#60303wk8

[lindseymillan-blog]

Genuine communication will lead to successful identification of organizational needs

The best way to determine a client’s needs is to genuinely listen to them while asking thoughtful, purposeful questions about their struggles and concerns (Schein, 2016).  It’s important to set aside your own preconceptions about their issues and really take note of what the client is trying to communicate.  One should avoid the temptation to give advice, and instead guide the client to a solution of their own making (Schein, 2016). Relating our experience to another person’s is a natural part of communicating, but our past problems have little meaning to our client. It’s important to focus on the client and not ourselves because we need to show the client that we truly want to help them find solutions to their ailments. Otherwise, we will not have a lasting impact on organizational success.

An organizational assessment can be used as a tool during this process, but it cannot be the only tool utilized. Further, an assessment will be truly useless if it does not target the right problem. That’s why establishing professional trust with the client prior to any further action is critically important in any change initiative (Schein, 2016). Some consultants like to see themselves as the all-knowing expert who can fix any issue with their knowledge.  However,  we know that a one-size-fits-all approach to problem-solving rarely creates successful results. Using a pre-made survey without any customization for the client will only be helpful in the most general sense, such as determining broad cultural attitudes. A more personalized approach guided by the client themselves is the best way to ensure that an organizational assessment is truly effective.

References:

Schein, E.H. (2016). Humble Consulting: How to provide real help faster. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Gif used originally posted by dribbb. Retrieved from Tumblr internal search engine.

[kmsummers-blog]

Week 8: Client Needs Assessment

In order to determine a client’s needs, one of the first things you should do is find the client’s organizational pain. You can ask them what their needs are and go from there, but maybe there are needs they do not know they have or cannot articulate. To find those needs, it takes some empathy, educated guessing, and humble inquiry in the style of Schein in order to perform “pain spotting”. 

Pain spotting is a concept from Liz Ryan of the Human Workplace--her advice is to ask a person what keeps them up at night. Although she writes advice for job seekers, her suggestions are extremely helpful for consultants as well: 

“ Use your right brain. Real life, including business, is not school. There is no x + y = z chart to tell you the right answer when it comes to spotting business pain. Your experience, judgment and instinct will guide you, instead, and luckily these are the very muscles we need to grow for the new-millennium workplace! “ (2014). 

Assessing a client’s needs takes certain skills, but mostly it takes a lot of practice and thinking outside the box instead of ticking off boxes. While organizational assessments can be helpful, I do not believe they should be the first tool you reach for before having a conversation or two with the client. Once pain/needs are articulated, then you can reach into your tool kit for assessments or other methods to see how deep the needs are and how to solve them.

Reference List:

Ryan, L. (July 24, 2014). Spot the pain and get the job. Retrieved from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140724044751-52594-spot-the-pain-and-get-the-job 

[tliston1-blog]

Wk 8:

When engaging a client, what is the best way to determine their needs?

The way in which you determine a client’s needs should be the very basis of executing an assessment tool. Not only does this support data consistency throughout an assessment, it also provides an objective perspective for the client. In order to establish this type of baseline, the following should apply:

Client has clear understanding of your role

Your engagement remains at an objective-level and you do not get too involved in their situation/needs

Engagement should still indicate that you are clearly listening and understanding what they are sharing

Delivering the correct questions in proper manner

Client should feel comfortable in sharing stories

Open questions (Pudlatz et. al, 2002, p. 12)

Telling client what you are interested in = focused client

Closed questions, indicators, rating scales (Pudlatz et. al, 2002, p. 12-21)

Regardless of the tool being used, their needs essentially drive the effort and results. Of course, the client’s needs are essential, but those will not ultimately paint a clearer picture for you. You must also gain a true understanding of their organizational culture, situation, blockers, objectives, etc. In fact, the McKinsey consulting company’s (2011) “7S Model” could be used as a template for your picture and the client can paint within its lines with the help of your guidance.

 McKinsey 7S Model: A strategic assessment and alignment model. (2011, April 24). Retrieved August 01, 2017, from https://whittblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/mckinsey-7s-model-a-strategic-assessment-and-alignment-model/

Pudlatz, M. (2002, February 28). KM Assessment Model and Tool. Retrieved August 1, 2017, from http://www.providersedge.com/docs/km_articles/KM_Assessment_Model_and_Tool.pdf

[neeran-saraf-blog]

Week 8: Organizational assessment and my project

The topic for my project is how to assess and capture the tacit knowledge available in an organization and share the knowledge.  The objective of my project is to focus on tacit knowledge that resides with senior employees who are close to retirement or moving to other organizations. 

I have reviewed the various assessment models that were described in the readings for this session and have not yet decided which would be best to use.  I think possibly combination of methodologies or frameworks might be a better approach. 

For this week, I am not clear if the assignment is to select the assessment approach we want to use for our final project or to perform an assessment for another organization.

[neeran-saraf-blog]

Week 8: When engaging a client, what is the best way to determine their needs?

The best way to determine a client’s needs is to do as was suggested by Schein, ask questions and more questions to elicit more information from the client in order to learn more about their work and their needs to be more helpful. 

Schein in both videos, identifies three types of questioning:  the humble inquiry, the diagnostic questioning, and the confrontative questions.  In my consulting work, sometimes I am hired by clients to help them identify the best technical solution to implement for a particular need that they have identified.  Once I am engaged, I always start with asking questions to learn more about their business process, what their daily processes are, what matters to their business, what are their frustrations, etc.  At this stage, I am trying to learn as much as possible about the client’s business and daily operations to be better equipped to move to the next step. 

In the next step I ask questions that help me understand the reasons behind the client’s need for a new technical solution.  The previous set of questions allowed me to have an understanding of their business.  In this set of questions, I seek answers to questions such as what do they feel is broken in their process.  What problems are they trying to solve, what are their daily frustrations.  For example, while working with one of the associations, a common frustration among the various stakeholders was that they didn’t have a 360 view of their membership.  They wanted to know who is engaged with a specific member, what events a member attended, what publications they purchased, are they a major donor to the association etc.  They were seeking a solution that can help them find these answers in a timely manner without having to reach out to their colleagues for information. 

Once I have a better view of their business operations and their frustrations and needs, I engage the client in various scenarios questioning.  For example for the above client, I would ask questions like if you had a system that offered you the 360 view of a member, would that help solve your problems in better understanding your membership needs?  The client and I have a thoughtful discussion around this.  I get to understand the thought process of the client and through that I hope to understand the true needs of the client and the environment the client is operating in that might hinder the success of a technical solution. 

Often time responding to a client’s request to help with the selection of a technical solution does not revolve around technical conversation only.  As Schein highlighted in his both videos, one has to understand the group dynamics and the organizational culture.  In my assignments, I find that I almost always end up helping the client not just with the initial problem they have identified but additional issues that are on the periphery and need to be addressed to ensure that the proposed solution is successful  and adapted across the department or organization. 

References: Edgar Schein - Helping. A You Tube video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bknGdA_xdw Edgar Schein on Helping: How to offer, receive, and give help. A You tube video available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPl3sdNmGU

[rolup]

Week 8: When engaging a client, what is the best way to determine their needs?

Based on the readings of this week, the best way to determine what the needs are to conduct an assessment requested by a client, is to start understanding what the client really needs/wants.

Following Schein’s notion of helping[1] the main focus should be working on creating a climate where the client feels safe to share what he/she/they really want. Improving the communication flow while maintaining a humbled approach is key. Being a service provider or a doctor to its patient, the important thing is to understand where your client is, where she/he wants to be and how much he/she is ready to engage.

As Mc Kinsey[2] describes on his 7sModelAssessment there are two main points to carry out a successful assessment:

Understand the real desire to change and

Understand the organization’s capacity to evolve progressively on three aspects: (i) direction & approach (values & strategy), (ii) step & alignment (structure & systems) and (iii) capabilities,  people & behavior (skills, staff, style)

Once understanding what the client wants, where do they stand and their real approach to the change, the consultant will be able to assess the tools available considering the consultant’s bias and the cultural impact of the tools to be used.

Other key aspects for the consultant to consider when carrying out the assessment are:

the use of the language and understanding of the needs;

time-frame and efficiency: be meaningful to the client;

contribute to build a culture of reflection and analysis;

avoid confronting the current culture through the assessment tool (the assessment has to be seen in the context of the whole KM framework);

Before engaging on any tool, the consultant must understand the level of maturity the client has in confront to the KM framework, or as Uday Kulkarni and Robert St Louis[3] state, the maturity level refers “to the extent to which an organization consistently manages its knowledge assets and leverages them effectively”. It is certainly important to understand the level of engagement and the organization real willingness to make a positive difference, otherwise the level of effort can be higher that expected and rejected intermediately.

The analysis of the level of maturity should focus mainly on the organization’s approach to lessons learned, expertise, data and how the knowledge is structured and shared.

Once understanding the level of engagement and KM maturity of the client, the mapping of knowledge will drive to the most adequate tool to gather the information the client wants to receive. The mapping technique will allow the identification of the knowledge available and what needs to be there, considering the needs and requirements of the client. Surveys and interviews can be key to gather this information ahead of any relevant analysis.

The question however remains towards the level of engagement of the consultant with the client. It is essential to remain humbled when considering the client needs, understanding that without the proper maturity, all efforts in place can just be disregarded by the client.

Looking back to previous failures I realize now that the main reason that has driven to failure was the fact that I saw the needs and how to improve the knowledge framework without considering their level of maturity and/or understanding what the client’s really wanted to do. Had I simplified the approach on my side with a more humbled attitude, I would have probably done little to my eyes but more successful engaging them to actually use and benefit from the tools developed. It is certainly a tough point but as external, the main effort should be on providing the assistant the client really wants and not what you think you could give. Lesson learned for future consultancies.

[1] Helping, Edgar Schein, BertelsmannStiftung at Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPl3sdNmGU & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bknGdA_xdw

[2] 7S Model: A strategic assessment and alignment model. Mc Kinsey. https://whittblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/mckinsey-7s-model-a-strategic-assessment-and-alignment-model  The Organizational Strategist. April 24, 2011

[3] Kulkarni & St. Louis, Organizational Self Assessment. Ninth Americas Conference on Information Systems. 2003 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.86.8010&rep=rep1&type=pdf

[montstmichelfr-blog]

Week 8: When engaging a client, what is the best way to determine their needs?

The best way to determine a client’s needs is to first learn as much as possible about the client. Schein tells us the key to helping is to provide for the client what they cannot provide for themselves.  Therefore, the first step is to determine what they CAN provide for themselves. In doing so, the consultant can objectively view the process and identify gaps to fill. Amassing that level of knowledge will take some time. One of the major obstacles to overcome is the truth that Schein spoke of.  Getting all of the information, not just the ‘safe’ or ‘acceptable’ information requires the “cultural island” environment that Schein described.  Everyone, no matter their role, must feel safe in sharing what they know. In the absence of the safety of a cultural island, the consultant must provide that safe environment.  Gaining the trust of the employees, who may view the consultant’s role with skepticism at best, or at worst, with the fear of termination, becomes vital.  A consultant can’t help if they don’t first become trusted.

The evaluation methods we reviewed this week themselves need to be evaluated for their success in a given situation or environment.  Each one may require a different method. For example, I could clearly see the European KM Forum questions used not only in my department, but University-wide. When presented on-line, and in a non-threatening manner, employees may feel a certain anonymity in answering, and therefore, would be more truthful.  In my department, its size prohibits that same level of anonymity, and not everyone would agree to participate, skewing the results.  

Some of the knowledge mapping techniques described in the Journal of Knowledge Management Practice were used as recently as today in my organization. I used Process Knowledge Mapping and Functional Knowledge Mapping to determine how information had been missed in the maintenance of thesis records. I may not have recognized it at the time, but I have been employing these mapping techniques since I started working for the University. These will continue to be very important to us in the next few years as we experience additional retirements.   The key to this week’s readings/videos is the idea of being willing to share.  Dr. Schein’s lecture emphasizes the importance of a willing knowledge exchange.  He points out that employees must not feel threatened in sharing their knowledge.  The best way to determine a client’s needs is, first, to get them to share their knowledge.