Specific Problems with Organization and Management Methods
Professional Management Consultants providing routine Business Services
There are many stories of dissatisfaction with conventional business change consulting. Employ R-pM consultants for successful result value creation.
By: Harry Greene
I have seen many changes in my forty years as a professional management consultant, particularly in the business change and management improvement practices. My specialty is applying information technology for the benefit of the business. When I started out in the days of data processing, all computer systems and business change management consulting addressed specific client user requirements to solve specific enterprise client problems.
As technology advanced, many business solutions became packaged in software, processes, and methodologies that are applied to change situations rather than solving specific enterprise problems. Management consulting for business change became more like a business service than professional management consulting. But, all along both the enterprise client and the management consultant had a fundamental problem. They were attempting to change a business that was never organized or managed through more overlaid structures, systems, and solutions. Management consultants and enterprises need a new method to organize and manage the business and a new management consulting model to work in partnership for measured enterprise success.
Result-performance Management (R-pM) provides the means to organize and manage the business so that professional management consultants can return to providing solutions to precise problems to help clients with measured result value-added benefits. Review the R-pM community download "R-pM Consulting Model" to learn how to put professionalism back into management consulting.
In the days of Data Processing, system development and business change management consulting solved specific business problems
In the 1960s and 1970s, our consulting approach was to develop information systems from the ground up to satisfy business requirements. We started with the outputs needed and worked backwards to the inputs. It was clear that users could not envisage how information systems could really benefit the business. So much of our value was in helping users define and understand the main results (we called them business outputs) the business had to produce and then in designing the full man-machine system back to business inputs to produce better results. We did not implement the system; we implemented the methods and procedure solutions, which we now call business processes, to improve business results using the system.
Application packages changed many management consulting approaches
Then in the 1980s, things began to change. Application packages quickly replaced custom development. This lowered the cost of a quality system, but it also created a gap between the system and the business.
Since he no longer developed the system, the professional, who understood the business, had to dig deep into confusing documentation to use the advanced features of the package that enabled the business to improve. The professional, who understood the package, did not understand the business and saw his role as explaining use of system.
The approach became system implementation through business conversion
For consultants, employing the application package to improve the business was difficult and risky. The risk had to be contained, so the approach became system implementation to convert a defined portion of the existing business over the new system. Business change was through business conversion.
So, then consultants pursued the new business opportunity in packaged system implementation. It started with the big audit consultants, whose approach to consulting tended to parallel the approach to auditing -- use junior staff to follow methodologies and produce deliverables. Senior professionals no longer provided services, but were devoted to sales and leveraging staff on projects,
The approach evolved into utilizing management consultant methodologies
Consulting firms developed methodologies for strategic information system planning, system evaluation and acquisition, and system implementation. Senior professionals already had their own methods and resisted rote methodologies. So, junior consultants were trained to follow the methodology faithfully. By following methodologies, the consultants no longer needed the analytical capabilities and business knowledge of past professionals. Services provided became more like business services than professional management consulting services.
Business Process Re-engineering produced new business transformation methodologies
Methodologies began to spread to other facets of management consulting like corporate strategic planning, organization studies, etc. In the 1990’s a new wave came in business process re-engineering consulting, producing new business transformation methodologies. These methodologies concentrated on the business, but avoided IT, since business change could be executed quickly, and IT change was notoriously slow. This created a gap the other way between the business and the system.
Enterprise resource planning systems methodologies came in to solve the problem of old methodologies
Then integrated applications systems were relabeled as ERP systems and proclaimed to employ industry “best practices” that would automatically solve the problem. Many consultants supported a particular ERP package implementation, so then system planning and system evaluation and acquisition methodologies favored that package to bring in the implementation revenues.
But, ERP system implementation employed the same implementation methodologies that concentrated on conversion of existing data, business rules, and practices. Employing industry best practices required strong user effort beyond what the consultants provided.
Many problems with conventional management consulting have been exposed, tarnishing the professional image
In recent years, there have been exposés of the problems with management consultancy methods. Books have been written about the bad practices that also developed within management consulting firms.
So now, much of the professionalism has gone out of management consulting. More and more services offered are really business services rather than professional management consulting services. What do we have to do to bring professionalism back into consulting, particularly for business change and management improvement consulting?
Management consultants and the enterprise need a way to work in partnership for shared enterprise success
As a professional management consultant, I have been concerned both by the decline in professionalism and by the need for a way for management consultants to leverage enterprise capabilities for measured value creation.
We need to employ a new management consulting model that requires change by both the enterprise employing consultants and the management consultants and consulting firms. The enterprise must have the capability to manage its own development and manage the achievement of benefits. The consultants must get away from employing rote methodologies, and return to professionalism to work in partnership with the enterprise.
R-pM provides a new management consulting model to provide specific professional services for enterprise value-added success
The new model is provided by Result-performance Management (R-pM), which redefines the enterprise to employ specific performance solutions to produce specific results desired by management. This simplification enables the enterprise and consultants to have clear view of their participation. R-pM enables the enterprise and consultant to work in partnership for specific result value-added.
The R-pM 21st Century Management Consulting Model is not designed to employ junior consultants and project methodologies. R-pM consulting employs enterprise leadership and resources supported by consulting practices to meet standards and produce planned result value-added. R-pM consulting employs small methodologies to produce precisely-defined results within a project.
The R-pM consulting model requires enterprise management capabilities and leadership
The enterprise should not expect consultants to fulfill enterprise management responsibilities. The R-pM consulting model involves the following responsibilities on the part of the enterprise.
- Install a professional capability to manage enterprise investments and development programs
- Structure the enterprise to define and manage the precise results needed for success
- Structure enterprise capital to manage all capital utilized to produce results
R-pM consultants can help the enterprise set up the required management capabilities as a first step.
The R-pM Consulting Model employs professional consultants to leverage enterprise human capital to produce results
R-pM consultants provide specific performance solutions the enterprise lacks and leverage enterprise performance solutions to achieve development program results. The R-pM consulting model involves the following practices on the part of consultants.
- Help the enterprise implement R-pM and set up their side of the R-pM consulting model
- Provide result-based services to help the enterprise understand and plan the strategic result value to be created to provide the return on the investment
- Work with the enterprise in partnership to create the defined result value
- Provide proven professionals with the analytical capabilities and specialty experience that the enterprise lacks
- Develop the enterprise human capital capability solutions needed to produce results under the program
- Leverage the in-house enterprise teams to produce enterprise results and improvements. Do not do anything that the enterprise can do itself
- Work with the enterprise through to utilization of improvements for benefit and return on investment
- Do not implement information systems, implement the improved process that incorporates the system
- Do not provide consultant deliverables for review. All documents are accepted enterprise knowledge and records. There is one consultant deliverable, shared enterprise success
R-pm is used to both organize and manage the enterprise results to create value-added from the professional consulting services, and also to organize and manage the enterprise and consultant service solutions provided and the results produced in a result-performance development program.
The R-pM consulting model uses R-pM to reduce result risk and to increase significantly the value of R-pM consultant services
Management consultants need to adopt R-pM to help the enterprise eliminate 20th century performance problems and establish a 21st century enterprise. To do this, management consultants use the new R-pM consulting model to eliminate the old problems and risk in gaining benefit from business change and management improvement. Only when we have a way for the enterprise and their consultants to work together in partnership for measured success, will we have a way for consultants to return to the professionalism of old.
Content deleted May 2007 from Provide Prof Bu O and Ma Consulting with R-pM
R-pM consultants are leading the way to put professionalism back into management consulting
R-pM consultants learn to employ R-pM to understand the enterprise business and to enable new consulting services never possible with conventional business organization and management methods. R-pM provides a basis for many specialized management consulting services for business simplification, system/business process implementation, information capital management and integration, investment benefit analysis, capital performance and result development management, value-quality chain management, mergers and acquisitions, etc. There is an emerging need for R-pM management consultants to support enterprises in the transition from 20th century methods to 21st century Result-performance Management.
R-pM organizes and manages the business for all consulting applications
The first R-pM consulting will likely occur before the enterprise has implemented R-pM. This could be for an R-pM application or a full R-pM Transition Program. All R-pM applications organize and manage the business in the project problem area, whether the application is business simplification, a result value-quality chain, a capital development project, strategy development, etc. Project scope is defined by the results and performance solutions in that portion of the enterprise selected for improvement.
R-pM also organizes and manages the business of the project in a project business stricture to produce desired enterprise improvements as project results and manage enterprise and consultant capital assigned to the project as specific performance solutions.
Once R-pM is implemented, the business structure changes naturally and the enterprise has the capability to employ consultants in partnership for measured success in capital development and management improvement.
R-pM Consulting is professionally directed at producing planned result value-added from all improvement
All R-pM consulting projects are directed toward adding planned and measured value to results in the project plan. The objective is never to follow a methodology or simply implement a solution. R-pM manages both the results to be improved and the performance solutions to be developed and implemented. Result value without performance improvement is compared to result value with improvement over the payback period to justify the project. The actual result value achieved is measured against the improvement goals over the payback period, and steps are taken to ensure that planned result value is reached,
Achieving result value-added requires planning, implementation, and integration of all solutions producing the specific result. R-pM consulting is not a business service. R-pM develops the professional capabilities of both the consultant and the enterprise customer.
R-pM Consulting Model guides the enterprise- consultant partnership for measured result value-added success
R-pM Consultants have only one deliverable; jointly achieved enterprise result value-added success. All materials and recommendations produced within the project are enterprise-owned. The enterprise manages the project. The R-pM Consultant guides and assists to develop capabilities needed for the project and professional operation of results and performance solutions.
The most important result from the project is the implemented enterprise capability to manage and operate cost-effective performance to produce value-quality results.
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