"When you come to a fork in the road, take it," said baseball legend Yogi Berra, who apparently came across few utensils in his all-baseball career path.

But for Andrea Corney, who owns a Menlo Park company that trains managers to be better managers, the fork in the road was an innocuous class she took while en route to law and business degrees from Stanford University. It was one of the first offerings of "interpersonal dynamics," a class that helped shape her business career.

Looking back on it, she says it was the most important class she took. It's now one of the most popular on campus, she says, but it also set her on the path to her own business.

"You need your academic, intellectual, functional skills to get on the first few ladders" to success in business, she says. "Real success in business is being able to lead others, manage others, work with them, and create the circumstances where teams are effective."

Ms. Corney says that's where mastery of interpersonal dynamics makes the difference.

"When you're in a knowledge economy, which is highly educated workers, you need to exercise judgment, where you're dealing with complexity and ambiguity, the old industrial model of command and control and strict hierarchy doesn't work as well. Work is different; work has changed; but our old model of management hasn't caught up," she says.

The course work stayed in the back of her mind as she worked for two of Silicon Valley's largest law firms: Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Increasingly unhappy with the law, Ms. Corney decided to make the jump into consulting to avoid the conflicts and misunderstandings that lead to legal actions.

"My instinct was to repair the work relationship. If the lawyer repairs the work relationship, no one gets paid," she says. "That to me didn't seem productive."

The fork was finally taken in 1995 when she started Acorn Consulting, putting into practice much of what she had learned in that Stanford class on interpersonal dynamics.

"I did a lot of networking. I had some expertise in conflict resolution so I did workshops within professional associations," she says, explaining how she got the business off the ground. "For a while, I partnered with a more senior consultant."

She also gained experience and exposure by participating in Stanford's program to provide free consulting for nonprofits. The experiences gave Ms. Corney examples from which to draw when it came to building her consulting business.

"In some ways it was a relief to do it," she says of making the break from big-time law to a small, entrepreneurial effort. "It finally made sense. I've been consulting to high-tech and nonprofits ever since."

Ms. Corney's ability to "herd the cats" in a company to get managers working together can make a big difference, says a customer.

"It had a huge impact," says Randy Ditzler, who hired Ms. Corney when he was chief executive officer of Actona Technologies, Inc., of Los Gatos. Actona was acquired earlier this year by Cisco Systems, Inc., of San Jose, for $82 million. "She was instrumental in creating communication pathways. She's very thorough and thoughtful in team dynamics and in understanding the differences. She crafts the appropriate program."

Her company's advice has been sought out by high-tech firms ranging from Actona to Virage Logic and by nonprofits from California Certified Organic Farmers to the Global Fund for Women. She has also added schools and other educational organizations to her list of clients.

Ms. Corney says she finds a problem common in many organizations is that management fails to give employees feedback or "they give feedback but do it in a way that's destructive."

She says there are simple, straightforward ways to give constructive feedback. "It's not the only thing but with almost every client I work with it's one of the pieces I do with them."

"Her background is really unique," says Tom Griffin, now with a software company in New Jersey, who worked with Ms. Corney when he was at Mentor Graphics. "She's an attorney by profession, she has an MBA. She's incredibly overeducated but she handles that well; she doesn't let her obvious pedigree be a barrier. She's an easy person to know, an easy person to like."

Ms. Corney has stayed in close contact with Stanford, acting as a senior facilitator for the business school's interpersonal dynamics course.

"There are now about 150 of us in the Bay Area. It's a pretty intensive 12-week training program," she says. "We have formed a learning community where we have social events. We have half-days where we teach each other things."

Ms. Corney says she's sort of the "church lady" for the facilitators, helping organize activities and editing their newsletter.

"When you spend time with a bunch of people who are all committed to personal integrity, to be honest and direct, to do what it takes to make communities vibrant, it's a great place to be," she says.

Ms. Corney says she spends much of her free time developing the flower beds at her townhouse. "Gardening is so satisfying because there are no permanent mistakes," she says. "If something doesn't work, you yank it out and put something else in. The garden doesn't care; the garden just likes your attention. You're never wrong when you're in your garden."