Improving a consulting organization

As you can see from the mandate I set for myself with the blog, the third area of focus of this blog is on improving my own organization. As some of you know, I anchor a small consulting team .Many of the conventional,transactional process improvement approaches,some how,just don't seem able to work with my team.

Thomas H. Davenport in his book "Thinking for a Living' provides some interesting insights on what works and what does not in improving knowledge work

What does not work

• Top down reengineering
• Scripting : (An expert lay out a script for others to use)
• Computer mediated processes for everyone
• Treating all knowledge workers in the same way

Distributed in the book are some directions on what works ( and I agree :-))

• Use of powerpacks ( a compilation of outstanding proposals, presentations, compettitive information, models,specialised tools and a variety of other relevant business resources)
• Adoption of agile methods :Replace detailed process flows with examples,ready to use tools,templates (e.g a checklist to gather role specific information in an interview),promote a highly iterative work flow,build straw-man's early,develop a culture of urgency etc
• Understand that certain parts of knowledge work can be process-ified and that enables knowledge workers to focus creativity on the difficult parts
• An appropriate technology support tuned to the level of 'rule based' decision making,which probably means google's desktop search running on a dump of information is probably what a consultant wants !

More to follow..