After reading this, you'll understand why re-engineering processes fail, why the balanced scorecard isn't "the" solution", why teaching people skills sometimes has no impact, why implementing SAP is so hard and why people in companies are very sceptic if you suggest any of these "popular" solutions. In fact, all these solutions share the same underlying principle: some knowledge and procedures need to be added to the company to "fix" problems. This notion is wrong! Overcoming resistance to change has to do with giving people a chance to participate.
When studying projects of famous consultants and big 5 consulting comapnies, I have often wondered: "Why did the implementation of this project fail?" My first personal lesson was that PEOPLE matter more than methodology and tools. (I have been writing about this for years...).
Next to this first learning, I knew that it's not the consultants that have to bring the solution, it's the persons IN the organisation. And I have been looking for years for solutions to this paradox (being a consultant, that is). SO: methodology IS important: if you use a methodology which will mine the knowledge of the company as a WHOLE, you are the enabler of the change. As a consultant, you do not have to bring the CONTENT, the knowledge of WHAT needs to be changed, but you have to GUIDE the change process, and bring knowledge to the organisation so that they can change themselves. This book is one of the few that will really help you understand which processes are needed for this (many of the 30+ people that helped to write this book have a proven track record in this area).
If you don't know how to put systemic thinking into practice (or you think it's just about designing a solution with the system in mind), and/or if you haven't heard about whole-scale change, apreciative inquiry or the engagement paradigm, this is a good place to start: you will literally discover a new way of consulting, one that lives up to the title of this book and might even really enable "flawless" implementation processes.
And if putting this book into practice isn't flawless: go to the last chapter: Peter Block added a "trouble-shooting guide" that helps you get trough 12 common roadblocks.
Make consulting flawless, learn how to make people share THEIR solution.
Patrick E.C. Merlevede, co-author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"
If you want to know the innards of consulting, without getting caught up in brands, to delve into both the art and science, then read this book....it's a must for facilitators, trainers, process consultants of all hues and colors.