Notes from the 7 C’s of

Consulting
By Mick Cope
 The underlying principles
• Consulting is fundamentally about change. It is about helping another person,
team or organization to make the transformation from one state to another. This
might be a physical, cognitive, emotional, structural, technological or
organizational change. Unless something changes, then why should any reward
be forthcoming from the client?
• Any consulting project will benefit from the application of a change model that
makes sense to the client as well as the consultant.
• Change is change. Scale, context and outcomes may differ, but the basic steps are
common to all assignments.
• Content and context drive a consulting project, so no two projects will be the
same. Any consulting framework can only act as an indicative rather than a
directive model.
• Successful consulting is about making a difference for the client and consumer -
the goal is to deliver the contracted change, not a successful consultancy project.
 Value through Sustainable Change
The foundation stone of this entire book is that and effective
consulting process delivers "value through sustainable
change".
• Change: The client or consumers must think, feel or behave
differently at the end of the engagement.
• Value: Through understanding and taking responsibility for
the change and the value derived from the change, the
consultant and client develop their capacity to repeat the
activity and enhance future performance.
• Sustainability: There is little point in making a change that
has value but does not stick.