One of the things I love most about being a consultant is the relationship with our client partners and the opportunity and privilege to support their work while improving our own practice and knowledge base. They also are really quite funny and slightly irreverent which is important when you are trying to shift power and create a more equitable society. Here are some of the gifts they have given me over the past few weeks which have given me both pause and a giggle:

• It’s not as good as a day off but it’s better than being at work (about retreats)
• Strategy is not the same as planning. We need to stop conflating the two.
• Having voice is not the same as getting what you want.
• Transparency in decision-making is what it is, usually rather opaque.
• We’re all a little bit racist at times.
• I liked the model when we had an external evaluator. It’s hard to be evaluative when you are doing the work yourself.

What does your organizational name say about you and your work? 

When I decided to transition from subcontractor to consultant and start my own practice, I reflected extensively about the name. I wanted the firm name to represent something about my approach as well as provide space for new ideas and voices if others were to join me.  

When my husband and I came up with the name jdcPartnerships (one evening at Café Rouge in Berkeley), we were deliberate that only the P (and NOT my initials) would be capitalized. I had been in the field for a while and wanted to capitalize on whatever recognition my initials would bring, but there was more. I wanted to convey my belief that through Partnerships of consultant and client something novel, relevant, and meaningful happens. While we bring expertise and experience in some areas, it is our clients understanding of their own programming and specific organizational and local contexts, which leverages our strengths so that the engagement builds upon the explicit and implicit knowledge of both parties. 

It has been eight years now. The name, with lower case initials and capital P- for Partnerships, still reflects our team’s collective approach to strategy formation, evaluation and leadership development. Through our work across sectors and issues, our partnerships inform and refine our approach and the contribution we can make to the work of our clients and colleagues.  

Some Definitions:

• Simple – Readily understood with limited components.
• Complicated – Not simple but knowable. Interactions can be somewhat controlled. Results including cause and effect can be reasonably predicted by experts.
• Complex – Not simple and never fully knowable. Multiple moving and interacting parts, contexts and factors. Situation difficult to predict and is best understood in retrospect.

In my experience, the words complex and complicated are often used as synonyms for each other.  They are not.

Given the work in which most of our clients engage and the outcomes they desire, it is fairly safe to say that it is not “simple.” But whether it is complex or complicated is often not as easy to ascertain. How do we find out?

In an April 2010 article in the NY Times,  Brenda Zimmerman, a professor at Schulich School of Business in Ontario states “We get seduced by the complicated in Western society. We’re in awe of it and we pull away from the duty to ask simple questions, which we do whenever we deal with matters that are complex.”

I think she is on to something….