Your Dreams, Our Interpretation
Weyinmi Jemide (Partner)
Every business is driven by dreams - from the CEO to the FDO (front desk officer); from the corporate to the departmental; from the group to the subsidiary; the list goes on. In fact, a business is a salad of personal dreams set under a corporate umbrella. Of course, between dreams and reality, there are hurdles which the dreamer often fails to or is unable to scale. Consequently and not surprisingly, many dreams are either partly or never fulfilled.
Between Dreams and Reality
Consulting fits in at some point between the dreams and reality as an enabler and interpreter. It enables companies achieve their visions and objectives and in the process empowers individuals to connect with their dreams. Within fulfilled corporate visions personal desires are met, passions are explored, childhood dreams are realised, educational and professional pursuits are rewarded and natural attributes are expressed.
Dreams Unrealized
On the contrary, unrealized dreams throw CEO's and top executives into unemployment and generate layoffs and downsizings. They also cause corporate strife, loss of market share, company takeovers and sometimes the ultimate negative outcome of company failure.
Ancient Perspectives, Modern Profession
Men can often conclude that ancient things belong to ancient times and modern things to modern times. This is manifest when we say that certain things belong in the past without making the connection between the past and the present or the future. This approach is not always correct.
At Ashford & McGuire Consulting, we have discovered an ancient perspective on dreams which is deeply relevant to consulting in today’s setting. This perspective is found in Chapters 39 to 41 of the biblical Book of Genesis and it dates between 1400 BC and 1500 BC. Consulting is therefore not such a modern profession as more recent documentation would seem to suggest.
But let’s find out more about the story and its characters…
The characters
The story has four main characters: Pharaoh - king of Egypt (and de-facto ruler of the then known world), two unnamed servants of Pharaoh who served as butler and baker. Then there is Joseph - Hebrew slave and prisoner turned consultant who is the lead character of the story.
The story
Now here’s the story summarised in today’s language:
It started with dreams.
At the age of 17, Joseph was a shepherd alongside his brothers. His brothers were jealous of their father’s love for Joseph and they hated him. Joseph further provoked this hatred when he told his brothers about dreams in which sheaves of wheat belonging to them bowed to his own sheaf and the sun, moon, and 11 stars bowed to him.
A dead goat and a living slave
One day, the brothers plotted to kill him and throw him into a pit. Later on, they decided not to kill him but sell him to a caravan of Ishmaelite traders for 20 pieces of silver. The brothers then dipped his coat into the blood of a slaughtered goat and brought it back to Jacob who recognized the coat and concluded that a beast had killed his son.
Accused but not seduced
The traders took Joseph down to Egypt where Potiphar, captain of Pharaoh’s guard bought him. Potiphar made Joseph his personal attendant but Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph who refused her each time, citing loyalty to Potiphar and to God. One day, she grabbed his coat and he ran away. She claimed he tried to seduce her and reported him to her husband. Potiphar was furious and sent Joseph to a jail for the king’s prisoners.
Solutions for prisoners
In prison, the chief jailor put Joseph in charge of all the other prisoners, including Pharaoh’s butler and baker who had offended the king. One night both the butler and the baker had strange dreams. Joseph interpreted the dreams, saying that in three days time the butler would be recalled to his former position while the baker would be killed. Sure enough, three days later, Pharaoh restored the butler to his job and killed the baker.
Solutions for a king
Two years later, Pharaoh himself had two dreams that his magicians could not interpret. The butler told Pharaoh about Joseph and Pharaoh sent for him. Joseph told him that the dreams meant seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. He advised Pharaoh to appoint a wise man over the land to store food from the seven years of abundance to save for the years of scarcity. Joseph’s prediction and advice pleased Pharaoh and he made Joseph his second-in-command.
Solutions for nations
Joseph traveled throughout Egypt, gathering and storing enormous amounts of grain from each city. After seven years, a famine spread throughout the world, and Egypt was the only country that had food. Joseph was in charge of rationing grain to the Egyptians and to all who came to Egypt.
So what’s all this got to do with consulting?
There are SIX consulting analogies we can draw from this story.
- Joseph had dreams long before he was in a position to interpret those of Pharaoh.
Two men who challenged the status quo in corporate thinking were consultants - Peter Drucker and Bruce Henderson.
Drucker became a consultant to General Motors in 1942. Always ahead of his time, Drucker was the first to invent the “knowledge worker”, the first to predict that state enterprises would fail; the first to insist that government should govern but not “do”.
Bruce Henderson’s obituary in the Financial Times said it all:
“Few people have had as much impact on international business in the second half of the twentieth century as the founder of the Boston Consulting Group”.
Henderson applied ideas from other subjects to paint the broad outlines of business strategy as we know it today.
Both these men like Joseph saw events way ahead of their time. If they lived in Joseph’s time, they would have been the dreamers and interpreters of dreams. Consulting as a profession often produces dreamers – people who seek to make things work better, see things that others do not see and see into the future while others dwell in the present.
- Joseph interpreted the dreams of the baker, the butler and their lord, Pharaoh.
Dreams that cannot be interpreted are problems in the mind of the dreamer. The consultant also interprets dreams – CEO's’ dreams, corporate dreams, personal dreams and even national dreams with global implications such as Pharaoh had.
Consulting is about solutions – such as giving interpretations to dreams that cannot be understood. This role calls for insights and perspectives which the dreamer does not at that material time possess.
- The butler gave Joseph a referral to Pharaoh
As Pharaoh puzzled over his dream (replace ‘dream’ with ‘business challenge’), the butler remembered by to give Joseph a referral based on the sound solutions he provided two years earlier.
Consulting thrives on credibility and capacity to deliver fertilized by client referrals or the simple ‘list of clients served’ found in marketing brochures or proposals.
- The magicians and wise men of Egypt did not have solutions to Pharaoh’s problems.
Sad to say, not all consultants can or do deliver value to their clients. This situation reduces the credibility of the Josephs in the consulting world today. In fact, the situation has made some clients wary of (instead of open to) consulting services.
- Each dream had a different interpretation
Consulting solutions are never one-size-fits-all. Frequent attempts by consultants to treat them as such generate failed consulting projects. A consultant needs to listen to the dream and understand it before he can interpret. From the biblical narrative, value is in the eyes of the one with the challenge – “And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of all his servants” (Genesis 41:37). A good solution has to be agreeable and acceptable to the client and most importantly must deliver value to the client – all from the client’s (and not the consultant’s) perspective.
- Joseph offered a variety of approaches and solutions
Consulting with all the emphasis on ‘specialists’, often presents a combination of solutions to clients. Joseph’s range of solutions and approaches included the following with their modern day equivalents:
- Interpreting the dreams: Defining vision, mission and values or identifying clients’ real and latent needs.
- Giving good and bad verdicts: Telling the client the real situation, not what the client wants to hear or what will generate fees.
- Beyond the interpretation to recommendation: Stating the diagnosis and having a solution for it
- Beyond recommendation to implementation: providing a solution as well as holding the client’s hand through the execution.
- Recruitment and role profiling:…look out a man discreet and wise…appoint officers over the land – Genesis 41:33,34.
- Inventory management:…gather all the food of those good years…and that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine – Genesis 41:35,36.
- Distribution:…let them keep the food in the cities – Genesis 41:35.
- Taxation and fiscal policy or financial management:…take up a fifth part of the land – Genesis 41:34.
- Contingency and disaster recovery or risk management:…but in all the land of there was bread – Genesis 41:54.
- Architectural design: And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number – Genesis 41:49. The Pyramids were not mere monuments or “wonders of the world”. They were architectural structures that included deep grain storage pits. Since the corn was so much, it required massive and purpose-built storage space. Archaeological evidence from inscriptions (hieroglyphics) has shown that the design of the pyramids coincides with the period of the famine in Egypt.
- National advantage and global power: And the famine was over all the face of the earth…And all countries came into Egypt to Joseph for to buy corn, because that the famine was so sore in all lands – Genesis 41:56,57. The period of the famine brought all other nations to Egypt in search of food. They became subservient to Pharaoh and more impoverished as they gradually traded all their wealth for food to survive. This period brought about immense global power and prosperity for Egypt.
Today’s Pharaohs
It is pertinent to understand that Pharaoh’s influence and power at that time supersedes in relative terms that of any living person today. Read this extract from a web page on the History of Egypt:
Egyptians addressed their pharaoh as though he were a god with several forms. They thought he was more than human… …The Egyptians believed that no single name could express the greatness of their ruler. They also believed by serving the gods, the king helped the sun to rise every morning and helped the Nile to flood at the end of each summer. They believed that in return for the offerings of food and water that only the pharaoh could make, the gods would feed the souls of the Egyptians after death. The pharaoh's power was almighty and unquestioned. As a matter of fact, just touching the pharaoh's crown or scepter, even accidentally, carried the death penalty.
Yet, Pharaoh with all his might faced a challenge which called for a consulting solution. Today, presidents, governors, ministers, managing directors and other leaders or influencers require solutions to business or governmental challenges. Consider the range of solutions that Pharaoh eventually ‘bought’ from Joseph and you will see how relevant consulting remains.
Your dreams, our interpretation
Welcome to consulting, welcome to solutions. Between dreams and reality, often lies a consulting solution (or interpretation). Your dreams, our interpretation... |
