Opportunities - Sr.Consultant

Senior Consultant:

New Commons, Inc. is looking for its next Senior Consultant.  This position is not a job, it is an opportunity. Each of us has the mentality of an entrepreneur and owner. We seek solo practitioners and small practices that long for a community of like-minded practitioners banding together to create deeper and broader impact for the common good in the world, especially locally and regionally. We value the face to face as well as virtual ways to collaborate.

You have a client base and the ability to do develop business that “wins the work.”  However, you know that collaboration—building something greater and better together—is more interesting and profitable, long-term, than remaining solo or in a small practice. You want to build a firm that can expand its client base by mobilizing a powerful network.

Above all you are aligned with what New Commons wants to put into the world, and especially in the Southern New England region – future organizations, future networks and future communities.  In the next several decades, real change for the common good will occur at the local and regional level more than nationally or globally.

New Commons operates as a business cooperative 
A business cooperative is organized based on issuing a maximum of 100 shares, albeit not all shares have to be used. In effect, each owner has one share which equals one vote.  No owner, not even the founder, owns more than one share. There is a vesting period of 2-years before ownership is offered.

Workplace democracy is our essence.  A small management committee and a CEO execute the day-to-day management decisions and the policy decisions of the owner’s council composed of all owners.

We want people looking for an opportunity to build, with others, the cooperative where each of us owns one piece. Each of us is “hungry, but not desperate,” and we are ready to evolve a business, learn and make something unique happen. Compensation is based on the book of business you produce, less infrastructure contribution, and performance-based profit sharing. 

You have these core consulting skills

• Think and practice using whole systems
• Naturally facilitate groups—listening with rapture, building relationships and surfacing doubts and concerns, when they have to be raised, when no one else is ready to do so
• Design processes for the continuous learning of clients
• Change agent
• Life-long learner
• Innovator
• Communicator

Beyond the core skills noted above, each of us has a distinct body of knowledge and practice about organizations and/or communities. In effect, it is best that your skills align with and are simultaneously distinct to the current mix of skills at New Commons. You bring at least, and ideally more than, 12 years of professional experience in consulting/professional services work.  We want people who will carry on this work beyond the life of the founder.

You must be able to stand in the psychological, creative tension of the opposites. In this dynamic, there is always a third way that has to be “owned” and pursued. Some tensions of the opposites: on one hand, be a self-starter/entrepreneur and a “character” and on the other hand, work for the common good of the planet and with the entire practice. Be ready to build a new kind of collaborative, owner-based company and at the same time, apply proven management practices. A New England sensibility is very helpful.

You must have a current book of business of at least $60,000. You must be ready to contribute distinct organizational know-how for building the company such as branding, workflows and so on.

Who we are
New Commons is a consultancy and think tank. We go beyond big ideas and big reports to engage in the “linking and doing” most required to get things done—Think…Link…Do. We have been in the professional services business for over 28 years, established in 1982. Our focus is the future of organizations, networks, communities and economies. We are consultants to organizations and the larger external communities in which organizations co-exist. We do strategic planning, external communications, organizational structures and implementation.

New Commons creates meeting “spaces and places” to produce innovation in strategy, structure and performance. Think of strategy as either strategic thinking or a plan. Structure is organizing to get results. Think of performance as getting results by using the best operating structure or effectively managing a project.

Our clients are commercial and civic. New Commons and its clients work as partners.

Our toolbox includes tools and products for change, learning, creativity and community. The client’s real work, opportunities and pressures are used to organize a consulting project. Visit our website, www.newcommons.com for more information.

Help make our brand sing
New Commons is known for large systems change. And we do it by challenging people to: Think freshly...Link ideas and people in new ways...Do it differently when mobilizing for action.  Think...Link...Do.

We are known for our focus on localities and regions.

We are known for our engaging facilitation process, in part, based on “making American” Metaplan of Germany.  Metaplan uses a dynamic process with groups to visualize, cluster and prioritize the spoken word, on large pin-boards, using different colored and shaped cards on brown paper. New Commons calls its process, “brown paper and cards.” Metaplan cleverly blends art and science. The next senior consultant must be ready to learn, use and innovate, that is, take to the next level, this facilitation process.

Overall, the next New Commons practitioner must be ready to learn, use and animate the New Commons brand.      

Start date:  ASAP

Qualifying Process:  the partnership will evolve in stages

1. Initial contact:  letter of intrigue to answer the questions below, interviews, and owners meeting
2. Work on a project together – can be yours or ours
3. Assess our collective human dynamics
4. Formal affiliation: declaration of commitment and voting in by owners
5. Profit sharing arrangement based on actual projects and performance
6. Partner and ownership agreements once vested

Interested: Ready to take the next step?  If yes, then send us your resume and a “Letter of Intrigue” that answers the following questions:  Take up to four pages to respond, and submit this to EMAIL. 

• Who are you? How do you serve the world?
• Describe your current consulting practice and its dollar volume?
• Based on the requisite skills New Commons listed above, what do you do best as a consultant? Where are you vulnerable?
• How do you facilitate groups? Talk about your readiness to learn “brown paper and cards?”
• What do you bring to New Commons that will stretch it in the right ways?
• Where do you resonate with the essence of New Commons?
• Overall, where do you challenge us or have doubts?
• What are your first questions?

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