DBA 8090 Module 1 Written Assignment: Choosing a Consulting Role With a Family Marine Contractor Example

Who Asked for Help, and What Kind? Choosing a Consultant's Role With a Marine Contractor That Wins Bids and Loses Money

Student Name

Doctor of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

DBA-8090: Organizational Consulting: Process Consultation, Avocation, and Business Sustainability

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Who Asked for Help, and What Kind? Choosing a Consultant's Role With a Marine Contractor That Wins Bids and Loses Money

A Phone Call From Cedar Run

Frank, the 64-year-old owner of Cedar Run Marine Construction, a composite firm of about 70 employees, called on a Tuesday evening. In 2024 the company booked its largest year, roughly $18 million, yet its operating margin fell from about 11 percent to 3 percent. Nine of its last 22 municipal and marina jobs finished over budget. Frank opened with a request that sounded simple: "Find out which of my estimators is pricing too low." Before agreeing to anything, a consultant has to decide what kind of help this request calls for, who is asking for it and whether the person asking is the one who will need to change.

What a Consultant Is

Block (2011) defines a consultant as someone who has influence over a person, group or organization without the power to make changes directly. That definition matters at Cedar Run. Frank can fire an estimator; I cannot. Whatever I find will only matter if Frank, his two adult children and his field supervisors decide to act on it. The consultant's product, then, is not the answer alone but the client's use of the answer. Weiss (2021) frames the same point commercially: clients buy improved conditions, not reports or hours, and the consultant's value is measured by the change in the client's results.

Three Roles, Three Kinds of Help

Block (2011) describes three roles a consultant can take. In the expert role, the client hands over a problem and the consultant solves it; responsibility moves away from the client. Acting as a pair of hands, a consultant simply does work the client lacks time for, and every decision stays with the client. In the collaborative role, the two share diagnosis and the plan, so the client's ownership grows during the work.

Schein (1997) sorts helping into three similar models. The purchase-of-expertise model assumes the client already knows the problem and needs only a capability. The doctor-patient model assumes the consultant can examine the organization and prescribe. Process consultation assumes neither is safe: the client may not yet understand the problem, and only the client knows what will work in the culture. Schein (2016) later argued that consultants help faster when they start with humble inquiry, questions asked from real curiosity, and build a more personal relationship early instead of hurrying to a diagnosis.

Frank's request fits the purchase-of-expertise model exactly. He has named the problem (a weak estimator) and the fix (find and correct the person). If he is right, an expert role would be efficient. If he is wrong, an expert role would let me deliver a confident answer to the wrong question.

Who Is the Client?

Schein (1997) separates contact clients, who first reach out; intermediate clients, who take part in early meetings; primary clients, who own the problem and the budget; ultimate clients, whose interests the work should serve; and unwitting clients, who will be affected without knowing it. Mapping Cedar Run this way changed the picture.

Two details from the call stood out. Frank said Lauren "has all the numbers," and he mentioned that Danny and the senior estimator "don't talk much anymore." Both suggest the problem may sit between functions, not inside one person.

Trust in the First Meetings

A family firm hiring an outsider takes a risk it cannot fully judge in advance. Glückler and Armbrüster (2003) found that clients reduce this uncertainty through trust built on direct experience and through reputation passed along networks of people they know. Frank found me through a marina owner I had helped with project controls, so I begin with borrowed trust that I can lose quickly. Nikolova et al. (2009) describe client-consultant work as a set of social practices in which expertise is negotiated, not simply delivered. At Cedar Run that means the first meeting is already part of the work: how I ask questions will show the family whether I am there to judge them or to help them see the business clearly.

Choosing the Role

I will propose a collaborative role with a defined expert task inside it. The expert task is narrow and technical: rebuild the cost history of the 22 recent public and marina jobs from Lauren's records and compare each estimate with its final cost by line item. That analysis needs project controls skill the family does not have. Everything else, deciding what the comparison means, which practices to change and who owns each change, will be shared with Frank, Lauren and Danny.

This choice has a cost. Frank wants a name, and a collaborative role will feel slow to him. Block (2011) warns that consultants who accept the client's first definition of the problem often end up solving the presenting problem while the underlying one stays untouched. I will tell Frank directly that I may find an estimating problem, a hand-off problem between the office and the field, or both, and that I will not judge any person until the job-cost data has been reviewed with the people who produced it. If he insists on an expert verdict about one estimator, I will decline the engagement, since that work would likely damage the people involved without fixing the margin.

What I Will Do Before the Next Meeting

Three steps follow. First, I will ask Frank whether Lauren and Danny can join the next conversation, which tests whether he sees them as part of the client system. Second, I will ask for one completed job file, a marina pier that ran 31 percent over budget, so the first discussion rests on facts. Third, I will write down my own assumptions about the cause so I can check later whether the data changed my mind or merely confirmed it.

Conclusion

Frank called for an expert to find a weak estimator. Mapping the client system and the kind of help requested suggests the work needs a collaborative consultant who carries one expert task, the cost history, and shares diagnosis with the family. The role is chosen before the contract because it shapes every later step: what the proposal promises, what data is gathered and who will own the results.

References

Block, P. (2011). Flawless consulting: A guide to getting your expertise used (3rd ed.). Pfeiffer.

Glückler, J., & Armbrüster, T. (2003). Bridging uncertainty in management consulting: The mechanisms of trust and networked reputation. Organization Studies, 24(2), 269-297. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840603242004

Nikolova, N., Reihlen, M., & Schlapfner, J. F. (2009). Client-consultant interaction: Capturing social practices of professional service production. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 25(3), 289-298. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2009.05.004

Schein, E. H. (1997). The concept of "client" from a process consultation perspective. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 10(3), 202-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534819710171077

Schein, E. H. (2016). Humble consulting: How to provide real help faster. Berrett-Koehler.

Weiss, A. (2021). Million dollar consulting: The professional's guide to growing a practice (6th ed.). McGraw-Hill.