Continuous improvement of consulting practices – humanising approaches to the challenges

This critical analysis charts my journey from my initial foray as an engineer, more comfortable with numbers and processes, to my role as a leader who needed to embrace the humanity and uncertainty of practice.

My early years gave the gift of streetwise – needing to read situations and people very quickly through the need to survive. My education gave me the gift of technical understanding, how the world, machines, and organisations work. My need for professional growth gave me my agency. These have all been gifts that have contributed to my practice, however through this work I realise that the gift of academia was not as present.

This thesis sets out core lessons for the new small consultancy owner/leader, and academics who are interested in the professional application of theory into practice and practice into theory, based upon the critical reflection of three significant transformation programmes that changed the shape of organisations in the public domain, each having a profound impact on society.

My realisation throughout is that the human aspect is just as important as the technical, with elements of Autoethnography, Practice Theory and Hermeneutics being vital concepts to inform effective leadership and facilitation.

Mistakes were made throughout the course of creating these public works. Hard lessons in the management of a consulting firm, the development of practice, and my own evolution are drawn out through this critical work and enable me to draw new learning, set out in the manner of hard-won advice for those who follow in the same path.

Two critical lenses are applied to the three public works:

• Autoethnography – Research based on my own lived experience, looking at the macro, meso and micro aspects of the works, myself, the era, and the environment in which they were created.

• Shewhart Cycle – A framework for root cause problem solving and continuous improvement that is close to my own personal practice that enables me to draw out explicit practical improvements in the management of consulting firms.

This assessment revealed new learning and insights, contributing to the field of management consulting through core practical advancements: Resourcing, Professional & Personal; Evolution of Practice, Evolution of Me; Becoming a Long-term Strategic Partner, and My Own Strategic Partnerships. The issues have been studied to identify root causes, and finally the root causes have been resolved through new insights and development of new practice, particularly a new concurrent public work – my consulting firm’s new value proposition.

I conclude with a surprising outcome. This programme has enabled me to further examine how academic research mirrors my own practical solutions that were born through necessity. I had been implementing academic concepts in isolation inadvertently. Doctoral research has drawn out similarities from scholarly works. Opportunities are clear for the operationalisation of academic theories into professional practice and how practice can inform academic preoccupations bringing them to life, showing that a stronger bridge can be forged between academia and industry.