Our Values and Beliefs

Our Values

• Authenticity -- wholehearted participation in life and work
• Getting things done and learning at the same time
• Not letting the plan get in the way of the planning
• Not letting the planning get in the way of action
• People addressing their own challenges to get the most lasting, appropriate solutions
• Leveraging the power of peers to get things done and learn at the same time

Key Role of Authenticity in Our Work

We strongly believe that authenticity is the most important criteria for learning in life and work. The term "authenticity" is becoming almost commonplace in literature about leadership and management development. To us, the term "authenticity" means wholehearted participation. An authentic person is someone who shows up completely and is participating as honestly as possible in the here-and-now. This authenticity is the bottom line requirement for any form of learning in life and work.

Our Beliefs

We work from a certain set of beliefs about professional and organization development -- these beliefs address many of what we consider to be major problems in development today.

"Too often, consultants and leaders assume that approaches in development are truly powerful only if the approaches seem novel, complex and conveyed by the latest guru. Too often, they assume that the more expensive the approaches, then the more powerful the approaches must be -- this is the fallacy of 'executive-level pricing'.

"Instead, natural and real development comes from natural and real practices in life. True development comes from this 'simplicity on the other side of complexity'. Authenticity Consulting always keep focus on this simplicity which is accessible to us all."

"If we leaders and practitioners are to help accomplish what we envision for the world, then we'd better focus a lot more on the real 20% that generates 80% of the results -- and we'd better focus on making that 20% a lot more accessible to a lot more people. Authenticity Consulting brings that 20% to anyone."

"We practitioners assert that our leaders and learners really must do more to think out-of-the-box. Yet we practitioners use primarily the same limited approaches in our consultations, such as delivery of written plans. Too often, after these plans are delivered to the client, they sit, collecting dust on clients' shelves. Authenticity Consulting puts as much priority on helping clients to implement plans as it does on helping clients to write the plans themselves."

"Perhaps, rather than trying to improve development by creating yet more slogans and models, we should leverage more learning by ensuring leaders and learners a) have mastered the 20% that generates 80% of results, b) are helping each other to really learn from each other, c) and are helping each other to be more accountable to actually apply new information and materials from consultation plans. Authenticity Consulting focuses on these three goals."

-- Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD,
co-founder of Authenticity Consulting, LLC