The Complexity of Consultancy

Consultancy is a lucrative industry dependent on the production and use of tools and techniques which hold out the promise of success for the organisations it supports: transformation, or greater efficiency and effectiveness, perhaps even culture change. However, a critical and important question is whether these promises are fulfilled in everyday practice in organisations. Is it possible at all for consultants to predict and control the changes that their clients ask for? This volume reframes the role of consultants from detached observers wielding a stable body of knowledge useful in all contexts, to that of skilled participants in the conscious and unconscious processes of organisational life.

In this book, one of three in a series looking at complexity and management, the expert authors bring together their experiences to provide vibrant accounts of how to lead in everyday organisational situations using practical judgement. The book includes a brief historical introduction to complexity and leadership, real-world narratives illustrating concrete dilemmas in the workplace, and a concluding chapter that draws together the practical and theoretical implications.

With both theoretical grounding and practical insights from managers and consultants in leading firms, this is an ideal resource for executives and students on leadership development and talent management programmes, as well as those undertaking higher education courses in leadership and consulting.

"To the extent that consultancy involves immersing oneself in an alien (client) environment so as to elicit a feel for the culture and relational dynamics of that setting, it represents a derivative ? albeit commercial ? form of ethnography. What better method, then, to explore the practice of consultancy itself? Furthermore, and as the editors of this volume rightly observe, the complexity and uncertainty of everyday consultancy life belies the orderliness and linearity of consultancy technique prescribed in mainstream management literature. The (auto)ethnographic methods advanced collectively by the contributors of this book takes aim at this tension. This volume makes for a read that is genuinely insightful, rewarding, and pedagogically rich."

Dr. Tom Vine, Associate Professor, University of Suffolk, and editor, Ethnographic Research and Analysis: Anxiety, Identity and Self

"This timely book is for reflective managers as well as consultants who are unconvinced or disillusioned by conventional wisdom. It proposes a ?grown up? approach that moves away from the easy idealizations and simplifications of organizational realities and consultancy interventions. Based upon insights born of curiosity and lived experience, each chapter deals with the ?dirt? and explores the ?shadows? of organizing and managing. Emphasizing the importance of increased self-understanding and deeper sense-making, this path-breaking book urges and advances the adoption of more thoughtful, less self-defeating means of grappling with the demanding, contradictory practices of managing and consulting."

Prof. Hugh Willmott, Bayes Business School

"How stimulating to encounter a text that probes those discomforting experiences that arise during consulting processes, and, rather than explaining them away or trying to avoid them, shows how discussing these frankly and thoughtfully unearths a fertile ground for informing ethical action."

Dr. Patricia Shaw, Co-founder of the Doctor of Management Programme at University of Hertfordshire

"A unique book, based in the autoethnographic experience of its contributors, this collection provides a richly nuanced and reflexively theorised insight into the complex reality of everyday consultancy practice. It is essential reading for practitioners, researchers and students."

Prof. Ian Burkitt, University of Bradford