Sometimes we are called management consultants, other times capacity builders, and still other times: facilitators, planners, OD practitioners, TA providers, strategy consultants, or mediators. And sometimes we’re called a few names that are unprintable…

Other professions have multiple names, but they all tend to mean the same thing: for example, lawyer, attorney, or counselor; doctor or physician. But in our field what we are called by our clients, and especially by prospective clients, often tells us a lot about what they want and need, and about who they are.

Here’s a handy reference guide:

Capacity Builders: The only people who ever use this term are foundation staff and, of course, other capacity builders.

Facilitators: Use of this name typically lets us know that the client is looking for someone to facilitate a meeting, not to lead the organization through a transformative process. Sometimes, however, this term is misleading; it may be the only one the client has at his/her disposal.

Management or Strategy Consultants: These terms usually mean the client is working within a corporate context or wants us to know they know “the lingo.” They are often used by board members with corporate backgrounds.

Mediators: This name lets us know that the client has a high-conflict situation. They need a consultant to help them through it, but the only term they can think of is mediator, as if they were going to submit the organization’s difficulties to arbitration (but that’s another specialty: arbitrators).

OD practitioners: Like “capacity builders,” this is an insider’s term—”organizational development”—that is almost exclusively used by OD practitioners to describe their work.

Planners: This is the military or corporate term for the people whose formal job is to create plans. Some large corporations, and large military units, have a dedicated group of planners. They don’t tend to facilitate decisions by leaders, but rather to provide paths for implementation of decisions already made.

TA Providers: This name (technical assistance provider) is the grassroots version of “management consultant.” Community agencies, if they have any sense that our field even exists, are likely to know of it as TA.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Consulting for Nonprofits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.