how it affects others, especially your clients when working with them. Different people have quite different preferences and approaches for [...]
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By Carter McNamara on October 26, 2011
There’s a lot of money available to help small businesses, and it seems like there’ll be more available as we work to make more jobs. So OD in small businesses might be even more worthwhile. About half of our clients are small organizations. My experience of the differences of between OD in small and large [...]
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By Carter McNamara on October 15, 2011
Free Advice Too Often Backfires On You During a recession when potential clients are more reluctant to pay consultants for services, it can be very enticing for consultants to do almost anything to win contracts, even to do a lot of free consulting — to give away what the consultants otherwise would be paid for. [...]
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By Carter McNamara on April 7, 2011
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By Jim Smith on March 19, 2011
(See Part 2 of 3) Warren Bennis taught me to ask three questions: What’s So? So What? What Now?” How we handle uncertainty and how we deal with it personally is critical in how we manage change. Given the uncertainty and complexity in our organizations, dealing with ambiguity is a critical skill for consultants. This [...]
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By Jim Smith on February 25, 2011
(See part 1 of 3.) The personal development lessons come from putting myself into what Richard Leider called “The Land Of I Don’t Know. “ Putting myself into a total situation where I literally do not know how to survive on my own or I literally do not know what is going on half the [...]
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By Jim Smith on February 16, 2011
(Part 1 of 3) I have been in Africa for the past month. I am still in re-entry. About once ever 12-18 months my partner and I take teams of people into developing nations to work in villages to build clinics, or schools, or other projects to assist the local community as a whole. We [...]
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By Carter McNamara on January 21, 2011
Consulting books often suggest a sequence of steps or phases that a consulting project goes through. The nature of the sequence depends on the perspectives of the authors of the books. The initial phase has been referred to by a variety of names, for example, Start-Up and/or Entry. (Some books even mention these two terms [...]
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Carter McNamara of Authenticity Consulting, LLC, provides organization development and consultant training services, and is developer of the Free Management Library. [Read more ...]
Jim Smith has been a consultant for over 40 years, and has very strong knowledge and expertise in successfully guiding change
in many types of organizations. [Read more ...]