Why Bother With Consultants?

Consultancy has a very mixed reputation and a poor stereotype. 

Most people when they hear the word ‘Consultant’ immediately think something along the lines of ‘money pit’ or ‘handing over good money to be told what you already know’, and visual their budgets rapidly disappearing into a black hole. Others think that hiring a consultant would be useful but that it’s for large companies with big budgets. Very often, the words ‘we’re bringing in a consultancy’ are enough to create a feeling of dread and at times resentment from the team who will work with the consultants. In the extreme, it can create a very real ‘them and us’ mindset with your permanent staff feeling under-valued.

Depending on who you work with and the relationship you have with them, any or all of the above could be true. The reverse side of the stereotype is that a well managed engagement with the right consultant can bring significant benefit to your business. 

The main reason for this is that the consultant isn’t an employee of your business. This adds value because you get:

·       Objective Advice - Their career isn’t dependent on a good performance review so they can be honest.

·       The Benefit of Experience - They will have worked with a number of businesses and have a seen similar challenges to yours in other businesses. They will know how those businesses met the challenge and how well these approaches worked.

·       Focus on your Success - Good consultants focus on doing the right thing for their client and their sponsor. As well as providing the advice the business needs, consultants can help their sponsor navigate the business challenge.  

·       Focus on the Objective – They will focus on the brief agreed in the Statement of Work rather than being drawn into business as usual.

The trick is to avoid the stereotypes and pitfalls while getting the benefits. The good news is that this is possible if you take some simple steps; think about the outcome you want, select a suitable engagement model, and find a consultant that will fit your company culture. Let’s look into these a little more.

What do I Want to Achieve?

Bringing in a consultant without knowing what you want to achieve is a bit like getting in a taxi and just saying ‘Drive’. You don’t really know where you’re going, you spend a lot on the fare, and don’t know how good a driver you’ve got. Instead, thinking about the outcome you want from the engagement and discussing that at the start helps everyone understand what they’re working towards. It’s important to note that I didn’t say that you need to think about the business outcome, but about the outcome of the engagement. This might be to help you crystallise your thinking about the approach to a business problem rather than to manage or assess ‘in-flight’ change.

What’s a Good Engagement Model?

This might sound very obvious, but deciding on the engagement model is key to managing your budget. 

If you want a defined, short term deliverable such as an assessment and recommendation report, I suggest a fixed term fixed price engagement with defined deliverables. 

If you want more of an advisory arrangement on a specific aspect of your business, budget a defined number of days over a defined period and agree the consultant’s expected role. If the consultant is any good, they’ll have no problem helping you to do this. This approach works well if the need isn’t full time (for example, if you’d like them to sit on the governance of a major change programme). 

If you’re looking for a full time interim resource to manage delivery of a specific change programme or project, the arrangement should still be based on defined deliverables to protect you from IR35.

Will They Fit My Company Culture

You may think that finding a consultant that fits your company culture could be difficult, and on face value I’d agree. However, when you think about how your business runs, I’m willing to bet that very often it boils down to people working with people. That means that whoever you hire needs to be able to work with people and avoid making them feel inferior. That’s where emotionally intelligent consultants come into their own. They try to fit in rather than stand out, and work to help your team be successful while delivering their brief. They also quickly learn enough about your company culture to provide pragmatic, actionable advice that will work in the real world rather than ‘best practice’ advice. This doesn’t mean that they don’t understand ‘best practice’; it means that they know how to tailor it to work for you.

Finding the right consultant can create a long term, high value source of advice on your terms which is completely different to the stereotype. It will make you wonder why you didn’t do it earlier.  

Pragmatist Consulting provides a pragmatic, emotionally intelligent business and change consultancy service which we tailor to meet your needs. We focus on helping you turn your business problem into a success story.

29 April 2019