Sharp-Image Diagnosis

We management consultants play an essential diagnostic role in our work with clients, or at least we should be doing so. Too often, however, consultants appear to move to prescription and prognosis before undertaking sufficiently rigorous description and diagnosis. Indeed, how many times have presenting symptoms in a given leadership and organizational context been confused with underlying causal factors? Too often!

My love of photography finds me readily embracing the simple metaphor of the zoom lens. Here, the consultant undertakes a broad scan based on a theoretical frame of some kind, such as seeing organizations as complex adaptive systems. The consultant then selects the most promising areas for close-up investigation, zooming in as needed but often zooming back into a wider angle to verify that he or she truly understands the larger context and interdependencies.

In their useful book Organizational Diagnosis and Assessment, Harrison & Shirom (1999) take the analysis to another interesting level, however, with their use of the term sharp-image diagnosis. Sure, many consultants zoom in and out in the manner described above, but that's where the diagnostic process typically ends. Harrison & Shirom invoke another imaging technology - the MRI - to push the metaphor even further. The "MRI goes below the surface of the body to produce three-dimensional cross-sections showing the condition of body tissues and blood flow." (p.18) So too, sharp-image diagnosis goes below the surface of presented leadership or organizational problems to examine underlying systems and their dynamic interactions. After all, most of the actual problems or challenges clients face are buried deep, inextricably linked to other problems and challenges, and quite different from the presenting issues described at the outset of an engagement.