Falling Up

I think I have heard this question a million times in the last few months.  Heck, my dad asks me three times a week at least.  I think he’s worried because I haven’t even begun job searching yet. 

Well, I had a really enjoyable weekend (very purposefully, gearing up for my very busy, stressful last week of school) and I reflected a lot on what I really wanted to do after school….at least for the short term!  And I don’t keep a journal, so I thought this was a nice place to list my “post graduate goals”.  And here they are:

• get some sleep!
• improve my gym workout
• hula hoop on my back porch, in the sunshine, with good music on
• take my nieces to the park
• have more documentary dates with my best friend
• start volunteering with RPEC
• clean out my closet
• keep running workshops at my internship (soon to be PAID internship, woo-hoo!)
• email those neat women I met through UMFS and look into travel opportunities and potential career leads
• play my guitar more
• buy a bunch of cool experiential learning tools that I’ve wanted for a while
• find an apartment or house!
• get a decent haircut
• start planning my next Habitat volunteer trip
• volunteer at the local Habitat (my old place of employment- miss those guys!)
• continue adding to my “kit” that I created to use during workshops
• blog more
• learn to play hand drums
• read about a million good books that are waiting patiently while I finish up coursework
• look into getting a teacher’s certification
• look into mediation training
• learn how to garden
• cook more for myself
• get out to the ropes course more
• see my friends at more than just the “big” events
• go to Lewis Ginter
• put all of the pictures on my floor into albums!
• learn another language
• take piano lessons (again, but this time with more time to practice!)

I could go on and on.  When I left my volunteering event Saturday afternoon, I felt so great to be outside on a beautiful day, singing along to a great new CD, heading to a cookout at a friend’s house.  I haven’t had real downtime since 1997.  Two, three jobs, internships, multiple church obligations, other volunteer roles, traveling…. I love my life, but man, it’s tiring.  I am looking forward to having more time for the little things that get pushed aside, like my hobbies, and the big things that get pushed aside (like my friends!). 

But it’s not that I don’t want to work.  I do want to find a career, and one that I am passionate about. The dilemma perhaps is that I am passionate about a lot of things!  And as soon as I find that career, I will be overbooked again, and there goes the hula-hoop, guitar playing time.  And right now, I need some of that time!

Really, what I want to do after graduating is find some balance.  Then I’ll start job hunting.

I just checked, and it appears I’ve already been graded for my blog participation this semester, but I just feel weird about not posting a final post.  I need some closure, people!

I think ADLT623 (org learning) has been one of the most interesting courses I’ve taken.  I think I say that every semester.  But truly, given the current business atmosphere, the information was so timely and the discussions were so rich!  We had our very own case study, unfortunately.   I usually classify courses into “information based” or “skill based”; you learn stuff, or you learn how to DO stuff.  This was more of the information based kind…I learned lots of great stuff, but…what do you do with it, other than write analysis papers?  I am grateful that I took it at the same time as my Consulting Skills course.  The combination of learning about how organizations learn and grow, and how culture shapes those efforts came into play as I’ve gone through my consulting project, where I’m exploring how an organization can learn…and grow…  What a great overlap! It’s nice to have new knowledge and skills that I can not only use in the future, but, tomorrow too.

The downside of learning all of this is the discontent it sets in my head whenever I see my own company acting in disfunctional, anti-learning ways. But I recognize that while I am a part of that culture, I can choose which part I am.  Erica said it better in her blog, about being a rock in the stream and letting some of what happens rush by.  I can’t say I’m looking forward to fighting the good fight at my organization, but I can say I’m prepared.

I just wanted to share that I had my teambuilding session today with my consulting project clients, and it was a success!  My definition of success?  I went in prepared, I was comfortable and confident about the planned activities, the participants were engaged, the dialogue was open and thoughtful, the feedback I received was useful and meaningful, and the clients were very satisfied, it seems.   A highlight for me was that, at the end of the program, a participant told me that I seem like I’ve been facilitating my whole life.  That was great to hear!   I also enjoyed tying in aspects of Appreciative Inquiry and other change strategies (think: lots of sticky notes on the walls) and engaging in some collective meaning-making.  Best of all, the participants seem to have left with several new ideas of how they can work more collaboratively, which is their goal. 

I have already identified some things I could have done differently or better.  The main critique is that participants indicated that they would’ve enjoyed learning more about their co-workers that they don’t know much about.  I did some ”get to know you” activities in the beginning, but decided to cut one due to a time shortage that I perceived.  Based on the feedback, I should’ve left the activity, as it would’ve met a very basic desire of the group.

But overall, I’m happy.  I feel successful, and it was fun.  AND, I can move on to the feedback meeting now…hooray!

Here are some glimpses of the day…

“Team Write”:  each group had to write a section of an Emerson quotation using this crazy device that looks simultaneously like a jellyfish and a pineapple slice. 

Here are all of the groups’ portions of the 2 quotations by Emerson.  They read:

“Do not be too timid and squeamish.  All of life is an experiment.  The more experiments you make, the better.”

“Not in his goals but in his transitions is man great.” 

And now for some collective meaning-making…        

I believe this is my last night of reading for this class!  I’m on the couch, reading tomorrow’s homework and catching up on any readings I missed over the semester… I’ve really enjoyed Block’s book this semester.  It has spoken to me both professionally and personally.  I find that a lot of what he says is applicable to me just as ME:  a person, not a consultant.

I’ll share a silly but relevant anecdote that is somewhat personal, but I have a feeling I’m safe here on my blog!  Over the weekend, I had a date.  It was a 2nd date with a very lovely person.  However, I was pretty sure going into this date that I was not really “connecting” with this person.  The evening was fairly awkward, and while we chatted and had a nice time, there was definitely no sign that this relationship was going anywhere.  Later in the evening, we joined some of my friends at a holiday party.  My date left separately, and my friends immediately began asking me what I was thinking dating this guy, since he was clearly not a good match for me.  I gave some excuses and defenses, some of which were just sort of funny quips (due to my need to relieve stress after a long, awkward date!)

Enough of my personal life folks!  The point of the story is that I spent the whole evening (and the evening of the 1st date as well) feeling VERY inauthentic.  I wasn’t myself, I couldn’t quite say what I wanted to say.  What bothered me more about my behavior was that when questioned by my friends, I wish I’d been more authentic then.  While my quips about my date weren’t mean-spirited, they didn’t reflect what I really felt, which was this was a very nice man who simply is not right for me.

I feel very silly writing a blog post about this!  But, this is probably my last “What I’m Learning” blog post, and Block gets a bit sentimental in his last chapters too.  He makes an excellent point that consulting requires both the head and the heart.  Flawless consulting is authentic.  It requires doing the right things.  It requires peeling the onion,  discovering the real issues and being of service to others.  I see so much parallel between his advice and just being a decent human being.  I think the book will stick in my head for a long time… I mean, if I was thinking about Block while on a date, then it’s definitely made an imprint!

This has been a busy semester.  In my personal life, it’s been a long year, and a bit of a stressful one.  I am happy to finish up this semester and relax while enjoying the holidays with my family.  I’m looking forward to 2009…. I was thinking about New Years’ resolutions earlier today, and I have a feeling that I’ll be basing some of mine on what I’ve learned from Block and in class this semester.  Wish me luck…

I just finished my Block chapters for tomorrow’s class, and they’ve gotten me all worked up.  I will never fall asleep tonight…

I was reading the chapters on engagement and implementation.  I think Block makes a great point that the stages of implementation have gotten almost cliched.  It does seem like the last few years have brought on an onslaught of mission and vision statements and motivational speeches from the owner and like, 500 new books on leadership, change management and the like.  I can see the cartoon of the proud business CEO offering a motivational talk while the rest of the staff groans.   It really does seem like consultants may simply be peddling the wares of the week, so to speak. 

For me, this is distressing because I’m still new at this, and vision statements and all that still seem really useful to me as far as actual activities and implementation goes.  I want to avoid doing what Block describes:  prescribing this sort of generic recommendation that everyone gets that not only may not work, but may in fact work against the very thing you’re trying to do!  I can even see it in my own thoughts with my consulting project- my first inclination is to assume some type of teambuilding activity (my background, of couse) would be helpful (although not a solution) and since taking ADLT 625 last semester, I’ve been all about processes like Future Search, AI, Open Space, etc.  So, even as a novice I already have my “favorites’ in terms of things I’d like to see implemented.  These chapters really helped me remember that perpetual recurring theme for me:  slow down, take a good look, and see what’s really happening in order to find out what’s really needed.  And, ask lots of questions.

Well friends, I have now received 2 completed questionnaires and have held 2 interviews for my consulting project.  I have 2 more interviews set up, and am still waiting to hear back from the rest.  I have already learned a LOT about consulting and about the “problem” I am facing.

In my second interview, I spoke to a staff member who is fairly high up on the food chain, so to speak.  We chatted for about an hour, and from him I gained two things:  1: some insight into Consulting.  2:  His own agenda for me.  First, he was quite open about understanding what I was experiencing as a new consultant, and offered me some good advice as we talked.  Actually, it threw me off a bit at first, because I wasn’t trying to act like a student imitating a consultant, I was trying to just be the consultant.  But it felt a bit like a dress rehearsal, because at times he would interject to offer his thoughts on how I was consulting.  While unnerving, it ended up being very helpful, and I did appreciate his insight, especially because I have a lot more interviews to do! Specifically, I had a hard time not mentioning things others had said already.  Not in the sense that I was gossiping, but part of me felt like I should connect things that people said.  In this particular case, the person was saying very similar things as the person I’d interviewed earlier that day.  So I would note these things as being shared by the other person.  For the record, they were positive things.  I certainly know better than to repeat negative information!  Either way, my interviewee correctly informed me that I might refrain from referring to others’ interviews in the future.   This was a bit embarrassing, and I knew what I was doing in saying what I said, but his point is still well taken. 

The other point he made that was helpful was in terms of the problem itself.  Now, he was just my 2nd interview, so who knows what will come up in later ones.  But his opinion is that, while I am tasked with examining the relationship between X and Y, it may be that there is more happening within sub-cultures of Y.  This theory sounds likely based on the little bit I’ve discovered so far.  If I continue to see this idea come up in interviews, it will definitely put a twist on what the contracting clients “know” the problem to be and how I present recommendations.

Lastly, this particular client seemed to have his own interests in having me as a consultant.  He questioned whether there wasn’t room for me to work on several other issues within the organization that don’t seem to be related to the current one.  Towards the end, he mentioned that if I encounter trouble in tying his ideas in to my recommendations, to let him know.  To me, that seemed strange; I’m not sure that his suggestions would factor into my recommendations at all, since they are on a completely different topic.  I am happy to say that I think I responded authentically.   I noted his ideas, stated that I did not see that they fit well with this current project, but that they certainly sounded like topics that could use some fruitful discussion. 

Dealing with a higher-up staff person early in the process really made me consider what kinds of information these people can offer. While they may not be privvy to the intimate details of the conflict, they are quite handy at providing big-picture, contextual information that helps frame the conflict in terms of something larger.  I am looking forward to the next few chats as I continue to flesh out my understanding of the issues.

Well, I am just about to send out my first email to begin gathering data from the employees of my client company.  Woo-hoo!  As I mentioned in my last post, I feel like this will definitely be a good 50/50 partnership, and the evidence is that my 2 contracting clients have been very prompt to provide me with names and contact information, to introduce me electronically to their staff and explain what I am doing, and to look over my draft email and survey and to offer their edits and opinions on what I’m sending out.  I am very grateful to have such cooperative clients!  Further, the edits offered were genuinely helpful, and not just ones that make them look better or avoid sticky conversations.  I sense a real desire to fix the problem!

I was hoping that someone from ADLT 610 or Dr. Carter might review my survey/email before I sent it out.  That’s definitely one downfall of not having a partner on this project.  (hint hint, if you’re reading this, I’ve posted them on the wiki!)  But I do want to send them out soon, so I may not wait since I’ve at least had three people from the client company okay the documents.

My data gathering includes emails/phone calls/in person conversations with about 15 people that my contracting clients have deemed “important to talk to”.  These are people with either an historical perspective of the relationship in question, an active role working between the 2 departments, or some other perspective that is useful.  My clients brainstormed this list in front of me, and I was glad to see that they included a diverse group of people- by diverse, I mean that they selected all levels of employees, both insiders and outsiders.  I think that the information I receive from these folks should be very useful.

The second part of my data gathering will happen on Dec. 10th, when I will facilitate 4 hours of teambuilding mixed with a little future search-y activities.  I am designing this to be more data gathering and not as a solution, but I have no doubt that it will probably (hopefully?) serve as a little of both.  The idea for the client at least is that from this 12/10 date and my survey data, I will compile my recommendations.   I’ll definitely be blogging more on that as it draws near!

Now I’m off to finish editing that email and hopefully send it out soon!  Wish me luck.

I am a little behind, I’m afraid, on this blog, but better late than never.  Between the 2 classes I have with Dr. Carter, 610 seems to be my red-headed step child in terms of blogging.  (We actually discussed this in 623 last night…how those of us in both classes do more blogging for 623 than 610…)  I do have some thoughts to jot down regarding my contracting meeting for our consulting project.

My client is a local service agency/non-profit, and they are quite excited to have a free consultant.  So far, they’ve been quite cooperative and understanding of what I can and cannot do for this assignment.   And one of the two people actually has some familiarity with Schein, so this is not at all new to her.  Best yet, they are both open to the idea that they may be part of the problem!  Bring on the data collection!

I actually had 2 contracting meetings.  For the first meeting, I met with just my initial contact, and I think I followed the steps Block outlines quite well.  I got her to condense the problem to a one sentence statement, which helped immensely, and I gave her my expectations and wants, and solicited hers as well.  I was particularly happy that one of her “wants” was that I would be very open and frank with her, including feeling free to relay any negative feedback I received regarding her.  She seems very open to changing her own behaviors if they seem to be contributing to the problem.  I suppose we’ll see if that really happens!

We agreed that we probably needed to meet again with her counterpart so that all three of us are on the same page, and to gather his insights about the problem.   That was our second contracting meeting, and the new person added a good deal of insight to the problem (I liked that he preferred to call it an “opportunity” rather than a problem!) as well as his own wants for me and for the project.  We all agreed that we should be frank and open about this endeavor, and I definitely feel like it will be a 50/50 partnership.

I think the contracting meeting(s) went well.  Then again, don’t we all until an issue arises?  I’ll be curious to see if there is anything I left out that will come back to haunt me.  So far, I feel good about this partnership.

Peter Block’s chapters on resistance were really insightful for me.  I deal with resistance- don’t we all?- quite a bit, and sometimes I like to think I am good at getting to what’s really bothering people, but other times I just don’t have a clue.  And while I feel familiar with this subject, I like how Block categorizes types of resistance.  Breaking it down like that really helped me approach resistance as individual actions or behaviors instead of as a huge, confusing wall in front of me.  Not to say that resistance isn’t bigger than one action.  But being able to deal with big picture resistance seems more feasible if I look at it in terms of what might actually play out in a meeting.

I hope I get a chance to practice this in my consulting project.  Is that silly to say, that I hope I encounter and deal with resistance?  I think being able to read people is a very important skill; to be able to see fear, worry, doubt or nervousness,  and acknowledge and work through these is essential not just to moving onward with a project, but with building the relationship. 

In about five minutes, I’m getting up and heading to work, where I will deal with resistance in the form of “I’m not surprised” from a new employee who has a lot to learn but somehow is “not surprised” by any of the feedback I offer, even though she hasn’t followed through on any of it.  Maybe today I will use Block’s approach and see if I can’t get to an underlying concern…

Here I am in my attempts to catch up with 2 weeks of missed blogs!  Between Edublogs being down and my boss being out of work for a while, I’ve fallen off of the blogging wagon, so to speak, but will try to catch up.

I wanted to post some thoughts based on the article “When Consultants and Clients Clash” (read it online here:  http://www.harvardbusinessonline.org under Human Resource Management articles).  After reading part 1 of the case study, my Consulting Skills class was given a chance to act out how we envisioned the story’s upcoming status meeting going.  The enactments were pretty darn funny and difficult, and we had a lot of discussion on all that we were not sure about:  who should be at the meeting, who should do the talking, how we thought the actors would really be, what the “ideal” meeting would’ve looked like, and so on.  Later, we read part 2, which collects the opinions of 4 “experts” who offer their suggestions on how the meeting should’ve gone.

In part 2, the author mentions that 2 of the experts were responding as if they were working for the client (Royce) while the other 2 responded in terms of what the consultants should do.  This was a great way to look at it, because while I read over the story, I hadn’t considered what I would’ve told Royce to do, and some of those recommendations were the most useful.  I was also struck by the idea of the first expert, which was for the 2 consultants to come in armed with outside information about mergers.  If the consultants’ boss had not been at the 8 am meeting, including this extra information may have given the consultants at least a sliver more credibility.

The article really just reminded me to think outside the box, and to think before you act.  In class, we worked more or less under the assumption that we only could plan what we would say in the meeting.  We didn’t really consider what research we might want to do before then, or that we might approach things from Royce’s perspective.  It was all very eye opening.  It reminds me that you can’t be a wimp in consulting.  You have to look over your information, know your stuff and be authentic.  As always, the lesson for me seems to be the perpetual reminder that I will always need to slow down and think before I act.  I tend to rush right into things, and in every reading, case study and class discussion, I am continually seeing that my greatest challenge will be to take my time and think out each situation.  Although contrary to my nature, it will definitely be a GREAT habit to form…