Sharpening My Saw

Life as a sovereign professional is enriching in so many ways but, without due care, it can also be inadvertently narrowing.  Thus it was that I spent three days last week in the company of Mark Law, sharpening the saw by attending one of his Management Consulting courses. 

Mark’s firm, Advanced Management Skills, is a leading trainer of consultants and value practitioners and the course I attended covered both structures for generic management consulting activities and aspects of the specific Value Management methodology which has been adopted as a European and UK standard (BS EN 12973:2000).  The courses are recognised as routes to formal qualification in both management consulting (through the Institute of Consulting) and Value Management (through the Institute of Value Management).

Value Management techniques are being widely adopted across both commercial and public sector organisations, the recent Cabinet Office Initiative (press release, here) being an example.  One of the most comprehensive but succinct descriptions of Value Management is given by the Society of American Value Engineers (SAVE).

All in all, it was a valuable three days and I’m looking forward to including the approach and my new, refreshed and sharpened skills in future projects.

Also, an added benefit of the course was discovering Mark’s Book Summaries which I’m hoping will lighten the load on my Must Read shelf.