Consultancy Symbiosis II
Consultancy can also take place without anything being changed in the decision-making patterns of the client. This is often the case. We call such consultations ‘Consultancy Symbioses’. They arise in two forms: Form II is recognisable from the consultant doing what the client wants or suggests. With form I it is exactly the opposite.
For this variety II: If consultants do what the client wants, they take on the frame of reference and interpretation of the client’s system. “We need something for digitalisation/agility etc.”, “We must have better meetings!”, “I have to become more self-assured in presentations!”. This means that the self- diagnosis of the client system with regard to the problem and solution is the starting position for the consultant. With this, the consultancy system collapses, so that there are no longer two systems, consultant and client, who, jointly, create a third. Instead, there is a client system which brings new behaviours into the system (but no reflection upon its decision-making pattern or knowledge about the meaning of the symptom).
Of course it may be that the self-diagnosis of the client system is appropriate. In this case, an optimisation of the existing patterns will also take place. But without consultancy, which engages with the existing pattern, it remains an optimisation and stabilisation of the existing and there is no change in the premises which lie behind it.