project and our organization?’
As a consultant representing an organisation you will need to recognize that collective knowledge is part of your proposition and incorporate this to at least some extent in each project. Clients will expect it.
The topic of ethics plays an important part in the shaping of the consulting proposition. Poor judgement associated with ethics has resulted in the erosion of client–consultant relationships and has been an issue in large consulting collaborations more often than one might expect. The foundation of an ethical relationship with a client relates to the helping relationship that was introduced at the beginning of this chapter.
Consultants are engaged by clients to provide help. They are expected to provide that help with the client's best interest at heart.
Consider a visit to a private doctor, a qualified and experienced medical practitioner. You pay the doctor for a premium service and expect him to give the best possible advice; to act in your best interest. The doctor makes a diagnosis and prescribes an expensive medication. A week later you find out that the doctor is being wined and dined in the city's finest restaurant by the pharmaceutical company that produces the medicine and is recommending it to everybody. You would immediately question the ethics of the decision and question whether you would ever return to the doctor, let alone recommend him to others. Questionable ethical conduct has undermined the relationship.
Providing a consulting service with the client's best interest at heart as well as respecting associated ethical practices concerning matters such as confidentiality and general conduct will usually avoid ethical dilemmas in a consultant–client relationship. The problem, however, can relate to another fundamental issue:
What is in the client's best interest and what is in the consulting company's interest to make more business may not be the same thing.
Consider the following example.
A large consulting company providing IT-related services was contracted to carry out a major systems implementation project in northern Europe. More than 100 consultants were assigned to the project for its two-year duration which represented a significant amount of revenue for the consulting company.
Everything went fine until four months before the project was due to end. Managers within the consulting company suddenly realized that soon close to 100 people would be in need of new assignments and there was little chance of developing sufficient business to maintain the high staff utilization in the time that remained. As a desperate move they approached the client to propose an extension of the project through the provision of additional services. The client was already tight on budget, but the consultants were persuasive and managed to agree an extension of the project for an additional three months, even though the proposed services were only loosely tied to the client's business priorities. Whether the extension of the project was actually in the client's best interest was somewhat questionable. Two weeks after the new work began the project was cancelled by the client as no tangible short-term benefits could be visualized. It was a less than ideal way to end a business collaboration of more than two years.
In the example above the additional services proposed had represented a way to keep the consultants busy, but with no significant benefits to the client. The consulting managers' need to sell their services overtook the key basis of a consulting collaboration, to help their customer. In large organizations managers may be under pressure to meet internal targets and a great emphasis is placed today on what is referred to as add-on business. Ultimately the measures defined within organizations will drive the behaviour and performance of its people. Do not, on the other hand, underestimate your clients. Sooner or later they are likely to recognize what could be referred to as consulting overkill. Some sceptical clients have referred to consultants as people who come into their organizations to conduct an assignment and then never leave, through success in pushing their own agendas.
So how then should consultants promote their services, meet their internal targets, and where does the correct balance lie? We will consider this question later in the chapter.
We can now incorporate the ethical dimension into our consulting 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, acting in the client's best interest as a trusted adviser.
Through the sensible application of the ideas presented, a consultancy is able to position itself as a partner and trusted adviser to a client. This requires a long-term view rather than a short-term view towards the relationship, which can be a door opener to future business as demonstrated in the example below.
A consulting firm was contacted by a small, fast-growing company working in the professional services industry. The client was concerned that their growth in employee numbers was overtaking the capability of internal business processes and had decided to embark upon a consulting initiative before the situation got out of hand. The consulting firm had been identified based upon reputation in addition to a personal referral from a member of their management team.
In an initial meeting the consultants listened to the client's requirements and concerns, assessing the activities that should be recommended and the value that could be added by a potential assignment. The issues reported by the client may have seemed challenging to the people working in the organization, but were generally not complex in nature. The client, ready to take action, was willing to engage the consultants immediately for an initial contract period of three months.
The consultants reflected upon the case, noting that the issues were more trivial than the client had understood. Would the client later thank them for spending their money for the three months and then realizing that they could probably have solved the problem with limited help themselves? Instead of immediately accepting the assignment the consultants decided to offer some guidance. ‘These are the three areas that you should focus on’, they advised. ‘And these are the type of actions that you should be taking. Try these recommendations, and if after three to four weeks you are still concerned we will be happy to send in a team.’
The client accepted the advice and within a month the people in the organization had successfully resolved the most critical issues themselves.
A year later the consultants were contacted by the client again, regarding a new, much larger opportunity. Based upon the credibility that had been created in the first interaction they were engaged directly, without consideration of other potential consulting suppliers.
Engaging as a partner means having the best interest of your client at heart. As in a personal relationship, you sometimes favour the interest of your partner over your own short-term gains as an investment in a longer-term, valuable relationship. In the practical world of consulting this may mean that not every new client discussion results in immediate business for the consultancy, but that every action you take constitutes a positive next step in your relationship with that client. Demonstrating this intention not only through your words but also through your actions can result in strong client relationships that may shield you from competitors and be your ticket to a long-term business partnership.
A landscape gardening consultant has appointments with two new clients one Saturday. He tends to arrange such meetings on Saturdays as it is easy to get face time with clients and discuss their options for realizing a variety of garden transformations. He has been in the business for more than 25 years.
He inspects the first client's garden and recommends the trimming of some tall spruce trees, reshaping of the lawn and the replacement of the garden fence despite the fact that the existing fence is in fair condition and could simply be repainted.
