Strategy Six: Discussions about Work
This strategy reflects the traditions of many organizations regarding the value of dialogue and deliberation. It is readily embraced by and rarely threatening to many employees. Practitioners who employ this strategy usually assume that employees entering into in-depth discussions about their work will gain a more mature perspective of their job performance as a result of these discussions. Employees will also acquire a more explicitly defined set of concepts about the ways in which they might most effectively operate in relationship to other employees.[iii] If the discussions are held over an extended period of time with the assistance of a trained leader, they may produce significant personal or professional change. Nevitt Sanford and his colleagues in Berkeley, for instance, found that they could have a profound impact on faculty members simply by interviewing them about their work. I have similarly observed that the simple use of interviews with employees in many different kinds of organizations can make a clear and long-lasting difference. An appreciative perspective is critical. The discussions about work should lead to greater understanding of the complex dynamics that occur in the workplace, as well as increased appreciation for the role played by other employees in the organization.
Strategy Seven: Consultation
The consultation-based HRD strategy seems, on first acquaintance, to be similar to the training strategy. However, there are distinct and important differences between the two. The consultation model does not begin with an assumption that training is always an important aspect of change. As a matter of fact, at least one consultative model begins by rejecting the basic assumption concerning the desirability of change itself. At the very least, an appreciative perspective on consultation challenges the assumption that there is something wrong with the current organization that must be corrected or changed.
An experienced practitioner who makes use of a consultation-based approach to human resource development will not begin with any well-developed preconceptions about what the problems are in the organization. She will usually make extensive use of information collection, analysis, and feedback—after having taken the most critical and often controversial step in the consultative process: identification of the client. Who is the client: the department head, the president, the trustees or board directors, the employees? The client, once identified, will define the goals of the program. Given the necessary responsiveness of a consultant to her client, no one sequence of activities can be defined as being typical of this strategy. Only in the case of the entry point is there a common pattern among consultants. Prior to any consultative intervention, some clarification of the client’s problem usually occurs, along with the establishment of a preliminary contract in which the obligations and expectations of both client and consultant are spelled out in some detail.
Many consultative processes are basically a recycling between information collection and clarification, and contracting between the client and consultant. The primary goal of the consultant in this process is to generate valid and useful information for the client, while increasing the client’s options for action. Needless to say, this type of dispassionate, almost detached, process is more difficult to achieve if the consultant is a member of the organization being served. At an early stage, external consultants can usually do a more effective job than can internal consultants, especially if the external consultant works closely with one or more human resource practitioners who operate from inside the organization.
