Airport in the United States to Stockholm, Sweden. The flight was approximately eight hours in duration and departed Newark in the early evening. The gentleman sitting next to me on the aeroplane was smartly dressed in a suit with the appearance of a senior executive. As we arrived at our seats we exchanged courtesies. During the first hours of the flight we both focused on our work, until the crew appeared to serve a meal. We placed our computers aside and engaged in light conversation over dinner. I rarely talk much about my work in such situations and generally steer towards lighter social topics of conversation.
The gentleman turned out to be a senior manager for an automotive company, based in Michigan. For many years his key area of specialization had been the design and production of heavy-duty gearboxes, a subject that he clearly relished to talk about. During the course of the next 20 minutes I learned a lot about gearboxes – everything from sensor technology to industrial lubricants and their response to different temperature gradients. My travel companion was pleasant, enthusiastic and told an interesting, although somewhat technically detailed, story.
At a certain point in the discussion the gentleman changed the subject and asked what I did for a living. I responded without hesitation, ‘I am a senior consultant, working with an international firm’. The mood of our conversation changed immediately. ‘Oh – a consultant!’ he exclaimed with a pronounced sigh. For a moment I paused, but as usual my curiosity got the better of me. I was keen to discover what had happened to this gentleman in the not so distant past that had provoked such a reaction. ‘I sense that you have some experience working with consultants’, I said. ‘Would you care to share it?’
His response to this question was a passionate one: ‘We had some consultants working in my organization several months ago. They came in wearing dark suits. They upset all of my people doing everything their way, according to their fancy consulting methodologies. It was like an invasion. They changed a lot of things, cost us a lot of money and left us in a mess. There will definitely be no more consultants in my organization for a very long time.’
It suffices to say that the next team of consultants who engage with the organization concerned will not be welcomed with open arms by the people working there. Clients may indeed be wary regarding the value that consultants will deliver, regarding the way that they will engage, and may be haunted by past experiences. Consultants must therefore be skilled in handling negative perceptions and the obstacles associated with them. We will explore these ideas in Chapter 7, Client Interactions and Related Obstacles. During longer-term consulting engagements an additional client concern may relate to the consistency with which an assignment can be delivered. This is of particular relevance to larger consulting firms that may be forced periodically to rotate the resources assigned to their projects. Consider the following example.
A client engaged a team of consultants from a large, well-known firm. The consultants worked efficiently, were a pleasure to have in-house and exceeded expectations in the output that they produced. The client was delighted with the result and communicated this openly at project conclusion. The following year when another assignment was initiated, the client had no hesitation in engaging the same consulting company based upon his former experience. The second assignment was, however, carried out by a different team from the consulting company. The second team performed well but not as well, in the eyes of the client, as the first team. Although the assignment was completed successfully the client reported a lower level of satisfaction.
This situation emphasizes that consulting, like any professional service-related discipline, is a people business. Client satisfaction is highly dependent upon the skills and attitudes of the individuals carrying out the work. Consulting firms therefore need mechanisms to ensure that they can deliver with high quality and high consistency, limiting dependence on individuals.
Such mechanisms include strict recruitment criteria that go beyond educational qualifications and place a strong focus on practical and interpersonal abilities. Most firms also operate an internal certification programme tied to the defined roles within their organization. An individual aspiring to the role of senior consultant, for example, may have to demonstrate a solid base of experience as well as a highly developed skill set that meets carefully defined criteria before securing the position. It is measures such as these that enable larger firms to deliver a consistent experience to clients.
If you are representing a consulting organization rather than operating as an individual, the credentials of your organization will also form an important element of your consulting proposition. When leveraged correctly, these assets become quite significant. Consider working as a consultant representing a firm of 500 people. Your consulting proposition can now be described in two parts: your personal proposition, and that of your organization. When helping your client you will be expected to:
• Leverage your own expertise and experience
• Tap into a network of 500 colleagues, locating answers to questions as needed
• Identify assets created by your organization in similar, past projects and reuse them to improve both quality and efficiency.
We can incorporate these ideas into our definition:
The role of a consultant is to help a client by leveraging his or her own expertise and experience, together with the collective expertise, experience and assets of his or her organization.
A fundamental question is how as consultants we bring these collective assets to bear. Well-managed consulting companies are knowledge management companies, and a number of texts have been published on this topic. The tools and processes required to facilitate effective knowledge management vary depending upon the size of the organization as well as the types of knowledge to be managed. Both formal and informal approaches can be effective. Once, during my junior years as a consultant, a senior colleague described the importance of this with a very simple story.
‘When this company started’, she said, ‘we were 50 employees located in one office spread over two floors of a building. If you were working on a project and needed information or an answer to a question you would consult one central resource – the coffee pot. If you went to the coffee room and chatted with colleagues you would quite easily find either someone who could answer your question, or someone who knew someone who would be able to help. The coffee pot was often something of a saviour. But now with more than 5000 employees spread across five continents the coffee pot has long since exhausted its limitations. That is why we document different types of knowledge objects in databases for easy retrieval, connect specialists globally through networks and communities, and bring people together in face-to-face events such as conferences. Knowledge management has never been more important to the competitive nature of our business’.
Larger consultancy firms invest heavily in the infrastructure required to facilitate effective knowledge management. Experience has shown, however, that the key to success is to create a knowledge sharing culture where employees understand the importance of both contributing to and reusing knowledge assets in their consulting assignments. Even with elaborate tools, databases and processes in place, there are still too many consulting organizations that reinvent the wheel on a daily basis. There is a tendency for creative people to follow their passion to invent before taking the time to check what has been invented before. To deliver with both high quality and high efficiency at least some form of reuse is likely to play an important role.
Many consulting firms market themselves with a great emphasis on corporate experience and knowledge capital. As a result, clients may have high expectations regarding the way in which this is leveraged during an assignment. Consider your answer to the following question if posed by a client:
‘We selected your company due to your experience in this domain. How are you utilizing lessons learned from other cases
