Notes from the 7 C’s of Consulting

By Mick Cope

The underlying principles• Consulting is fundamentally about change. It is about helping another person,

team or organization to make the transformation from one state to another. This might be a physical, cognitive, emotional, structural, technological or organizational change. Unless something changes, then why should any reward be forthcoming from the client?

• Any consulting project will benefit from the application of a change model that makes sense to the client as well as the consultant.

• Change is change. Scale, context and outcomes may differ, but the basic steps are common to all assignments.

• Content and context drive a consulting project, so no two projects will be the same. Any consulting framework can only act as an indicative rather than a directive model.

• Successful consulting is about making a difference for the client and consumer - the goal is to deliver the contracted change, not a successful consultancy project.

Value through Sustainable Change

The foundation stone of this entire book is that and effective consulting process delivers "value through sustainable change".

• Change: The client or consumers must think, feel or behave differently at the end of the engagement.

• Value: Through understanding and taking responsibility for the change and the value derived from the change, the consultant and client develop their capacity to repeat the activity and enhance future performance.

• Sustainability: There is little point in making a change that has value but does not stick.