witness at a trial. His or her expertise is sought in a specific area for a finite duration. If there were no brake pads or air traffic control, the consultant would be irrelevant.
On the horizontal axis is the ability to apply processes and to transfer them to the client. If that is purely what's done, and there is no content expertise at all, then we have the equivalent of a facilitator, who can run group meetings and prevent mayhem, but who brings no intellectual capital or property to the table.
I submit to you that the diagonal represents the power in consulting: the consultant who can apply and transfer skills and who also has an impressive ability to tackle content areas. That person becomes a collaborator with and partner to the client, and is far more valuable (can demand higher fees) than either colleague at the maximums of the other axes. And that person more readily can become a trusted advisor, an ideal role for a consultant which we'll return to later on.
Recent phenomena have included the move of traditional audit and accounting firms into more generalized management consulting. The trust placed in them in dealing with company finances was simply transferred to other areas of the operation, albeit with mixed results—the audit mentality has resulted in time‐based billing, which I'll discuss at length later as unwise, unethical, and unforgivable. There have also been abuses in such transfers of trust, as we saw with the collapse of Enron and the subsequent crumbling of Arthur Anderson's consulting business at the time (since resurrected as “Accenture”).
Finally, bear in mind that IBM derives the greatest percentage of its profit not from hardware and not from software, but from its consulting operation. That should tell you a great deal about the future. No one really knows how much revenue is derived by the total management consulting profession, but at this writing I'd guess it's over $500 billion.
The Ongoing Need
We've established that our role is to improve the client's condition. That client is the person who is authorizing our payment out of his or her budget. I call that person the economic buyer. The buyer is our client, not the organization. A client is a human being, not an inanimate entity.
I know you prefer to list Bank of America or Microsoft as your client, and we all do such things. But very few buyers have the authority to hire you on behalf of the entire organization, and even those that do—CEOs, board chairs—are almost always hiring us for a limited scope of action. Your allegiance is to the economic buyer, the person whose condition is to be improved. (Only if you find that the buyer in ethical or legal conflict with the organization should you abrogate that allegiance.)
“Need” for the buyer comes in three flavors:
1 Preexisting needs.These are age‐old, traditional, and valid needs now and tomorrow, and may include such areas as customer relations, market expansion, strategy, conflict resolution, innovation, and so on. Even the pharaohs had team‐building needs, but they chose to take care of them with whip methodology.
2 Needs you create.All clients know what they want, but few know what they need. No one knew they needed a belt‐mounted device connected to headphones to play music, but Akio Morita at Sony created the need with the Walkman (despite internal advice not to pursue it because no one wanted it). That was the grandfather of the iPhone, which is one of the most popular consumer products in history. Today we have tele‐health and 3‐D printing. Don't forget, a luxury, once used successfully, quickly becomes a necessity! The COVID pandemic created the need for remote meetings, work‐at‐home protocols, workplace safety parameters, and so forth.
3 Needs you anticipate.Globalization, increased volatility, changing societal mores, technological advances, and other waves of change should enable any consultant to predict future needs for the client, such as the need to manage remote teams that never see each other, to outsource some services while insourcing others, and to create new levels of internal computer security. Disruption and volatility are offensive weapons not threats to be defended against.
The Gospel
All clients know what they want. Few know what they need. That difference is your value‐added.
You can see in Figure 1.2 that your value distance is the difference between what the client states is wanted and what you demonstrate is really needed. That's often accomplished merely by asking this complex question: “Why?”
“We want a leadership training program. Can you design one?”
“Yes, but why do you want such a program?”
“Once people get to district manager, our attrition rate goes way up. They are obviously not prepared for the job.”
“That's one possibility. But the increased travel, management pressure, and dealing with administrative requirements might also be causing tremendous stress and unhappiness, right?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then shouldn't we investigate, ascertain the real reasons, and formulate appropriate responses? Training might not accomplish enough.”
FIGURE 1.2 Value Distance
One of the primary flaws of unsuccessful consultants is that they accept client wants as the real need. The need is almost always beyond and above the stated want. If you simply satisfy the client want (no value distance) or advance it slightly (small value distance), your value is not very great.
However, if you demonstrate to your client that the real underpinnings of the issue need to be addressed, you can broaden the project, best delight the client, and, not surprisingly, charge the highest fee.
This concept of need is critical to consulting success. No one, but no one, cares about your mission, or vision, or values, all of which are now monotonously pontificated on countless consultant web sites:
“We believe in the highest level of integrity and ethics.”
Oh, too bad, I was looking for an unethical consultant.
Your own beliefs and value and firm history are irrelevant and hugely boring to buyers. What fascinates them are their own history, values, and beliefs. The more you cater to what's in it for them, the more successful you'll be in holding their attention. And always bear in mind that buyers have two sets of needs: professional and personal.
Thus:
Never settle for what a buyer claims is wanted (even if the word “need” is employed). Probe to find out what conditions prompted the initiative to scratch that particular itch. Ask “Why?” to raise the lever of the decision.
Always seek professional needs (e.g., greater market share) and personal needs (e.g., I want to stop acting as a referee between teams and between team and client).
No matter what type of consulting you're undertaking, these facts are immutable. However, the various forms do have some distinctions.
Various Forms
Everyone today is a consultant. There is no barrier to entry, which is the blessing and the curse.
