The BASK names a four-stage consulting process. Its whole point is that you do not design a solution before you understand the challenge.
The four stages
Discovery; analysis and solution; recommendation; implementation.
- Discovery: interviewing stakeholders, pulling data, observing - defining the problem.
- Analysis and solution: weighing alternative designs against root causes.
- Recommendation: presenting the preferred option to the sponsor.
- Implementation: putting the agreed program into operation and supporting its adoption.
Sequence questions are common. Once root causes have been identified, analysis and solution is complete and recommendation comes next - not implementation, which only follows acceptance.
What the stages are not
- Planning, execution, monitoring, closing are generic project phases, not the BASK's stages.
- Unfreeze, change, refreeze adapts Lewin's model, which the BASK names as a *change model*, not as the consulting process.
- Awareness, desire, knowledge, ability are four of the five ADKAR elements.
Order before solution
Consultation's first sub-competency is Evaluating Business Challenges, and the process begins with discovery. When a manager demands a recognition program for low morale and HR has not yet examined attendance, exit interview themes or spans of control, the keyed action is to work with the manager to evaluate the business challenge before designing a solution.
- Launching the requested program adopts the manager's proposed solution as the diagnosis.
- Surveying employees on which awards they prefer refines the details of an unvalidated solution.
- Hiring an outside consultant outsources a step HR should lead, and delays it.
Designing versus the rest
Designing HR Solutions is constructing the components of an HR program intended to resolve an identified business challenge. Diagnosing why absenteeism rose in one shift is Evaluating Business Challenges. Coaching a sponsor on announcing the program is closer to Advising and Change Management. Clearing a backlog of employee service requests is Service Excellence.
Carry this in: when people have not yet accepted that change is needed, the target is ADKAR's Awareness - understanding why the change is needed - and it comes before Knowledge and Ability.