Conflict Issues
Many points of conflict arise in the work place, especially
in that of business consulting. Among the most critical is the plan of action
that will be taken. In business consulting the majority of work is done within
a team setting. As a result of this team or group setting many opinions arise
causing much debate in regards to the most “advantageous” way to proceed with a
specific client.
Within the team a conversation could go something like this:
Consultant 1 – Looking at the past financial statements it
looks as though our original theory was incorrect. We need to reconsider the
issue that is stopping the client from growing.
Consultant 2 – What did you see in statements that cause you
to believe that?
Consultant 1 – (Providing some level or reasoning to his
change may say) the original forecasts we predicted were based on falls
pretenses.
Consultant 2 – What do you suggest we do from
here?
Consultant 1 – Well from the information that we have thus
far it appears that (some plan of attack) would be the best way to proceed.
Consultant 2 – That is a good idea, but I have dealt with
clients such as these before. I have made the mistake of following your idea. The end result very rarely ends the way planned so let’s do this
approach instead. (Consultant 2 may then offer a different option and the conversation
would continue until an agreement was made.)
Analysis
Almost all of the dialogue between the two
consultants refers to the options they have that will affect the future in an advantageous
or disadvantageous way. This is often done through the use of documents as
consulting firms often times refer to past financial statements. An important
topic of invention that is often used in this field is that of past fact and
future fact. This is often used by those consultants who are the “team leader” (in
this case consultant 2) as they typically have more time and have attained more
experience. This could be created into its own topic of invention (we could
call it experienced vs. experienced).
Interesting post for me to read, because your example applies to actuarial consultants working together as well. I chose to give an example about consultants and their clients, but I recognize and mentioned that this dialogue and point of conflict arises often in the world of consulting. I think it is interesting that in both situations we identified advantageous/disadvantageous as the special topics of invention at work here. From this analysis I now see how both situations complement each other and help the consultants become better at both situations.
ReplyDeleteNice post. This highlights the importance of team work and communication. I also think it's good that you mentioned that the consultants need to be able to support their opinions with their experiences or facts.
ReplyDelete