Many blog posts and articles address when to use management consultants versus not. Some argue that using consultants for strategy development intimate incompetence by management (example here). Others argue that consultants should be used in cases when expertise is higher than that of existing employees.

While I don’t often write about leadership, management, and consulting “techniques”, there’s one that I wanted to share as I’ve found it useful when facilitating a diverse group of folks. I call it “painting the ends of the spectrum”, although I’m sure there other varieties and names for this approach.

Here are a couple of examples of “painting the ends of the spectrum”:

For those unfamiliar with Quora, it is one of the emerging “question and answer” sites on the Internet. Although its positioning is not quite clear to me yet, a point of difference relative to other sites (like Yahoo Answers) is that Quora integrates aspects of social networking technology. Throw in a carefully-honed, early-adopter market segment and some venture capital hype – the result for now seems to be a high-quality, professional dialogue hub.

As a consultant, 2010 has been an interesting year for me to reflect upon. I am thankful for the clients I have, and they have challenged me to perform my best in a very diverse set of circumstances and industries over the past couple of years.

Folks - for the future, I will be posting my manangement consulting blog entries at the linked site. The Feedburner reference has been replaced. Thanks for stopping by!

Entrepreneurial situations in large companies differ from that of startups, yet one thing that they seem to share is that they often represent “hope” in one way or another. In the case of large corporations, these new initiatives can not only turn out to be profitable “ventures” but also boost morale and reward key employees through growth opportunities. Yet many of these new initiatives have difficulty getting off the ground. Frustration is common. This post provides a peek at some of the situations, complexities, and steps to resolution that I have seen.

Adrian C. Ott, CEO and founder of Exponential Edge Inc., included me on her distribution list for an advanced reading copy of her new book, The 24-Hour Customer. I cannot say enough good things about this book. In my mind, the book is excellent for executives, strategists, marketing, and innovators.

People should view this post as a “food for thought” post. The idea for this post was triggered by things I have been increasingly seeing in companies as the recession bottoms out. The managerial situations are similar pre-recession, but anecdotally the occurrence seems more numerous as managers raise their heads-up to reassess their vantage point.

What if your intent as a leader within a company is to (any of the following):