The Fundamentals of Management Consulting

So what? Why should I take this course?  A Note from trainer Kevin Schwenker

The Fundamentals of Management Consulting is an information-packed training course that sets out the basic tenets of the profession.  If practicing management consultants want to be identified collectively as a profession, it is important that all share a common essential base of knowledge and skills, share consistent definitions of common consulting terminology and share a common professional approach to and assignment process for all clients.

Professional standards should be useful and practical to the conduct of management consultants. Their purpose is to assist in improving the comprehension and competency of both new and experienced management consulting practitioners and customers.  Ultimately, they are meant to provide, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines, tools and techniques for consulting processes or services with which compliance is not mandatory, but highly encouraged.

The Fundamentals of Management Consulting is an ambitious survey of the basic elements that make up the shared set of principles and practices, but it is not intended to explore in depth every aspect it touches upon. As in any survey course attempting to set out the breadth of a profession, someone taking this CMC-Canada approved course is meant to be exposed to an understanding of what the profession of management consulting is all about.

This is a course for one who wants to know the breadth of the profession and what is out there to guide them and make them the complete professional.  The course introduces the breadth, and it is left to the participant to seek out the depth through practice and further professional development.  For example, many common tools and techniques are identified, some are explained, and others are simply introduced. Which is also why this course provides a complete package of supplementary materials - we provide a complete set of references for participants to pursue further study on their own, after the course.

To use an analogy, a superior management consultant looks upon tools and techniques as arrows in a quiver – the more arrows one has – and the more specialized arrows – the more one is able to target accurately, in more circumstances, to fully and expertly serve one’s clients. A professional management consultant will use this course to identify the gaps in their knowledge and practice, and set a path of continuing professional development to fill their quiver with more and more arrows.

Ultimately, the hallmark of a profession is a collection of shared principles and practices, an underlying set of competencies required to practice, and a commitment to an ethical code where members voluntarily assume an obligation to exercise judgement and self-discipline above and beyond the requirements of law. It is the endeavour of the trainers of the Fundamentals of Management Consulting to introduce such a set of commonly accepted management consulting principles for members of the North American Management Consulting industry.

Kevin Schwenker, FMC is an approved trainer for the Fundamentals of Management Consulting (FMC).  He is also the National Trainer for the Essentials of Management Consulting (EMC) – a web and team-based CMC-Canada learning program which covers the FMC material in greater depth over three months.  The above material is adapted from his “Introduction to the Profession of Management Consulting”, part of the profession’s Common Body of Knowledge which was the basis for both the FMC and the EMC learning programs.

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