[Ebook PDF] Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, 3rd Edition

• Delivery: Can be download Immediately after purchasing
• Version: Only PDF Version.
• Compatible Devices: Can be read on any devices (Kindle, NOOK, Android/IOS devices, Windows, MAC)
• Quality: High Quality. No missing contents. Printable

_____________________________________________________________

[Ebook PDF] Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, 3rd Edition

ISBN-13: 978-0470620748
ISBN-10: 0470620749

Author: Peter Block (Author)

This Third Edition to Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting addresses business changes and new challenges since the second edition was written ten years ago. It tackles the challenges next-generation consultants face, including more guidance on how to ask better questions, dealing with difficult clients, working in an increasingly virtual world, how to cope with complexities in international consulting, case studies, and guidelines on implementation. Also included are illustrative examples and exercises to help you cement the guides offered.

What’s New ?
The last time I revised this book was in 1999 when we were millennium-minded. On the one hand, we feared business would be shutting down because the computer world was going to abort and
refuse to grow one year older. On the other side was the belief that the new millennium would mark the beginning of a new consciousness for peace and well-being.
Well, neither really happened. Our dependency on computers and technology has only intensifi ed, and a decade into the millennium, we are at war, still addicted to fossil fuels, and concerned whether the
economic system we have grown used to is still relevant. This means that living with a vulnerable present and an uncertain future is going to be a permanent condition.
This situation bodes well for the world of consulting. The more complexity, confusion, and uncertainty in our lives, the more we realize we cannot go it alone or keep doing what we have been doing. The
demand for help and advice should keep growing.
The profound uncertainty of our lives, both personally and at work, also results in more and more people functioning in a consultative stance. The essence of this stance is that of wanting to have infl uence
when you do not have direct control. This challenge is true not just for consultants; it is true for people who used to be in charge: bosses, teachers, preachers, doctors, sergeants, mayors, and, not least of all,
parents. Permanent vulnerability and uncertainty demand a level of relatedness based on listening, authenticity, and not knowing. This is what makes command-and-control behavior increasingly obsolete.
Not all of us get this, but sooner or later, we are going to develop our capacity for deeper relatedness and partnership or we will be looking for a new job sooner than our careful planning might have indicated.
In response to the wider need for a consultative stance, I have added in this edition two examples of how consulting skills can be useful, actually transformative, in a broader context than strictly for people
in a support or consulting role. I have picked two sectors of society where the call for change and reform has been shouting in our ears for decades with little to show for it: health care and education. These
are also service industries, which is where most of us work these days.
Both of these fi elds are in the throes of the language of reform. But most reform efforts are more about improvement rather than rethinking something more fundamental. The health care “reform” is
mostly about cost control, who pays, and increasing the pressure on standardization. There is no reform in that conversation, just better or different management. Real reform in health care will come from
changing our relationship with our service provider and having service providers change their relationship with each other. In consulting terms, we need more balanced contracting, more joint discovery, and a new dialogue. This is starting to occur, and Chapter Twelve presents a great example from a very special surgeon, Paul Uhlig.
Like health care, the current conversation about education reform is also not reform; it is just more controls and imposed standards masquerading as reform. True reform will shift our thinking about the
culture of the classroom, accountability of the learner, and the relationship between teacher and student. An example of this from an amazing high school teacher, Ward Mailliard, is in Chapter Eighteen.
Looking at the face of reform in these two arenas gives us clues on ways to achieve changes for leadership in other areas, such as business, government, religion, and human services. In addition to living with permanent uncertainty, we are living increasingly virtual lives. Many of our relationships are long distance.
We are part of virtual teams spread too far to ever be in the same room together. We are more and more dependent on electronic interaction. We speak to friends by writing on an electronic wall, and we
substitute webinars for seminars. Soon we will be able to hold all our conversations, be entertained, find a life partner, and visually be with our family all on a handheld device.
Despite the growth of the virtual world, our days are still occasionally populated with live human beings and when we are in the room with others, we need to get to the point and make the most of it. Playing
roles, being vague, speaking in generalities, and getting to the point in the last five minutes waste the uniqueness of having all our senses available when we are face-to-face. We want to take advantage of real
meetings to become personally connected in ways powerful enough to overcome the distancing and isolating effects inherent in an electronic connection. Thus, the need for authenticity and directness about sensitive issues outlined in this book increases. There is a discussion in Chapter Six about ways to make virtual relationships as useful as possible. If you do not want to read that far, text me and I will compress it and send to your drop box, assuming you give me the key.
Another revision in this edition is in the chapters on the feedback phase and on implementation. Giving feedback is part of every consulting or support effort, but almost every meeting is one where ideas or analyses are presented with the intent of improving or shifting a person’s or organization’s strategy or operation. We still spend way too much time making our point, often our PowerPoint, without realizing that
the purpose of most meetings is not to make a point, or express ideas, or to sell something but to move something forward. That is why I have broadened the idea of a feedback meeting to include any meeting that has the intent of producing action. The action does not move forward when one person is talking and a group of people are listening. It is dialogue, interaction, doubts, and commitments that move
the action forward. This sounds so simple and remains so rare that I explore it in more detail in Chapters Fifteen and Seventeen.
One other addition relates to the shift occurring in the organizational world from a primary focus on needs and defi ciencies to a focus on possibilities, gifts, and strengths. The belief is that more change occurs
when we focus on the future and our capacities rather than try to make sense of the past or even the present and look so much at problems and what is wrong. In Chapter Twelve, I give some examples of
where this is occurring and offer some thoughts on what this means for consulting work.