The management consulting industry is one of the largest and most mature professional services markets today, with a global market size of $860.3 billion. Organizations often contract with management consultants to improve their performance, relying on the consultants’ expertise and knowledge about industry best practices. However, there are times when the consultant’s knowledge and methods are unable to deliver the Client’s desired results.
This is often where Process Consulting comes in. Process Consulting is an iterative form of inquiry and guidance, where the consultant works alongside the Client to co-create solutions. Instead of providing ready-made solutions to problems, a Process Consultant’s main role is to advance the Client’s growth and learning through an authentic discovery process, inspired by the Socratic Method. This field was first described close to 50 years ago by the late Dr Edgar Schein, Professor Emeritus at MIT Sloan School of Management.
Another pioneer of the field of Process Consulting is Mark L. Vincent, PhD, EPC. Vincent has been in the practice of Process Consulting for more than 30 years and has worked with more than 900 Clients worldwide. He is also the Founder and a Course Facilitator for The Society for Process Consulting, a body that establishes the core competencies for Process Consulting, as well as Founder and former CEO of Design Group International, an organizational development community of practice for Process Consulting practitioners. Vincent is the author of Listening Helping Learning: Core Competencies of Process Consulting, one of the seminal works in the field.
According to Vincent, Clients most often approach Process Consultants for something that they have never had to handle before. These Clients have likely tried traditional consulting, which sells existing knowledge, such as a management methodology, and were not satisfied with the output.
“After we’re brought in, we start asking questions such as, ‘Why does this matter?’, ‘What would success look like for you?’ and ‘Who needs to be involved for this project to be successful?’. Process Consultants start by creating a partnership with the Client as opposed to just doing something for the Client. We do not come in merely as contractors. While we might have a specific field of expertise that we could draw on, it’s not where we start. We begin by designing a process and co-creating that process with the Client, preparing to learn alongside them and to walk alongside them so that they are more empowered, more equipped, and more talented in the future. Process Consulting is an iterative process. Instead of selling solutions and making Clients fit into them, we ask questions and arrive at the solution alongside the Client, then we work together to implement it.”
Vincent says that most of what is considered consulting is subject matter expertise and positioning that expertise as the solution to an organization’s problems. And, in many situations, this works. He likens it to a car having a flat tire. Regular consulting is like knowing how to change a flat tire, where there is a known and technical problem with a known and technical solution that can be taught to others.
However, if the car gets a flat tire four days in a row, then there is a deeper and unknown cause that must be discovered. A Process Consultant will come up with hypotheses with the Client, eliminating those that are less likely to be true and retaining the stronger ones, eventually reaching a conclusion. In the case of the flat tires, these may be caused by someone angry at the car’s owner, someone spilling nails on the driveway, a manufacturing defect in the car, or something wrong with how the owner drives.
Vincent often works with CEOs, boards and senior management who are looking at continuity planning and succession planning for a business. Many times, a well-established CEO realizes that the business' strategic plans are going to continue beyond their tenure, whether after their retirement or after a new CEO with a different skillset is brought in.
“This is a precarious moment in the life of an organization, and it's not something you can just replicate,” Vincent says. “There's just too much uniqueness involved. Another important part of Process Consulting is training executives to think in the same way, taking into consideration the short, medium, and long term. An organization will want to have strong and long-term effective leaders rather than people that flame out quickly, so I'm often involved in helping to develop these leaders, serving as an executive advisor. Well-established CEOs want to have a good successor to ensure everything they've worked for won't go to waste. Process Consultants like me help raise those people up.”
Media contact:
Name: Mark L Vincent
Email: [email protected]
