IndexSummaryIntroduction to ConsultingIntroduction to Consulting (Change Management)Problem Solving and Its Powerful ToolsSystems Thinking and Project ManagementPersonal Team Experience in Group ProjectReferencesExecutive SummaryThis journal is the journey of learning and reflection report of MSCI506: Problem Solving Skills for Consultants which consists of 5 main sections based on my personal responses, ideas and reflections on the lectures, workshops, academic research and readings related to the topics of this course, as well as the income derived from learning and practical experience from the group project. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Introduction to Counseling Introductory sessions are essential for me as I have literally no experience in counseling before; it is therefore worth dwelling on in detail and can be useful in your future career as a consultant. At first, when you ask the question “what do you think business consulting is?” came up in class, my answer is just a general answer as "It is the service that makes customers feel safe or confident and provides solutions to customer problems." However, there is much more than what I learned in depth in these first three sessions. There are many definitions of management consulting from Greiner & Metzger, Kubr and Cockman & Evans. In my opinion, the Cockman & Evans definition provides the clearest and easiest to understand definition by stating that "counseling should be what happens when someone with a problem or difficulty seeks help to solve that problem or resolve that difficulty from someone who He has a special ability." skills.'Nowadays, clients understand their business quite well and have more confidence in choosing consultants because good consultants can significantly increase the organization's profits. In general, consultants have two fundamental roles which are the resource role and the process role. For the resource role, consultants will provide technical expertise and guide the problem-solving process. For the process role, they will help customers convey a methodology for diagnosing and resolving customer problems. After getting to know these roles, I realize that being a consultant, not only being good at solving the problem that the client proposes but also being able to communicate and understand the client well, which is quite challenging. Although the relationship between consultant and client is unequal in terms of power, the consultant must have ethical behavior. Also, it is the first time you get to know about internal and external consultants and their advantages and disadvantages. Internal consultants are good as they already understand the culture and history of organizations. Furthermore, they have connections and relationships with people in the company and it is easier to follow their work; However, there are some drawbacks which are: conflict between colleagues, absence of formal authority and unclear boundaries and delimitations. In my opinion, being an external consultant is more interesting because I like being an independent actor and I can work with various clients (not only within the organization as an internal consultant) and gain broad experience. Also, conflict between colleagues in the company is the thing I want to avoid. Furthermore, I got to know the types of clients within a company, i.e. the contact client who makes the initial contact, contract clients who have a role in the selection of consultants and contracts, an intermediate client who attends meetings, primary clientswho are the problem owner and key contributors, the end customers who are the end users, and finally the sponsor customers who sponsor the project or hold the financial resources. For the consulting cycle model, there are mainly 7 steps to follow. The first is to start the consultation. At this stage, consultants need to enter into an initial contract (prepare for the first meeting) and gain access to the client's building/workplace (establish a good working relationship with them). Second, the negotiation phase helps clarify the needs, goals, and expectations between the consultant and the client. Step 3 is to collect data such as interviews, questionnaires and direct observations and then return them to the client. Step 4 is about converting the data into words and presenting it in a way that is intuitive to the customer. Step 5: This involves generating options, making decisions and planning using tools or theories such as Kolb's learning cycle. The following figure illustrates this popular model based on psychology, philosophy and physiology. For phase 6, consultants need to adapt proposals and do training and successful implementation involves commitment from decision makers/managers (ownership), top management buy-in (leadership), capacity and organisation. The most demanding challenge in this phase is to overcome organizational resistance to change. For step 7, the last step is to finish the project, follow the evaluation to know the level of success, write the final report and define the commitments. The growth of the management consulting business shows us that at one time almost anyone could be a consultant and put into practice. However, to be a professional consultant, we must meet these criteria. The qualities of a consultant are 7, the qualities that I think I can achieve are 5 points out of 7, that is, learning quickly (intellectual capacity), knowing how to understand people and respecting them (understanding people), having flexibility and adaptability (intellectual capacity and emotional maturity ), passion and desire to help others (ethics and integrity), and ability to work well under pressure (physical and mental health). The other two points which are communication, drive and personal initiative can be developed and improved with practice and work experience. Introduction to Consulting (Change Management) I decided to talk about this entire section because I think it has a great impact in the reality -life scenario where changes always happen. There are continually new technologies arriving, so the market and business must adapt to change. Change management is not a specialist role but a fundamental element for every role in an organisation; therefore, the key for a company to survive and regain a competitive advantage is to easily design and implement change. So, “What do consultants do about managing change?” In fact, consultants are already involved in change as they facilitate change in organizations and help clients move from the old model to the desired model they want. However, change management is challenging as organizational change may take too long and never be completed, and poor implementation may result in increased workload, cynicism, and difficulty building lasting employee commitment. Therefore, it is necessary to plan and manage care to make the change effective. There are four key theoretical types of change management which are the force field analysis and unfreeze-change-refreeze model, ADKAR and the eight-stage model. Kotter's eight-step model illustrated in the figurefollowing is one of my favorites and I used this process in my group project as well. For step 1, creating urgency means prioritizing by identifying key crises or opportunities. You need to set what should come first and define the scope of your project. For Step 2, forming a powerful coalition brings together a powerful group that can drive change and form a strong alliance. For step 3, creating a vision for change means getting everyone in the organization to understand the change and the overall goal and realize the benefit of the change by creating the same vision to generate support from across the organization. For step 4, communicating the vision is to communicate the vision throughout the organization and utilize and guide the coalition you build because simply creating the vision may not be enough to generate support. For step 5, empowering action means removing obstacles that undermine the vision for change. The sooner you know about them, the more smoothly the change will proceed. For step 6, creating quick results, this is about creating short-term goals to increase motivation as the change process takes a long time to reap the rewards and therefore support may decrease. For stage 7, building on change, to sustain change we need to continue setting goals and continue to improve, for example by developing, promoting and recruiting people who can implement the vision for change. For step 8, the last step is to consolidate it by making the change have a lasting effect, creating better performance through customers or new behaviors and organizational success. In fact, you don't need to follow all 8 steps from The Kotter Model. Choose just a few passages that are powerful and suitable for a particular situation. In my group project, we have selected only three steps that we believe are the best for structuring the problem that is forming a powerful coalition because we believe that putting together a powerful group can effectively drive change which in this situation means breaking into the market, building on about change and making it a reality because we believe these two steps could help Cloudline develop a sustainable business. However, I later realized that applying ADKAR or force field analysis helps to improve our goals better. Problem solving and its powerful tools Problem solving skills for consultants is my favorite session because I think it is very useful and can be adapted to real life situations. In the Fifth Discipline, problem solving is stated in an interesting way: from an early age, we are taught to break problems into parts, making complex tasks more manageable and easier to deal with; however, from that action, we can no longer see the consequences and lose our sense of connection to a larger whole. As a graduate student in chemical engineering, I faced many complex problems and it was very challenging. Sometimes I feel stuck and don't know where to start to solve the problem (I can't find what is needed to solve it). This session helps me sort out my thinking, define "real" problems, and know how to build them using a new system (without breaking down the problems) with techniques and tools that help me solve problems much easier. Powerful tools that I have used a lot to structure and define problems are mind maps and rich imagery. For mind maps, the visual thinking tool helps capture and consolidate ideas and thoughts from different people. The following figure isthe mind map I created during my group project. After creating the mind map, I found that it was much easier to see what the problems are and what needs to be fixed. I also used this tool to define problems in the Introduction to Business Analytics and Operations Research assignment because there were a lot of problems to solve, so I had to list all the problems and possible outcomes. This tool helped me understand the whole picture and solve problems more easily. The figure below is the rough mind map I used to define the assignment problem. It defines the problems in university library system regarding book lending as some users can't borrow the book, they want to, so I have to list all the possible solutions that could solve this problem. For rich images, it represents the entire problem situation and the relationships between them on a single page. However, I realized that I'm not very good at drawing, so I still need a lot of practice to get better. Another useful problem-solving tool based on the theory of parallel thinking is "Six Thinking Hats" which creates people in a group to think in the same direction, from the same perspectives, at the same time (wearing the same hat at a time) generating more quality ideas. It's a waste of time when people look in different directions; for example, one person is trying to think positively and another person is trying to be objective, so they argue and get no progress on the matter. This approach is widely used in many organizations such as British Airways, NASA, Microsoft, etc. There are six colored hats and their purposes are shown in the following figure. It is not necessary to use all the hats, the hats can be worn more than once, the order of the hats is not rigid and we can select the one we think is most suitable for each particular situation. This session's workshop was a lot of fun and I also made new friends, exchanged ideas and improved my communication skills. The topic of this exercise was "Should we send people to live on the Moon or should we spend the money on much-needed projects on Earth?". Here are the ideas that my group and I gathered in that workshop. Starting with a white hat, the Earth has environmental problems such as pollution and global warming but is suitable for human life as it has oxygen, water and food resources while the Moon may not have the pollution that humans have created like Earth, but it might have something we don't know yet (because it's a new planet) like lack of oxygen and water and the temperature is too extreme to live on, etc. and it takes time for a human being to adapt to the new environment. For the red hat, it's a matter of feeling. Our feeling is that the Earth is like home to us and we don't want to move anywhere if it's possible. For the black hat, we know that the Earth is dying and the worst case scenario that could occur is food resources running out, toxic air leading to disease, temperature and climate becoming unstable. On the other hand, we also know that the moon is also unpredictable and the worst case scenario is that we could not adapt to the new environment and will eventually die. For the yellow hat, even if the Earth is corrupting, it is still our home. We know this planet quite well and we don't have to invest as much money as moving to the Moon. We don't have to create everything from the beginning, we just have to fix what we've done. For the Moon, despite being a new planet (we know some information about it, but we have never lived onMoon first), creating something new might be easier than fixing something. Let's just throw away what we have done on Earth and start a new life. For the green hat, we suggested that Mars might be a better choice than the Moon because there are some similar points between Earth and Mars. As for the blue hat, we concluded that staying on Earth is a better choice since we know the planet well and the environment on Earth is more suitable for the life of humans; although it is getting worse due to our unawareness, but if we put together, we could definitely fix and recover the situation and make the Earth a better place to live again for everyone. After this exercise, using this technique, I feel that we have collected many ideas that we had never done before. Therefore, I completely disagree with the statement that it is a stimulating creative tool rather than for generating ideas. I think it's a very productive way of thinking and should be used in meetings or group work. In my experience, meetings usually go nowhere and waste time and I believe that Six Thinking Hats can produce quick and productive results as well as reduce conflict and confusion by improving the meeting in a qualitatively appropriate way. I've also used this method in the group project to gather ideas from my teammates and it's actually quicker and more productive than when we didn't apply it! Systems Thinking and Project ManagementWhen it comes to systems thinking, the TED Talk video is still coming up in my mind. The video talks about 'The Ladder of Inference' which is a mental model based on our beliefs, hypotheses and our reflection. This theory is important because it reminds us not to jump to conclusions without knowing the real facts, and it is useful because many problems are likely to occur if we don't check our attributions about other people's actions. As an example in the video, a boy is looking for a parking space and just as he is about to park his car, another car steals his parking space. If he doesn't avoid "The Ladder of Inference", he gets angry and argues with the owner of the car; however, the reason why the car owner does this is because he has a proper reason. Thus, by realizing its “true fact”, conflict can be avoided. From my experience in real life, if there is a person who I think is bossy and I behave in a way to protect myself from his bullying by avoiding discussing something important with him. In the end, he is likely to end up acting bossy because he sees my act as untrustworthy. Therefore, this model reminds me not to climb the ladder by understanding what others think and unnecessary conflict can be avoided. In applying this theory to myself, I must be aware of my limitations and make assumptions about what others think. So, I have to question my assumptions to avoid bias. Then I have to make my thoughts explicit and act. When it comes to project management, many books have published various definitions. In my opinion, the definition: the planning, monitoring, organization and control of all aspects of the project and the motivation of all involved to achieve the project objectives safely and within agreed cost, time and performance covers the whole meaning. of this word. Regarding project management, I am interested in risk management because anything can go wrong and therefore this is a must in every project. By providing all this, we can avoid losing lives and wasting time and money. There are three common misconceptions about risk: Risk is always bad, somerisks are really serious and must be eliminated at all costs and playing it safe is always safe. Being a former chemical engineering student, risk management feels as familiar to me as it always has. put risk awareness first because if something goes wrong there is danger of death. However, this time, instead of integrating risk management with engineering knowledge, the integration with business is something more complex because it involves various events such as market risk, liquidity risk, credit risk, operational, legal risk and other risks. the steps in qualitative risk management help me clarify the risks in each situation. For phase 1, identifying sources of risk, we need to review historical records of past projects, create a risk profile, and estimate schedules and budgets. Sources of risk can come from illegal or unauthorized action by employees and managers and operational processes (preventable risks), from a credit crisis or oil and gas extraction (strategic risks), from political disasters and natural (external risks), etc. Step 2: Define the risk by stating what the cause of concern or uncertainty is and listing possible negative outcomes resulting from the cause. For steps 3 and 4, assign a probability to the risk, access the overall impact of the risk, and then evaluate them. For step 5, determine a strategy to reduce the risk, either by accepting it or avoiding/migrating it. For steps 6 and 7, it's about checking identified risks and continuing to monitor new risks. Overall, using these 7 risk management steps can effectively help you avoid or minimize risk in a project. Personal team experience on the group project I have gained many new experiences in this project and the one I am very proud of is doing face-to-face and telephone interviews with various people. I did interviews with native speakers who regularly go to theme parks across the EU and are total strangers. I didn't know them and had never spoken to them before. So, I had to put a lot of courage and confidence into achieving it, which I know is very difficult for a shy person like me. I also watched two videos on tips for better conversation and the art of Ted Talks interviews to motivate me. For me it is a vulnerable opportunity to improve myself in both communication and personal drive and initiative skills. During the interview, I realized that I can't just read the script and ask questions. From the research, there are 4 types of structured questions: situational, past behavioral, background, and job knowledge questions. Sometimes we need to ask general questions, for example context questions, to break the ice and know when and how to use questions. For example, if I asked a question about the interviewee's country of origin, age, and family size, I would know what kind of questions should come up next and what kind of theme park experience I could get them. However, during the my group project, I faced some difficulties since I am the only foreigner in the group. The other teammates are all Chinese, so they were speaking Chinese to each other and I didn't understand what they were saying. I often had to ask what they were talking about and it was quite annoying. At first I reacted negatively because I thought he was rude and I felt like an outsider. They should speak English so everyone can understand. However, I hid my anger but then realized that I was climbing “The Ladder of Inference.” After that, my negative thinking went away because I believed it might be why not: 2020].