What I Learned about Consulting from Nancy Drew

And why you should, too

Like Sandra Day O’Connor, 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 (ATD Press, 2011) and in developing Barnes & Conti’s programs based on the book (Consulting on the Inside and The Influential Internal Consultant) I’ve kept these principles in mind. Being an internal consultant (whether in HR, IT, strategy, or other areas of expertise) 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 – provide.