Advanced Consulting: Earning Trust at the Highest Level - Hardcover

Pasmore, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1523088060 ISBN 13: 9781523088065

Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

This is the first book to address the specific needs and challenges faced by high-level consultants, who work on very complex projects and must win the confidence of the most senior leaders in organizations.

Advanced consulting requires both expertise and personal qualifications that are distinct from those needed in everyday consulting. Advanced consultants work with high-level executive teams on complex issues such as strategy, organizational design, merger integration, digital disruption, culture change, and system-wide transformation. While neophyte consultants are often given a playbook to follow, advanced consultants need to invent methods that take full advantage of the opportunities that their work with clients presents.

There is an art to advanced consulting as well as a science; who you are is as important as what you do. Bill Pasmore draws on his four decades of experience as a consultant and teacher of consultants to show readers how to see possibilities that are not evident, conduct analyses that support the value of more comprehensive work, build relationships that engender deeper trust, adapt to changing circumstances, and empower members of their team to take independent actions while maintaining overall control of an engagement. Illustrated with vivid real-world examples and including a self-assessment to measure your progress, this book equips you to advance to more senior positions in your firm or to build a successful independent practice.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bill Pasmore is professor of practice at Columbia University's Teachers College as well as senior vice president of organizational leadership at the Center for Creative Leadership. He heads his own consulting firm, Pasmore Advisors, and was previously partner at Oliver Wyman Delta consulting. He holds a doctorate from Case Western Reserve University, where he was also a tenured full professor. He is the author of eight books.

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PROLOGUE
It’s 1998. I’ve gone  to work for Delta Consulting, a New York–based consulting  firm started  twenty-five years previously by David Nadler, a former Columbia  Business  School professor. The  firm specializes in consulting  to CEOs. Even though I have been  consulting  for over twenty years, I have recently completed six full weeks of orientation to learn to do consulting  the way people do at Delta consulting. This is a description of a fairly typical first meeting  between Delta and a client, in which I had the opportunity to observe David Nadler  (a wonderful mentor and friend  to me, now deceased)  work his art. The names  of the firm and client have been  changed  but the rest is as it happened that day.
  
8  a.m.— t h e  h e l ip ort  at  12 t h a n d  30t h on   t h e  H u dson. As the  Sikorsky A-76 descends over the  water, the  calm water of the river at first erupts  into  a fury of waves and  spray, and  then  actually seems to form  a depression as it absorbs  the  weight of the  powerful craft that  hovers above it. A second  later,  as the helicopter settles on the tarmac,  the river returns to normal, no worse for wear.
John Healey, the corporate pilot who guides the helicopter with the
tail number PM101 that identifies  the aircraft to air traffic controllers on  its frequent journeys  between  Hartford and  New York,  explains that  he earned his pilot’s license  before  his driver’s license,  by work- ing for flying time  instead  of pay at the  local airport. After that,  it was the military, where he learned to fly these  strange  birds without wings. Since then, he’s never paid a cent to fly. As a pilot who still has to pay to rent  an airplane, I envy him.
“Are you Dr. Nadler?”  he asks. “No, I’m Bill Pasmore,” I tell him. He  doesn’t  seem  impressed; to John,  I might  as well have been  an- other piece of baggage. “Well, is Dr. Nadler  joining us this morning?” “Yes, he’ll be along  shortly.” On cue, David arrives, and  soon we are lifting off over the Hudson, straight  up past the 38th floor of 1177 6th Avenue, where our office is located.  Hartford is 48 minutes upstream.
The  reason  for  this  magic  carpet  ride  needs  some  explanation. This  story,  like  others,   has  a  beginning. It  seems  that  this  fellow named George  Smith  runs  a company  located  in upstate New York that  keeps  the  local Wegman’s  grocery  in business  and,  by the  way, Delta Consulting, too. George,  who has worked closely with David for many years, experienced an interesting transition a few years earlier, becoming the first non-family member to run  the company.  The last family member who served as CEO before  George  was another client of David’s and took David’s advice about  how to retire  with style and grace.  As a result,  the  company  didn’t  miss a beat  as the  reins  were handed over to George.  There were other CEOs in the  news at the time who could  have used David’s help  with succession  planning but failed to ask for it. Some of them didn’t fare as well. Succession can be wonderful, or it can be hell.
George  finds time  to sit on  the  board of People’s  Mutual,  one  of the largest mutual life insurance companies, which in 1998 had about
$60 billion in assets and another $130 billion under management. The company  is large enough to own several other companies that would be large  in their  own right—such as the  Stratus  Fund,  which offers  People’s  Mutual  the  opportunity to get into  the  401K asset manage- ment  business;  John  Cline  & Company,  which serves individual and institutional investors; Malther  Realties, which manages  real estate equities; Pinetree Capital Management, which provides investment advisory services to the insurance industry; and Nova Leveraged  Cap- ital  Corporation, a commercial finance  company.  People’s  Mutual also owns PM101. They can afford it.
Sam Tyler has been  CEO of People’s Mutual for nine  years. Under his  uncannily  insightful leadership,  the  company   has  done   well, doubling in  size while making  bold  moves into  new products  that its largest  competitors still haven’t  matched. There is no  doubt that Sam deserves  to go out  a hero  and  that  is precisely  what he  would like to do.  He’s not  having  as much  fun  as he  used  to; some  of his close friends  have died;  others  are playing golf and  reaping the  just rewards of a life of hard  work and honest living. Sam is about  as down to Earth, honest in his self-appraisal, and open  in his confusion about how to do this thing  right  as anyone  you will meet.  He started  out as an insurance agent (he must have been a good one) and rose through the ranks. Now, at age sixty-one, he’s decided that he doesn’t  need  to ride the horse  until sixty-five or beyond.  In fact, he’d like to hang  up the spurs at sixty-three. He mentioned this to the board, and George picked  up on his inner turmoil. There’s  a problem, you see; Sam has no  clear  heir  apparent. He feels as though he has failed  to prepare someone properly but,  at the  same time—like  a guy shopping for a new car—he  has made  up his mind  to make a trade  and he wants to close the deal. Now.
George pulls Sam aside after the board meeting and mentions that he’s had  a little experience with succession  himself,  from  the  other side. No, he doesn’t  have the answers for Sam, but he knows someone he  thinks  could  help.  George  calls David to ask a favor. Then Sam calls David. Then David calls me. We’ll meet at the helipad early next Wednesday  morning. In the  meantime, I read  the  background that our research group has prepared on the company  and  the materials Sam sent along.
Have I ever consulted in the insurance industry  before? No. That’s OK. David knows the  lingo,  and  I’ll pick it up along  the  way. Have I ever done  a CEO succession project? No. That’s OK. David knows the process. I’ll pick it up along the way. Why am I here? Precisely because this is what I need  to learn. There are certainly others  more qualified, more  experienced in this particular work and industry.  David has an eye on the future;  the sooner he gets me up to speed,  the better it is for my billings—and the firm’s. I don’t  mind  tagging along.
Incidentally, David is looking  forward  to this. It’s a “try to stump the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2020
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1523088060
• ISBN 13: 9781523088065
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt; hello@eucompliancepartner.com; ; 139b-14; Tallinn; 11317; Estland