CONCEPT
Process Consultation
Schein's clinical methodology — helping clients see what is actually happening rather than telling them what to do — and the diagnostic approach the AI transition most urgently requires.
Process consultation is the methodology Schein developed over six decades of clinical work, formalized in three editions of his book of that title (1969, 1988, 1999). The central commitment is that the consultant's role is not to diagnose the client's problem and prescribe a solution but to help the client see what is actually happening — including the aspects of the situation that the client's own assumptions prevent her from seeing. The methodology operates at the level of basic underlying assumptions, and it is the level at which the AI transition must be addressed if adoption is to produce transformation rather than theater. Almost no organization is approaching AI adoption through process consultation, and the pattern of failed adoptions Schein's framework predicts is the result.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The methodology emerged from Schein's MIT work in the 1960s with the National Training Laboratories and his subsequent consulting engagements. It was radical for its time: while dominant management consulting operated through expert diagnosis