Chapter 3: A Springboard For Further Learning: Teaching Seasoned Practitioners by Harnessing Their Experience

The number of practicing management consultants keeps growing, most of them without previously having studied organizational change at university level. They enter the profession with backgrounds ranging from engineering and forestry, to psychology and economics, broadening their competence as they go. They mostly pick things up on the job, but also through in-house training programs (in large consultancy firms) or brief nonacademic skill-based trainings. Their original backgrounds do have relevance is some way, but leave much to be desired in terms of a common body of knowledge. Their gained experience definitely has relevance in many ways, but that knowledge is largely implicit and nonconceptualized. All this presents a need for educating practitioners with many years of experience.