Resources

Consulting is a many-faceted job, particularly in the complexities of today’s organizational landscape. For good consultants, every call brings a new, unique challenge. Each organization has its own assets and barriers. When every situation is so unique, where can you start?

We swim in a sea of noise. Images, words, sounds, and stories bombard us. Marketing tries to seduce us on city busses, bill boards, and buildings. News jumps from the black and white local newspapers. The 24-hour, almost unlimited, channels bring us news, shopping, stories, sports, and everything in between. Music, news, and talk radio keep us company wherever we go.

If you are like many of us working in fast-paced organizations, you most likely have no shortage of projects needing your attention. When the projects start piling up, you are faced with the difficult question of what to take on and what to put off. But the real challenge in making these decisions is that all these projects appear highly important or at least highly risky to avoid.

I have been distracted this week by the events in Washington, to say nothing about what is happening in London, on the Texas border, in Indonesia and North Carolina, and everywhere in between. These events challenge a set of fundamental beliefs I hold. I learned them from my parents, read them in classics of Western philosophy, observed them in communities of my youth, and vote to uphold them whenever the polls are open. The principles seem a bit naïve today, but they form the core of my relationship with personal, social, and political reality. I will be more specific.

I was recently thinking about Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”, particularly the lines: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”

. . . Or what I learned about my role in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives from a baby

In Human Systems Dynamics Institute, we say, “Nothing is intractable.” We chose that bold statement to express our belief that you can always find an option for action, no matter how difficult the challenge.