- Listening (see HearWhatYouSay)
- If what the client is doing isn't working, tell them to do something else (anything else).
Yes; very much so. [...on the "Listening" point.]
Something I learned early on...
- Come up with some excuse to talk to all the department heads in private. (We used "document the information flow through the enterprise," and had a CASE tool to help do this.)
- Ask each one of them "what should be changed in this organization?" And other similar questions.
- Summarize and present these ideas to top management. Odds are, most of these ideas are new to them -- in spite of being top items for their immediate reports.
Our consulting engagements were a lot easier and more successful once we started doing this.
See also the
WikiPage ConsultantWisdom and
GeraldWeinberg's book
SecretsOfConsulting.