Belatedly, an increasing number of external professional business consultants, accountants included are appreciating the value for clients is not asking WHAT or HOW, but rather WHY?
There is a noticeable awakening among business owners that many answers to the question Why? are inadequate, lacking depth, understanding and strategic competitive value and advantage. The sources to those answers reside with client principals and traditional constituencies.
Training, experience and expertise in accountancy, human resources, organisation design, law are specific process-driven skill sets and are therefore insufficient for purpose.
Innovation, creativity, originality and disruption tend to be beyond the scope of many external spheres of influence.
Business workshop facilitators and moderators likewise are perceived to lack the capacity and drive to be catalysts for identifying, developing and articulating “stretch-goals” and quantum-change initiatives.
ASSERTIVE FORCE
Shaking up and dispelling states of comfort will typically not be achieved by external sources asking “easy” questions. The need exists for contributors to pose “hard” questions enthusiastically and unapologetically.
These can be, and often are confronting, challenging and inclined to elicit personalised defensive responses.
Sometimes, to effect significant and sustainable change the structuring and delivery of “hard” questions exposes the fact that in these instances and times:
There is no place to hide
And so it is that a key fourth question is evolving, WHY NOT?
Fundamental is the presence of contentions, propositions and considerations, but never conclusions.
Conclusions rightly remain the province and responsibility of the client, owners and leaders. They cannot and should not delegate the authority of such to external catalysts and facilitators for change, innovation, creativity and, yes, transparency.
A sense of discomfort seems innate in such scenarios. That reflects the presence and reality of cognitive dissonance. That is, recognition of the gap – often substantial – between what is and what should (if not need) be.
CASE STUDY:
START WITH COMPOSITION
Recent exposure to a local government Business Development Advisory Committee presentation was revealing. Indeed invaluable.
Public Notice placements had been published in the local media calling for submissions regarding participation on the committee. Really? Very selective.
Some select invitations were extended to identified people. Included in the list were several “usual suspects”.
Meetings were held. Ideas exchanged. Lists compiled.
And then … tentative directions were issued to local government employees whose experience, training, expertise, authority levels and budgets were, well, limited, deficient and founded on inappropriate corporate culture values. There was little or no capacity to enforce, reward or penalise local property and business owners to undertake positive action.
The ideas may well have been profound, creative, original, appropriate and potentially financially rewarding.
Some committee members were identified as and nominated to be entrepreneurial. Most were senior employees and consultants known to local government executives.
It was quickly apparent that structural deficiencies and inadequacies existed. There appeared to be no shortage of issues. In all likelihood, the questions WHAT, HOW and WHY were addressed.
Posing a series of WHY NOT, questions was not well received.
However, one can be persistent and resistant to reluctance and dismissal.
Contemplate, if you will, the validity, veracity, and potential inherent in the “following” questions:
WHY NOT …
Change the Advisory Committee to an Action Board
Extend Board members list to include genuine local entrepreneurs who had the capacity to take on some of the ideas, accept the risks and invest outright or in collaboration with local property, business owners and residents.
Provide an annual budget for investment, encouragement and facilitation.
Issue specific briefs to specialist professionals to initiate, negotiate and facilitate nominated projects and proposals.
Provide tolerance for possible, and probable failures, and in some instances financial write-offs.
And finally, WHY NOT overcome the stifling belief and contentions that local governments are primarily responsible for rubbish, roads and rates, and take on the entrepreneurial mantle of being effective, efficient and supportive catalysts and facilitators for change, development, creativity, innovation and, above all, disruption.
The same principles and challenges apply to commerce at large.
Barry Urquhart
Business Strategist
Marketing Focus
M: 041 983 5555
E: Urquhart@marketingfocus.net.au