Doug and Dave, you have captured some of the dynamics of what happens when
an external "prophet" becomes an internal "one of the guys."
If the outside consultant is hired into too low-level a position -- or is
not given an organizationally-recognized "savior" role -- then I believe
status issues come into play, as Dave says.
However, there is more to the demise of the prophet's status in the longer
run than merely status or even culture pressure. In fact, when one is
inside an organization it is difficult to maintain one's sources of
insight and inspiration from outside the organization. The former
prophet, who once rubbed shoulders with two or three [put in your own
numbers] different companies every week, who once was challenged with each
new prospective client to come up with an exciting new approach that
stretched his/her knowledge and abilities, who maintained a network of
other external consultants or internal consultants in many different
industries (or at least companies), now finds him/herself spending nearly
100% of the week interacting with people from within just one company. It
is very difficult for the prophet's well not to dry up.
Plus, as an external consultant I find that I spend quite a lot of time
(connected with ongoing projects or not connected with anything) learning.
Yes, I have all kinds of time pressures, but they are irregular -- a few
weeks or months of absurdly little time for even sleeping followed by a few
weeks with distant deadlines. Inside an organization there seemed always to
be something to "do" (productive or not) and someone demanding to do it with
you -- unless your organization works on a project-by-project basis.
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>