I just discovered the blog of management guru David Maister,
acknowledged as one of the world's authorities on the management of
professional services firms. I particularly like David's Fast Company
article from 2002, "Are All Consultants Corrupt?"
because it touches on topics that one needs to address regularly as a
management consultant, particularly about how can one ensure that one
produces services that one can be both proud of from an ethical point
of view and a quality of product perspective. To this, all I can say is
that one should leave the management consulting profession if ethics
and quality can't be met.
But the real purpose of this post was to point to David's post on internal blogs as a management tool. His text here gets at a real pain point linked to diseconomies of scale in management:
As
firms get larger, more dispersed and more complex, the disaffection of
partners (in professions and businesses of all kinds) is becoming more
evident. I get calls all the time enquiring about my availability to
consult on the issue of partners’ unhappiness and their feeling that
they are treated like employees in an increasingly corporate culture.
I
am a believer that blogs can help with this sort of thing (essentially
flattening the communication structure associated with complex
organization structures). That said, blogs are not a panacea for
organizations and managers that do not know how to 1) use written
communications to complement the management style and 2) deal with the
semi-structured and dynamic nature of the blog medium. These latter
items are table stakes in my opinion, but they can be easily
underestimated.
In the comments section of David's post, I was also
encouraged to learn of a tip that Ernst & Young may be using blogs
internally. I have blogged before about consulting firms using/not
using blogs (e.g., here, here, here). It's good to hear of more activity in the consulting area and to learn of consulting/management blogs like David's.
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