Perhaps you remember the Consultick from the Dilbert cartoon. This funny and all too painful caricature of the consulting profession is the antithesis of what we do and is what drives the idea of process consulting. Rather than sell, tell and disappear as a consultick might do or trade on what may have worked elsewhere, the idea of process consulting is to work with client-defined and client-owned objectives, taking the risk of learning together.

Process consulting, as enshrined in the work of folks like Peter Block and Edgar Schein, is the central commitment of the Society for Process Consulting, now offering a professional community and credential that rises to the highest of consulting standards and ethics.

I got started in this field in 1989. In 2001, we established Design Group International  as a community of practice for people with deep expertise and a commitment to work beside their clients to meet client-defined objectives rather than to bleed them.

As this community grew we discovered there was no consistent training for professionals, and no standards-bearing organization to keep raising the quality of process consultants. We wanted this for those who joined our community of practice. As a result the Society for Process Consulting was born and placed under the capable direction of Kim Stezala.

We look forward to the day—and believe it possible—that CEOs will expect consultants they retain to be co-learners with them, and to follow the standards set by the Society for Process Consulting.

-mark l vincent