I am bilingual. I can speak two languages: academic psychobabble and consultantese. Neither language is superior, and both are very useful. And although they have common roots, they are often very different.
I have been a full-time academic since 1979 and have been doing consulting work since 1985, establishing my own company a year later. I also do executive coaching. I like to think I understand – and have had success – in both these worlds, despite their mutual mistrust. I’ve become an adept translator – and this article is my attempt at diplomacy.
I chuckle knowingly when serious academics pour scorn on the “simple-minded analysis and conclusions of greedy, out-of-date consultants”; I have coaching friends who have never considered the evidence for whether their practice ever works and have no qualifications whatsoever except the ability to bluff. Equally, I nod in agreement with my consultant friends who point out that “academics stuck in their ivory towers are impractical, naive and utterly irrelevant”. But, over time, I think I have become what cross-cultural psychologists call a mediator, taking from each of these groups the best of what they have to offer. It is the migrant in me.
