What I Learned About Consulting from Nancy Drew

(Part 2 of Why I Write Detective Stories)

[Like](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associate_Justice_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States) [Sandra Day O'Connor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Day_O%27Connor), Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Laura Bush, and so many other women of a certain generation, one of the formative influences in my life was Nancy Drew. Despite the obvious handicap (or perhaps advantage) of being fictional, Nancy provided us with a strong female character to emulate at a time when such role models were scarce. Of course, we all had our own Nancy. I appreciated her autonomy; her independent and authoritative voice. I admired her courage in speaking truth to power. I followed her logic and analysis and identified with her intuitive sense of what seemed true and what merited further exploration. I took many lessons from her detective work. Here are some that I've applied to my organizational consulting practice for the past forty years:

• •Be curious. Don't take anyone's first response as the final answer. Go deeper, ask the "five whys," get to the bottom of the "ladder of inference."
• •Be skeptical. Don't assume you understand the situation until you've looked at it from many points of view. Form your own opinion based on different and broad sources of information.
• •Be independent. Poke around; look for information in non-obvious places. If everyone else is focused in one direction, turn around and look the other way.
• •Be patient. Don't jump to conclusions; keep your own counsel until you've reviewed the evidence and developed a strong hypothesis.
• •Be bold. Speak up: you're not adding value if you don't have the courage to point out how the organization's reality differs from its aspirations or how a leader's actions belie his or her words.

In co-writing (with Beverly Scott) the book, Consulting on the Inside (ASTD Press, 2011) and in developing Barnes & Conti's programs based on the book (Consulting on the Inside and The Influential Internal Consultant http://www.barnesconti.com/programs.html#/) I've kept these principles in mind. Being an internal consultant means performing a balancing act between being an engaged citizen/participant and being a cool, neutral, and insightful observer.

As Nancy drives off in her blue roadster (in recent years, a hybrid) we can thank her and her equally fictional author, Carolyn Keene, for providing many generations of girls - and boys - with the focus and courage to explore and resolve the mysteries that life - and organizations - will provide.