Category Archives for "Purpose"

2 Four Models of Consultancy: Problems

This is the third post about four models of consultancy.  This post introduces the four models.

What is a problem?  You may hit a problem when developing a project.  Perhaps a good question to ask is: what prevents you from addressing the problem?  If it is a technical issue, why are you unable to resolve it?  Sometimes organisations would rather ignore a problem than deal with it.  However, many find that actively tackling a problem can be very rewarding.

Intractable problems are often shared with other groups.  The way your organisation works may be the solution to your problem and other groups often share similar issues.  Comparing experiences can bring insights and new approaches to an old problem.

I shall illustrate this consultancy model with the problem of an out-of-date website.  Many groups experience this and if they ignore it, the problem becomes worse.

Six Helpful Questions

1. What is the problem?  Defining the problem often helps!  An out of date website may have several causes and working out which apply to you may not be easy.  Is the problem an inaccessible content management system?  Or is it a lack of people who understand the cms?  What is the problem behind the problem?  Are you sure you are analysing the right problem?
2. What have you tried so far?  Listing the various attempts might be frustrating but it is helpful to recall previous attempts to resolve the problem.  If more than one group is experiencing the problem, they may find sharing past attempts  an inspiration.  Someone else’s failure might just work for your group!  This question may uncover problems met when dealing with the problem.  You need to build up a picture of the impact the problem is having not only on the website but on your organisation.
3. What specific change does your client desire and why?  So, what is the point of solving this problem?  How will solving the problem bring about the changes you want to see?
4. What are the causes and sources of the problem we need to examine?  By now the causes and sources should be clearer, summarise them and see whether you can nail the root of the problem.  Understanding can lead to insights into how to approach a problem in the future.  Note there will be historic causes, based upon decisions made in the past, eg the choice of CMS may be one reason site maintenance is difficult.  Other causes tend to sustain the problem in the present.  Why does this continue to be a problem?
5. What are we going to do about it?  The consultor must own the solution.  It should be specific and practical.  The problem will need to be monitored and reviewed to see whether it is in fact working.
6. What are we learning from our study of this problem?  This question can help you get a different perspective on the problem.  Asking this helps you take a step back and review the whole picture.

Be Problem-Conscious

Problems can be intractable and one reason is a problem-centred approach.  This can result in a negative approach where  allocation of blame becomes the main approach.  It is better to be problem-conscious, aware of the issues or difficulties faced and taking a developmental approach to resolving them.  Whilst planning is always helpful, it is often found that taking action and evaluating the outcomes is effective.  If you have analysed causes and sources, really understand the problem, then you are more likely to see opportunities as they arise from your activities.

Have you ever been stuck and then found a creative resolution to your problem?

2 Four Models of Consultancy: Projects

Last Wednesday, I described a typical three-step approach to assessing an organisation’s or individual’s situation.  It is important for design work to understand the consultor’s operating environment.  This time here are three tools to help design projects.  You may need to use them over several meetings.  They are not a sequence, use them and return to them as you need them.

I shall assume the consultor has requested help with the design of a web-based project.  If they have an assessment (from last time), it will help.  You may need to discuss whether you need an assessment before you go ahead with the Project.

The three tools are:

1. Purpose and Objectives
2. A Systemic Approach
3. Diagrams and Models

Purpose and Objectives

These evolve as you work on the Project.  Typically, aims and objectives are fairly general at the start.  As you go deeper you they become more concrete as understanding deepens.

I find tasks and issues helpful.  Tasks are things you need to do to meet your objectives.  Issues are the things that tend to resist the work on the tasks.  Sometimes issues need to be addressed before the tasks can be started.

Typically, as you start work, objections accumulate.  Once it becomes clear where the opposing interests lie, you can ask what can be done to tackle them.

The original list of tasks may grow as you address your issues and you may need to prioritise them.

A Systemic Approach

If you think you’re designing a website, you are very much mistaken.  The website is a sub-system of several other systems, some online and some in real life.  The latter are the most important.

There is always the possibility complexity will get out of hand.  Many websites are fairly small fry and if they are a short-term event, eg a community festival site, they need to pay less attention to complex systems than a major project consuming significant resources.  However all projects are part of various interlocking systems and it is the consultants’ responsibility to make sure everything is considered.

Bear in mind all the likely interests: parent organisations, partner organisations, competitors may all bring their own sub-systems.  Perhaps the most important sub-system is the website’s market.  Whether you are selling a product, a service or a cause; you must understand your market.

Once you have a systemic analysis, make a start and develop your website and other online media.  Then you can see how it operates and the impact it has on other sub-systems.

Diagrams and Models

Use them!  They help you move from situation to project or to analyse your project.

A model or framework is used to interrogate a situation or project.  If your model has three dimensions, it will help you to look at the situation in all three dimensions.  A model is never prescriptive.  It is descriptive, deepening your insight into the situation and the likely impact your project will have on it.

Diagrams are very useful.  I haven’t found a satisfactory way of doing them online.  In real life I work around a sheet of flipchart paper (A1) and equip everyone with pens.  This allows for lots of crossings out and things squeezed in at the edges but a good copy can be made later.

If the consultant begins a diagram, based upon the consultor’s description of the project, the consultor can check the consultant has understood the project or may see something new in the diagram they have not seen before.  If they work on it together, they both deepen their understanding.

For an online conversation, you need to improvise using drawing tools, email, holding sketches up to the camera, etc.  I would like to hear of tools you use to do this.

Notice how project design differs from web design.  The website design is framed by project development.  If websites are to be effective, they need to be planned as part of the consultor’s overall purpose.

Do you agree?  How did you plan your website?

2 Four Models of Consultancy: Situation

Last Wednesday, I introduced four models of non-directive consultancy and here are details of the first, Situation.

Sometimes an organisation says they need a web presence or an improved web presence but they have no clear idea what it can do for them; they need help clarifying their online objectives.

To analyse a situation, use these three steps:

1. a written presentation
2. exploration and analysis to establish the main focus of the work
3. design and plan an assessment the consultor commits to and is able to carry out (possibly with help)

So, let’s take each in turn:

Written Presentation

The consultor prepares a written presentation.  The aim is to help them put their situation on the table.  The consultant might offer guidance in the form of a questionnaire, for example, that encourages the consultor to think through their situation in detail.

It may include assembling existing documents, for example a business plan, strategies, policies and procedures.  The consultant needs to encourage the consultor to think deeply about their paperwork.  It isn’t enough to dump documents in the consultant’s lap.  Existing paperwork backs up the consultor’s written account of their specific aims for their business and web presence.

The presentation must cover more than the organisation’s online presence.  It is essential the consultant understands the consultor’s market, aims, issues, etc before even beginning to think about their online presence.

Exploration and Analysis

This needs to happen at a meeting or using something like Skype or a Google hangout.  Face to face is always better but not always practical.

For a face to face meeting, you can sit around a flipchart sheet (A1) of paper and map out the situation between you.  Consultant and consultor both hold pens and can annotate one another’s ideas.  This provides a common focal point which is harder when you meet online.

The goal is to agree a focal point: what are the main tasks and issues and how are you to tackle them?  Whilst with web consultancy, the expectation will be some sort of online presence, the consultant’s role is to find all relevant tasks and issues.  Remember your online presence won’t work, if you do not address relevant issues within the business.

Design and Assessment

The consultant will write an assessment based upon the design and planning that has taken place between the consultor and consultant.  The assessment is an action plan for the consultor and it is their responsibility to carry it out.  So, the consultor must commit to the assessment and be enthusiastic about carrying the work forward.

The assessment will show them not only what they need in terms of their online presence but also the steps they need to make sure it happens.  The consultant can show where the consultor lacks capacity and needs to engage external support.  Most sites these days need ongoing maintenance and usually third sector organisations do it in-house.

Third sector organisations are often short of cash and should not feel they have signed up to more than they can handle.  So, discuss finance for further consultancy in the assessment.

Furthermore, once the organisation has a plan, it implies changes to its web presence as it develops.  So, if an organisation is developing a capital asset for community use, it may in the early months be seeking to build support and finance development work.  Later, if the new facility is open to the public, the organisation will need to contact potential customers. The plan may be to build a list during the development phase and market activities once the facility is open to the public.  Thought needs to be given to the second stage because the first stage lays the groundwork for the second.

A situation does not have to be at the start of a web project.  A review of an existing web presence may be essential if the site is not supporting the work adequately.

Can you think of projects that need an assessment?  How would they benefit from analysis of their tasks and issues?  What methods or tools would you use to help them think them through?

If you would like to have a go, see my assessment offer.

1 Four Models of Consultancy: Introduction

George Lovell’s book “Analysis and Design” identifies four natural categories for non-directive consultancy.  (I’ve called them models of consultancy because model easier to type than “natural category”!)  They require different approaches.  It isn’t always obvious at the outset, which model best applies to a particular consultor and so the consultant needs to find the best model or models as the work progresses.    Where more than one model applies, the consultant will need to schedule the work with the consultor’s agreement.

So, the consultor might present a

1. situation they wish to analyse to plan
2. an online or real life project.   However, it may become clear the consultor is facing a number of
3. problems such as issues about software or applications, which might be about choosing the best solution or getting something to work better but as the problems persist, the consultant may find that
4. they have a case, an issue specific to the history of the organisation, that needs to be resolved before the consultor can make progress.

How the Models Apply to Web Consultancy

Over the next four posts I shall present each model in turn.  You can find out more in Lovell’s book but my contribution here will be to show how each model can apply to the work of a web consultant with third sector organisations.

These four models apply to any type of organisation.  However, private and statutory sector organisations often have more resources to throw at a problem.  They can employ staff to design their systems or hire consultants to run their systems for them.  So, a lot of the work involved in site design and maintenance can be resourced.  This is not to say these organisations don’t benefit from non-directive consultancy, just that perhaps they have less immediate need for it.

In the third sector the consultor, perhaps with an internal team, is more likely to need to take on long-term responsibility, with all the issues and conflicts that entails.  When you’re struggling with your online presence it is easy to lose sight of the real life organisational issues underpinning your lack of success online.

Lovell developed non-directive consultancy with community groups and churches so it seems logical to extend it into web consultancy with similar organisations.  He borrowed from conventional business consultancy and wealthy organisations may well borrow from non-directive consultancy.  Third sector groups may find, therefore, that non-directive consultancy has a better fit to their general ways of doing things.

Do the four options address the sorts of problems you encounter online?  Have you examples of one or more of them from your own experience?

Here is the Amazon uk page for Analysis and Design.  There are other book sellers available.

2 Consultant and Consultor

Third sector organisations do engage expert web designers but many cannot afford to spend a minimum of £3000 on a website, especially if it is not going to generate significant income.

Non-directive consultancy works better for third sector organisations planning their web presence and not because it is likely to cheaper!  The values of non-directive consultancy are more likely to match the values of the sector.  So, this is how it works.

If you engage a non-directive consultant, you are the consultor.  It is essential you understand the consultor role to get the best out of your consultant.

The Consultant – Consultor Relationship

The consultor has specialist knowledge about the purpose of their organisation, its history and background.  The consultant, supplies additional brain-power.  So, many third sector groups have a volunteer  or staff member who looks after their website.  Often the site lacks purpose or the knowledge of its in-house designer is limited.  Sometimes, a team of people maintain a site but they lack the expertise to put it together in the first place or to make major changes.

The role of the consultant is to help solve your problems.  If you know what you want and know what resources you have, sometimes it helps to have someone alongside who can challenge your thinking.  Similarly it helps to challenge your thinking if you don’t know what you want!

You are likely to need to work out how your website team is going to maintain the site.  Developing a disciplined approach is sometimes more important than the technical details.  The problems many sites encounter are to do with content not site design.

Non-Directive and Expert Approaches

A web consultant combines non-directive and expert approaches.  As a non-directive consultant, they aim to help the consultor develop a sustainable approach to their online presence.  As an expert consultant they offer you the technical know-how you need.

The issues you face may have nothing to do with computers or the Internet.  Maybe your web presence suffers because you are not able to manage your site.  Low capacity could be lack of staff or volunteers or else it could be the way you deploy your people and resources.  The consultant can help you think through the changes you need to make to be better equipped both on and off-line.

As a consultor you are in the driving seat.  You make decisions when you have the knowledge and expertise you need to develop an effective online presence.  The key is understanding your role, whichever approach the consultant uses.

If your website doesn’t do what you would like it to do, what are the reasons?

1 Introduction to Consultancy

Do not trust consultants!  Too often consultancy is about out-sourcing responsibilities that used to be done in-house.  The argument goes, don’t employ someone as it will be cheaper to pay a consultant.  Such an approach breeds dependency on external support and can hollow out an organisation.  I’m sure consultants of this type can take advantage of organisations, charging thousands of pounds for work that should be done in-house.

This is unfortunate because consultancy can offer far more than simply substituting for staff you cannot afford.  So, here is why you should consider taking on a consultant:

Broadly there are two types of consultant:

Expert Consultants

The expert consultant augments the skills in your team.  Sometimes they have skills specific to consultancy, they understand you need help with a particular problem and you want to be able to manage the problem into the future.  However, they don’t necessarily do this.  Some simply do something for you and then leave.

Web design is a good example.  As an expert consultant your designer offers skills you lack and uses them to design a website for you.  But if their expertise is entirely in coding they are not likely to be good designers.  Real design demands some understanding of the needs of the client organisation.  The web designer who can do this uses  consultancy skills.

You may think I’m being unfair but in the community and voluntary sector, groups often take on a consultant to design their website, who simply supplies the expertise for a small fee or even as a volunteer.  I suppose this can work and would like to hear from you if it has worked for you, especially if it has worked at little or no cost.

However, an expert consultant may not be what you need.

Non-Directive Consultants

The alternative is non-directive consultancy.  Unlike the expert consultant they may bring no specialist knowledge to the table.  Now you are the expert!  The role of the non-directive consultant is to boost your thinking, to challenge you to think about your tasks and issues in new ways.

For a web designer non-directive skills can be valuable, especially where the client organisation wants to run its own website.  Coding the site is only part of what needs to be done, the clients’ organisation will need to review its practices to accommodate supporting their website.  Diagnosing and resolving the issues preventing your organisation from developing and maintaining your website is as essential to the success of the website as the technical stuff, sometimes more so.

Most web designers fall somewhere between these two approaches.  If they are successful they need to be an expert in the technical stuff but also able to guide and support their client organisation.  I am going to make the case in future posts for non-directive consultancy as an essential part of web design.

Why not share your experiences of consultancy?  It can be effective but often fails to support the client organisation and so fails to provide sustainable solutions.  Examples of successes and failures would be interesting.  (They don’t have to be examples of web design!)

0 Two Ways We Understand Wealth

I’ve decided to hold back the answers to the Christmas Puzzles until a few more people have attempted them.

Today I shall follow-up an earlier post about Spirituality in Marketing.  In that post, I mention progress with a book, and I want to capture a part of the conversation. Many people in the voluntary and community sectors have reservations about marketing and accumulation of wealth.  Such scepticism is admirable!  We should be suspicious of any sales pitch.

But if we are going to re-build our communities we need to explore all the options available to us.  Given the failure of grants as an approach to community development, a failure I’ve written about elsewhere, see the posts in the position category, we don’t have too many other options.

Two Ways to Understand Wealth

One problem is, when we talk about wealth we confuse two different ways of understanding it.  So, here they are:

1. Personal wealth is where the focus is on the amount of money I have accumulated and the power I have using it.  The issue here is accountability.  We can all think of examples of (usually new) millionaires who lose all their money in a few years, through gambling or similar.  There are also those who salt away their wealth in off-shore tax havens.  They move their money out of the community, into places where it is no longer accessible.  The immensely wealthy, the 1% targeted by the Occupy movement, use their wealth to buy assets and lend them back to businesses at very high interest rates.  We don’t normally see this happening because it happens out of sight.  But we see its effects in low wages and unsustainable behaviour, damaging to the environment.
2. Social wealth is where there is some degree of accountability.  The focus is on money as it circulates in the local economy.  If I purchase from local traders and do not spend money in large chains and if local people do the same, then many people benefit from the same pound as it circulates.  Furthermore, I might find opportunities to invest my profit in other enterprises, thus growing the local economy.

Obviously the same person can experience both approaches to wealth but at least by being clear there are these two approaches, we can all be aware of how we spend and accumulate income.

Perhaps we could re-examine John Wesley’s three point economic plan.  In the eighteenth century, he traveled the UK, preaching to the new industrial poor.  His advice to entrepreneurs was “earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can”.  By save he meant not accumulation in bank accounts but spending money wisely, so that you have an excess than can be given to people in need.

This approach allows the wealthy scope to grow successful and ethical businesses.  Is it something we need to revisit?

0 Donations: Alternative Approaches

In the previous 6 Wednesday posts I have shown you how to make a case for donations to your cause online. This post considers some alternative approaches to designing your site.

This is a standard approach, which may work for many organisations:

This sequence is a model.  How you develop it is up to you.  You could build a website with six pages, each mirroring a step in this sequence.  But the sequence is really a guide and so long as each step is present, how you present them depends upon your creativity.

Purpose of Your Site

Towards the end of the sequence, I considered some issues worthy of further thought.  What is the purpose of your site?  To receive a single donation is not the most effective approach.  Your aim is to build a relationship with your donors.  That way they can offer you more value than a one-off donation.

It may sometimes make sense to ask for a donation immediately, for example if there is a crisis and you need large sums immediately, but building a relationship is a better investment for your effort.

Someone on your email list may donate several times during their relationship with your charity.  They may also offer you other opportunities, for example

The key to developing a good relationship is to offer good content.  So, offer information about how you use donations and be more ambitious!

You can produce educational material to give away or sell to your donors.  This may equip donors with the knowledge they need to promote your cause more effectively or it could be something of value to the donor personally, eg a charity that promotes health may offer advice about personal health.

Whatever you do, think carefully about the purpose of your site.  It is not always what you might think.  You need to plan for the long haul.  If you make contact with people who are keen supporters, and help them deepen their commitment to your cause, they may be willing supporters of your work for years to come.

1 Donations Follow Up

When you make donations follow up is important.  So far I’ve reviewed website page content for your charity and it is crucial you work out the best follow-up available to you.

Once your visitor has signed up for your email list and / or donated, they should arrive at a new page.  What’s on it?

First, thank them for signing up and / or donating.

If they have donated, explain you have placed them on your email list and so will keep them up to date with the work of the charity.

Most email services run a double opt-in service and I recommend you do this.  It means that once they’re entered on your list, they receive an email, asking them to confirm their wish to subscribe.  This way you know the people on your list have consented to being on it.  So, tell them there will be an email in their inbox where they can confirm they wish to receive emails from your charity.  Tell them to click on the link.

Why Follow-Up?

They’ve made one donation and so they are likely to make future donations. This is your opportunity to build a relationship with your donors.  They might donate again in the future or help you in other ways.

The big mistake many organisations make is persistent requests for donations.  Obviously you will request donations from time to time but this should happen rarely.  Your aim is to build a relationship with your list.  So, on the page tell them what they will receive from you now they’ve  signed up.  Here are a few ideas:

A lot will depend upon your organisation’s capacity but producing good content is not too difficult.  I will write about this in more detail later.

If you are going to offer something of significance you may want to flag it up earlier than on the thank you page, as a part of your campaign to get site visitors to sign up.  Your main concern here will be explaining how to get access to promised content or when to expect it by email.

Websites enable you to offer your supporters more information and so build relationships with them.  What sort of information would you welcome after you donate to a cause and what would turn you off?

1 Spirituality in Marketing

I’m working with some other people on a publication called “Spirituality in Marketing”.  We have a lot of material and it will take a while to sort it out.  In the meantime, here’s some thoughts.

Why Spirituality?

Who is the booklet for?  One possibility is the “spiritually aware or religious person”.  That’s reasonable, although I have some reservations.  Does it impose unnecessary restrictions on our readership?

A few years ago Father Christopher Jamieson, Abbot of Worth Abbey, introduced a couple of television series in the UK, The Monastery and a few years later The Big Silence.  Both series were about ordinary people living in a monastery for a month or on a 9 day retreat.

Father Jamieson says after both programmes his religious communities experienced increased interest from people, not associated with the church.  After the first series a number of business people made contact and so he published, “Finding Sanctuary”, under a secular imprint about the benefits of Benedictine spirituality for the modern secular person.

Spirituality is something all experience even if we don’t label ourselves as spiritual or religious.  So, how can spirituality support the business person whatever their formal religious affiliation.

Why Marketing?

Spirituality is about identity; how to become the person we are meant to be.  This is particularly important for the entrepreneur, who can easily lose sight of their purpose.  Business people make money and the question is, why?  They sometimes see their role as local benefactor.  In Sheffield, UK where I live you can’t walk very far without encountering names such as Graves, Firth, Ward and Osborn; all industrialists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Their names are still current because the city recognises their contributions.  Every city has them.  Whatever the detail of their business, they cherished their role as public benefactor. This is more than we can say for present day hedge fund managers, who salt away their fortunes in offshore tax havens.

But public benefactor was not the only role.  Real entrepreneurial value resides in the hundreds of unsung men and women behind the co-operative movement.  At one time co-operative business underpinned most of the civic infrastructure we take for granted today, eg insurance, building societies, banks, department stores, wholesale and retail networks, friendly societies and various educational institutions and libraries.

Contrary to what our current crop of politicians would have us believe, mutuals make a vibrant and creative contribution to the economy; both entrepreneurial and committed to social justice.

Mutuality is not confined to one form of business and its spirit was perhaps shared by some public benefactors.  Sadly in our modern economy it seems business is solely for personal benefit.  We need to refresh our spirits by understanding mutuality and reclaiming it for our broken communities today.

How do you understand the purpose of economic activity?  Do you think spirituality can help entrepreneurs understand their role?