Change Agents: Meet the Nicheperts

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Trust is terrific, but for the Sirota group, enthusiasm is the must-have for success. The Purchase, N.Y., consultancy calls it the foundation of company morale, talent retention, productivity, customer satisfaction and even higher stock prices. The consultants pitch themselves as enthusiasm builders, using methods like creating a "partnership culture" of shared business goals and joint decision making, and job-security policies like making layoffs the last choice, not the first.

So, what's the real key? Although each of these experts proffers a different cure for a different ill, the substance of what they do overlaps. Generally, they agree that unfair or badly communicated management decisions create a workforce rife with anxiety, anger and rumormongering. "I would be very cautious about anyone viewing one factor as a key to what ails all organizations," warns Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade. "Life and organizational life are a complex network, very multicausal."

In fact, if the corporate malaise, with its many causes and symptoms, can be pictured as an elephant--that ever useful beast of analogy--then some of these folks have grasped it by the trunk, some by the tail and others by the ear. But wherever they grab on, it's the same animal: a workplace unsettled by change and uncertainty.

Those who work from the top down stand the greatest chance of effecting a systemic cure, experts agree. Nevertheless, Barsade observes, if a consultant addresses a small issue like gossip, it can make a difference. "It doesn't have to be systemwide to have an effect," she says, "or to change people's lives."

Procrastination preventer Kerul Kassel has focused on this narrow niche for three years. With her procrastinator-profiler quiz and Anticrastinate Your Way to Success program, she uncovers competing goals that she believes are the root of most people's slowdowns. She helps clients bring them to the surface and resolve them. A typical case might be a midlevel manager who falls behind because he can't delegate. He makes his boss look bad and frustrates the people under him by micromanaging them. "If you procrastinate," Kassel declares, "people don't trust your leadership."

No matter how narrow their niche, the experts insist that inspired insight or client demand dictated their particular angle. Targeting is also a good business practice. "You don't want buzzwords," says Jeff Sandefer, president of energy investment firm Sandefer Capital Partners and a founder of the Acton MBA in Entrepreneurship program. "Everyone wants to hire the expert and will pay a lot for very specific help." Some companies love the idea of bringing in an adviser to fix one narrowly defined problem. Gossip Stoppers is a prime example. "A half day, and you leave with a couple of nuggets you can use," says Barsade enthusiastically. "How attractive is that?"