My approach to consulting is a natural outgrowth of my research. As a doctoral student, I tackled problems at the intersection of epistemology and psychology. You may not know the word "epistemology," but you know the territory it covers. Epistemology is simply the study of knowledge and rationality. While epistemology is a diverse field, it tends to revolve around the same basic questions. These questions include:
What does knowledge ultimately consist in?
What does it mean to be rational?
What is group knowledge, and how do groups increase in knowledge and rationality?
The third question, which falls under the domain of social epistemology, is particularly relevant to businesses. Social epistemologists investigate how information is transferred, how testimony transmits knowledge, how groups and organizations can have knowledge, and how epistemic cooperation can go wrong. Their research has significant (and largely untapped) implications for businesses. Within organizations, knowledge is constantly produced and shared. When knowledge is reliably produced and exchanged, businesses run smoothly. Most of the time, however, there are hiccups. Unreliable methods of business production can disrupt an organization's operations, and communication breakdowns between teams can distort business insights and propagate misinformation.
To address situations like these, an epistemic approach to consulting is particularly suitable. Using the epistemic approach, consultants can work with businesses to determine an organization's goals, identify concrete problems with knowledge production and dissemination that frustrate those goals, and execute strategies for correction. Often, the right strategies will require distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information, increasing the efficiency of communication between teams, and streamlining high-level messaging. But every situation is different, and good consultants always put the needs of the client before any theoretical paradigm. The epistemic approach is one among many effective approaches in an organization's suite of solutions.
At the same time, an epistemic approach to consulting is only as good as its empirical backbone. In the absence of data-driven behavioral science, business solutions have limited sticking power. This is where psychological science strengthens the epistemic approach. By combining the insights of epistemology and empirical psychology, consultants can determine both (a) where breakdowns in knowledge production and dissemination are occurring and (b) how we can cooperate with human psychology to correct these breakdowns. For example, a manager may fail to transmit knowledge to her employees because she has unwittingly attributed her own knowledge to them: a phenomenon psychologists call the curse of knowledge. By leveraging both epistemology and empirical psychology, consultants can help businesses determine their primary epistemic goals (e.g., to transmit know-how to clients), identify concrete problems that frustrate these goals (e.g., trainers unwittingly assume too much knowledge), and formulate actionable problem-solving strategies (e.g., supply trainers with scripts that accurately reflect the knowledge level of their trainees).
The epistemic approach is predicated on the view that knowledge is among an organization's greatest assets. Successful organizations have clear epistemic goals and concrete plans to achieve them. While the epistemic approach to consulting may seem novel, the insights that drive this approach are not. Knowledge managers are invested in similar problems and seek similar solutions. But unlike many knowledge managers, epistemologists have thousands of years of rigorous philosophical inquiry to draw upon.