Developing Consultancy Skills - Assignment Brief
As part of the formal assessment for the programme you are required to submit a Developing Consultancy Skills assignment. Please refer to your Student Handbook for full details of the programme assessment scheme and general information on preparing and submitting assignments.
Learning Outcomes:
After completing the module you should be able to:
1. Critically assess a range of essential consultancy skills appropriate to a specific consultancy engagement;
2. Analyse and evaluate the leadership and team building requirements of a consultancy project.
3. Select and apply a range of relevant diagnostic and problem solving skills
4. Structure debate, communicate and present effectively.
Your assignment should include: a title page containing your student number, the module name, the submission deadline and a word count; the appendices if relevant; and a reference list in Arden University (AU) Harvard format. You should address all the elements of the assignment task listed below. Please note that tutors will use the assessment criteria set out below in assessing your work.
Assignment Tasks
The assignment comprises three tasks. In each answer justify your conclusions in the context of both the relevant literature and practical applications. Your examples can be any type of organisation including commercial, public sector, voluntary, charitable etc. You are recommended to allocate your wordcount in line with the allocation of marks indicated for each task.
Task 1
- Define a problem recently faced by the organisation that has benefited from the application of consultancy support. Evaluate how well the external consultants built the client relationship, expressed their authority and developed their project team?
(N.B. If you have not experienced a specific consultancy intervention of this type, then identify a current problem that would benefit from such an intervention and assess how the above consultancy skills could be most effectively applied.)
Task 2
- It is often claimed that less than one quarter of all consultancy based projects succeed fully in meeting their initial objectives.
Why you think this might be the case? Is their any evidence to support such a claim?
(N.B. With the use of research literature and examples taken from your own experience and/or the module and other relevant reading materials, identify supporting evidence for your conclusions and illustrate your answer with examples of good and poor practice.)
Task 3
- Using the consultancy intervention discussed in Question 1, identify one key area of decision-making during the implementation phase of the project.
Demonstrate how the diagnostic techniques discussed in the course materials or your own wider reading might be usefully applied to support management decision-making. Demonstrate how they would be applied; identify what information would be required; and how would you plan to obtain it and ensure its accuracy?
Maximum word count: 3000 words
Developing Consultancy Skills
Core E-Texts
Wickam P. (2013) Practical Management Consulting, Amazon e-book.
Markham, C. (2004) The Top Consultant, 4th
Ed Kogan Page.
Available at:
http://issuu.com/bookswiki/docs/the-top-consultant-developing-your-skills
Indicative Reading
Biggs, D. (2010) Management Consulting: A Guide for Students, Andover: Cengage Learning EMEA.
Kubr, M. (ed) (2002) Management Consulting - A guide to the Profession 4th
Ed, International Labour
Office, Geneva. - also available as an e-text at:
http://kpe.fph.vse.cz/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/MC.pdf
O'Mahoney, J. (2013) Management Consultancy, 2nd
Ed, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sadler, P. (2007), Management Consultancy, Kogan Page.
Wickam P. (2008) Management Consulting, 3rd
Edition, Prentice Hall.
Textbook - The Top Consultant: Developing Your Skills for Greater Effectiveness, 4th Edition by Calvert MARKHAM