Food for thought: The benefits of concrete

For years now on training courses, we've happily taught the difference between abstract and concrete concepts in our approach to data collection. (For those of you who missed the course, it's easier to find out "how much money is in your pocket?" (concrete) than "are you wealthy?" (abstract)).

As consultants we are very accustomed to dealing with abstract concepts, but an over-reliance on the abstract can be a barrier in dealing with clients, as a couple of recent examples we've come across illustrate:

1. The consultant was looking at the performance of an accounts department. "How does your job contribute to business performance?", she asked the junior bookkeeper. The bookkeeper couldn't answer the question. The consultant had to revert to the concrete ("tell me what you do"), and then infer the answers to the original question before she got useful data.

2. A consultant had conducted a win/lose review with a client on a bid he had lost. He was surprised to hear the client say, "we wanted firm and prescriptive advice. We don't have the time to debate options; we needed you to tell us what to do - which is what the people who won the bid did."

There are, of course, risks in engaging in unwarranted abstraction. A good example of this is in studies of leadership, where the model seems to be, "do whatever Jack Welch (or fill in the name of another approved leader) does, and you will be as successful!"

But of course this belief does sell a lot of books!

If you have any comments, reply to me at calvert.markham@elevationlearning.co.uk

Calvert Markham