Assignment

chapter

Key consulting tips

With a complex topic like management consulting one of the chal-lenges for an author is deciding what to leave out. There are various topics I have rejected from this book because I think they

are of marginal relevance, critical only to a subset of consultants, or not the sort of ideas that are best conveyed via the medium of a book. That left me with a long list of thoughts or tips that will be useful to consultants but which do not fit neatly into any of the preceding chapters. They are very varied pOints but the features these tips have in common is that they are either helpful, but not obvious, when you start consulting, or they present useful but unusual ways to think about the world of consulting. The tips are a direct result of my experience as a consultant and I hope you find them useful.

Don't make yourself indispensable to a client.

It can seem a good idea, from a commercial perspective, to make yourself indispensable to your client. If you do a great job, a client may welcome your ongoing and continuous involvement with their business. This can result in strong revenues from the client and it removes the need for unprofitable and time-consuming business development. Unfortunately, a permanent relationship has a number of drawbacks.

13 Key consulting tips

Before explaining the disadvantages, it is important to understand that in giving this advice I want to differentiate here between the individual con- sultant and a consulting company. A consulting company will benefit from a permanent relationship with a client, but the interests of the indi- vidual consultant are not the same as those of the whole company. I also want to make a distinction between repeat business, where you periodi- cally sell to and work for the same client, and continuously working with a single client. The former is a sign of success, but the latter is problematic.

The first drawback is that if you personally work for only one client, you are not only indispensable to them, you will become dependent on them. All consulting engagements are eventually terminated, and if you have a relationship with only one client you will find it more difficult to find other work. When you want to leave, the client may not willingly let you. If you work for a big consultancy and your client insists on your continued presence, you may be left in a client organisation for a long time to maximise revenues and to maintain a client relationship. This is not good for your career prospects or your skills development as a con- sultant. An engagement can start to feel like a prison sentence rather than an opportunity for value-added consulting. If you do pull out, you leave the client with a problem. How will they cope without you? The client may end up feeling betrayed by you because of the challenges they face operating without you. Even internal consultants need to try and work across a business and not for a single client manager on a continu- ous basis.

What is a reasonable length for an unbroken involvement with one client? That is a 'how long is a piece of string?' type of question. My guidance is that value-adding engagements often take several months, but if a single engagement is stretching into years then you should ques- tion whether you are still adding value and improving as a consultant.

Always think about your exit plan from an engagement: what will you hand over to whom and who needs to have what skills transferred to

always think about your exit plan from an engagement

take over from you? A consulting company want- ing to maintain the revenue stream should try to rotate a different consultant into a client every few months. Soon after you begin an engagement, start sending those subtle messages that you will

not be around forever, as it can take several weeks or months to extricate yourself smoothly from a client.

__ L,;.,H...ii <..,;h-performance consulting

Give your clients the credit they deserve.

Your client runs a great business, otherwise they could not afford your fees. As a consultant, it is easy to see all the things your client is doing wrong, but if they did everything right they would probably never need your help. Give them some credit, as without it you risk becoming arro- gant. Arrogance in a consultant is unpleasant, and usually unwarranted.

Your client has probably achieved things you have not. When you are speaking to the chief executive of a big firm, do not just think about the mess they are making in some aspect of the business you are an expert in. Think about how they manage tens of thousands of staff and budgets of billions of dollars - something most consultants have never done. There is a lot of things consultants don't do and don't have to worry about that clients must do every day. Give great advice, be critical where you need to be, but remember that a little humility never goes amiss.

Understand the client's personal interest.

Why does the client, personally, want the work done? As discussed in Chapter 2, there are many different reasons why clients engage consult- ants. Try to get below the superficial level and understand why the particular client you are working for now wants the engagement done. What is in it for them as an individual?

This tip is not concerned with determining whether the engagement is for personal interest, as arguably in the end everything we do is for per- sonal interest (even if that is limited to wanting to avoid a punishment). Try to establish whether the personal interest of the client is aligned with the rest of the organisation's needs. If it is not, it is best to try and avoid the engagement.

A related issue is to learn to differentiate between the issue a client wants resolved and why they have chosen you. You may have been chosen for a

13 Key consulting tips

range of reasons beyond the current issue. You must primarily focus on the issue the client wants resolved, but if you understand what it is about you that made them choose you as the right person to work with, you have an advantage. Leverage this understanding to enhance your relationship.

Client trust is more important than charisma.

There is an image of the great consultant as vibrant and charismatic. Forget charisma - think about trust. A client trusting you is always more important than great charisma or personal confidence. Charisma and confidence can help, but too much charisma can make some people wary. A client is looking for someone they can happily work with day in, day out, which does not necessarily mean the person with the most allur- ing or magnetic personality.

Trust is the keystone that will enable you to develop productive client relationships and overcome any lack of confidence or charisma.

Md extra value. ~tnt.

Value is delivered to clients from all sorts of help provided by a consult- ant. Much of the value of consultants does not come from the primary work in delivering an engagement, but comes in peripheral activities. These can be small tips, advice, pointing at useful articles or books, prob- lem solving, simple tools or even just helpful chats now and again.

If you want to sell-on to a client, then delivering a great engagement to the letter of the proposal is a good start, but clients like working with people they know will willingly add that little bit extra. Of course, you must avoid the scope of your work expanding too much, but willingness to do that little bit more is a virtue. The trick is to find things that are easy for you to give, which add value to your client and which you have the opportunity to provide simply by being around. An old article from

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Harvard Business Review that is relevant to the client right now may add significant value, but takes little effort on your part. Just because some- thing is easy for you, does not mean it is not valuable to your client, and, conversely, just because something is hard, does not mean it is.

Be flexible, but stick to the brief!

Tip 5 is important, but needs to be balanced with the fact that you have limited time on an engagement and already have lots to do. To consult profitably requires that there is a limit to how much you deliver outside the engagement brief.

Clients expect a degree of flexibility in consultants, and often this is essential. At the point an engagement starts, you may have won a fee- earning assignment, but its precise shape and content may not become apparent until a few more days or even weeks of work. Whatever you do, stay close to the original brief, unless you agree a defined and properly priced modification to it. For example, don't drift into promising a busi- ness change, when what you are being paid to deliver is a report. It's very easy, in the pressure of trying to keep a client happy, to end up promising all sorts of additional extras, which you will never manage to deliver within the time or budget of your existing work.

Manage your engagement timescale from day one.

Consultants regularly run out of time towards the end of engagements, and end up working from early morning to late at night just to get the final report completed. There are various reasons for this, and some con- sultants seem to thrive on adrenaline and caffeine at the end of an engagement. Generally, this is just bad planning and poor time manage- ment. Most of the activities that delay you at the end of an engagement -

13 Key consulting tips

being asked to interview one more member of client staff, having to rework a report following a review by a senior manager in your own firm, or clients rejecting your findings - were predictable or at least clear risks from the first day of the engagement.

As all good project managers know, slippage on engagements starts on day one. It's far easier to catch up on lost time at the beginning than the end. Catching up on one lost day when you have 10 weeks to go is easy. Catching up on one lost day when you have only one day to go is a nightmare!

Keep the pressure up from day one. Predict the problems you may have when finaliSing an engagement and leave time in your plan to resolve them. It will make your life much less stressful and enjoyable, and usu- ally it enables you to deliver a better quality result to your client.

Take care with risk-reward engagements.

Risk-reward engagements are a type of commercial arrangement in which the consultant agrees to link their fees directly to the value delivered or benefits received by the client. The consultant is therefore taking a risk on the outcome of an engagement, and as a result is looking for the bal- anCing opportunity for increased reward. A classic example is a procurement project, where a consultant is engaged to reduce a client's procurement spend and, rather than being paid normal day rates, negoti- ates to take a percentage of the procurement savings as a success fee. On paper a risk-reward deal sounds fantastic. The client only pays for what you deliver, and there is an opportunity for extra margin to be made if you manage the engagement well. Risk-reward arrangements have been shown to work in many situations, and as a result of them there are a number of satisfied clients and profitable consultancies. It is a great value proposition, but take care before you get involved in one.

The often unforeseen problems with risk-reward deals come down to dif- ficulties with measuring the success of the engagement and how you handle the situation in which you significantly over-deliver. There is also the rather obvious risk that you may under-deliver and not get paid,

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which is inherent in the structure of a risk-reward contract, but I assume you would not enter into one if you did not understand and assess this specific risk!

Risk-reward deals can easily end in acrimony and argument. If you are very successful you may earn a lot, but if you earn too much it can damage your relationship with the client - even if it was the client who

, risk-reward deals can easily end in acrimony and argument , ,

suggested the deal and who benefits overall. For example, if your work results in you being paid several times what you would have earned if you were paid your normal day rate, then clients can end up resenting this. I have been involved in projects where the consultant performed what

was according to normal fee rates hundreds of thousands of pounds of work, to be paid in millions of pounds based on the risk-reward metrics. Clients should not resent this, as they also benefit. You can argue it is in both parties' interest and you would be correct. However, there is little point being correct if you irritate a client so much that they will not work with you again.

Additionally, you will obviously focus on delivering the maximum amount to achieve the maximum reward. The problem is that businesses are multi-dimensional and too much change in one area, such as reduced procurement costs, often has a detrimental effect elsewhere in a client's business. Clients often feel all you care about is the reward, which of course is true, as that was the point of the deal!

Successful risk-reward engagements require a mature relationship with clients, who will perceive the benefits to themselves if they end up paying you more. If you do want to enter a risk-reward deal, make sure the client understands the implications, there is a reliable measurement process in place and the timing of measurement is agreed up-front.

Measurement must be in place at the start of the engagement, or else there is no baseline for comparison. The timing of measurement is cru- cial. Any change takes time to bed in and problems may not be initially apparent. Collecting data on success at the wrong time may present an overly optimistic or pessimistic picture of engagement success. Avoid this problem by agreeing at the start when and what you will measure as the basis of payment.

13 Key rnn~lJlTmn

Be clear about the different types of risk.

When you talk about engagement risk there are two separate aspects of risk: client risk that you will not deliver or will give suboptimal advice, and consultant risk that you will not deliver in the client's eyes or will lose money on the engagement. You must clearly differentiate between the two. The implications of the two types of risk are different, and the way each type of risk is communicated, managed and mitigated will be different. Client risk is largely the client's issue to deal with, but you should be conscious of the client's need to avoid risk, and be engaging in such a way as to give them confidence that the risk is minimised. Consultant risk is yours alone to manage.

Manage your relationship with client staff sensitively.

Client staff will often think of themselves as representing the client and perceive you as just another supplier, whereas you may see the same client staff just as a resource to be used by you to deliver the engagement. There is an inherent conflict in these views and managing it requires a fine balance.

On some occasions you may end up 'managing' client staff within the scope of the engagement. Remember, staff are not your personal employ- ees. How they feel and what they say about you can influence your client's judgement of you. However, don't treat them with kid gloves or you will not get the work you require done. It's great to be popular with the troops, but it may not get the work completed.

If there are problems between yourself and client staff, discuss it with the client as soon as possible. Don't simply ask the client to remove any staff you are having trouble with as this makes it look as if you are a weak manager, but let the client know there is a potential problem brewing.

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You cannot have zero impact on a client organisation.

Sometimes clients want consultants to have zero impact on the organisa- tion. The client may be concerned that the consultant may cause some negative impact, especially if the engagement is dealing with some sensi- tive issue such as cost reduction or due diligence associated with potential mergers.

It is essential to act with sensitivity and respect a client's need for you to minimise impact. You can reduce your impact, but you cannot have zero impact. Even an activity like data collection by consultants is visible to the organisation. It is very difficult to do it and carry out an engagement in secret. It is quite possible that staff will not know why an engagement is being pursued, but the fact that something is happening will become apparent to staff sooner or later. Therefore never promise to a client that you can work in such a way that no one in the organisation will have any knowledge of your work.

When in a team, work as a team.

Engagements often require a consulting team to work on them. When you are working on this type of engagement, engage the whole consult- ing -team, accepting the strengths and weaknesses of different consultants. Delivering such a consulting engagement is like taking part in a team sport. You always want the best team you can get, but, like pulling a sports team together, the nature and timing of an engagement means that there is often not a perfect match between the skills required and the consultants available to deliver the engagement.

Continuing the analogy of the team sports, some consultants will be playing out of the position they are best suited to. If you are the lead consultant on an engagement, you must learn to get the best from the team you have, helping those who are in roles they are not familiar with to contribute to the overall engagement goal.

13 Key consulting tips

~i!!IEI ; authentic.

If you are advising a client to act in a certain way, you should act in that way too, otherwise your advice seems insincere. Human beings, including clients, seem to have almost perfect radar to pick up inconsistency of behaviour and hypocrisy. Yet consultants and consultancies are often loath to take their own medicine, and act as if it is not relevant to them. The worst financial systems I ever worked with were in an audit-based consul- tancy and one of the most inefficient management processes I saw was in

a six sigma consultancy. The line management of staff by senior managers and partners in some consultancies I have come across would not be

if you believe your advice - take it yourself , , tolerated in many other organisations. The

strange thing is that these consultants not only gave advice contrary to their behaviour, they believed it. If you believe your advice - take it yourself.

If you point out the difference between consultant behaviour within their own companies and client recommendations, the consultants usu- ally mumble something about 'cobbler's children' (from the old story that a cobbler's children have the worst shoes). This is just labelling the problem - it is not a valid justification!

Learn on engagements, but don't treat them as a time to learn.

What makes you valuable as a consultant is your ability to advise and get things done. These capabilities improve with time and engagement expe- rience. All engagements provide an opportunity to learn. But remember, the client is not paying you to learn or develop intellectual capital - the client is paying you because you already know.

On every engagement think about who is getting value and who is learn- ing. It should be the client more than the consultant. Any value and learning for the consultant should be collateral and not primary. If learn- ing is your primary goal, you have lost the pOint!

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Keep the expenses reasonable.

Many consulting contracts are specified on a fees-plus-expenses basis. Consultants are often away from home for long periods of time. Consulting organisations often set expectations that consultants will be well looked after when working. These factors can result in consultants generating huge expenses bills.

Don't go crazy on expenses, or stray outside the expectations of the client, or differ widely from how client staff operate. Yes, you have a right to be recompensed for reasonable expenses when away from home. But if the chief executive flies economy class, then it is not helpful for consult- ants to fly first class and bill for that. Do not hide behind the wording of your contract, as the details of what are and are not reasonable expenses are often not thought about when developing an engagement contract.

When you arrive at the client's workplace, work out what is acceptable and what is not. If you are unsure, spend conservatively. If you make a mistake - apologise - and if you underestimate what is acceptable to spend, it is never a problem to start spending more! You can do a lot of damage and cause significant resentment if you charge for what the client perceives as excessive personal expenses. Clients do not see their role as providing for well-paid consultants to live in luxury.

Avoid ostentatious signs of wealth.

If you do become a hugely successful consultant, have a fleet of Ferraris and Rolls-Royces, then that is absolutely fantastic for you. But don't turn up to client sites in one of them. Clients like to know a consultant is successful as it gives them confidence they are working with someone who knows what they are talking about. But there is a difference between turning up in a well- appOinted executive car and showing off. Clients do not like thinking that the consultant working with them is significantly wealthier than they are,

13 Key consulting tips

and got that way by charging their organisation. There are lots of ways of reinforcing your experience and competency - ostentatious wealth is not the best. Save it for your family and friends at the weekend.

Be clever, don't just look it.

Consultants can become obsessed with how clever their work looks rather than how clever it really is. There is some truth that clients can be impressed with reports or presentations simply because they look good. A well-prepared document with excellent graphic design can gain artificial credibility because of how well it looks rather than what it contains. There is nothing wrong with trying to make your presentations look exceptionally attractive, and in modern business it is expected, but do not use it as to hide a lack of thinking. Sooner or later, and often sooner, you will get caught out.

An example of this is in the application of tools - such as spreadsheet- based analyses of client data. Many problems can be solved with simple intuitive tools. When you present a tool it should be because it is good, not because of the 'now that's clever' response. Such responses are short- term. The tools must actually add value!

Knowing 'what' is useful; knowing 'how' is valuable.

It is helpful to understand the difference between know-what and know- how. An example of know-what is telling a client 'the relevant regulation is subsection 4.2 of the 2006 regulations', whereas an example of know- how is telling the client something in the form of 'the best way to conform with the regulation is to train all your customer-facing staff in a half-day course as we have specified'. Know-what is facts, figures, infor- mation and data; know-how is approaches and experience of what works and an ability to make things happen.

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, , the real value comes from know- how "

Years ago an encyclopaedic knowledge of a busi - ness topic was valuable. The person with the most comprehensive set of know-what in an area was sought after and treated as a guru. But increas-

ingly most business information can be easily referenced. A IS-minute trawl on the internet can provide huge amounts of useful information that would have taken weeks of research not that long ago. Hence, simply knowing things is more and more just a basic requirement to con- sult, it is not a differentia tor. Clients need consultants to have access to know-what, but the real value comes from know-how.

Know-how must be real. If you claim to have know-how to make things happen for a client, then you must be able to make things happen and not, for example, simply have the ability to list the sort of things a client should be considering. Clients will soon find out whether your know- how is real or bluffing.

Focus and simplification are of most value to clients.

Value to clients often comes from expressing the problem they really have in simple terms, or explaining how to implement a solution in an easy to comprehend and unambiguous fashion. Being able to express a knotty set of problems that a client has struggled to understand on a one-page diagram is of huge value. Similarly, showing a logical plan for overcoming a problem that can be grasped in a few minutes is worth a lot to a client. In business, the aim is to get results in the most effective way, not to worry about understanding every aspect of every issue. Accurate simplification is powerful.

Simplification is also required so that you can complete your engagement within a reasonable amount of time. To do this, you need to prioritise where you will focus your energies. A consultant must focus on an engagement and remove or ignore peripheral issues. For example, a busi- ness problem may have 20 contributory causes and you have time to focus only on the most critical three. When you do prioritise, keep a log of how you made your prioritisation deciSions, and ideally keep your

13 Key consulting tips

client involved in such decision making. Whether you focus on the three causes with the biggest impact on the problem, or the three which are eas- iest to resolve, will significantly alter the content and outcome of the engagement. A client may challenge, at a later date, your decision to focus on those three aspects of a problem and not the other 17. Unless you can give clear and appropriate reasoning, which the client agrees with, you can end up with an ever-extending and loss-making engagement.

Understand the limitations of simplification.

There is a balance to tip 19. Consultants love developing simple theories and models, and generally clients like them and find them useful. But there is an inherent risk in making the true complexity of real life appear simple. There is always a risk of underdetermination by the data, i.e. there can be competing theories, models or other simplifications that equally well fit your understanding of the situation. The problem can be compounded by a consultant who, after using a model which is intellec- tually appealing and gives some useful results in one Situation, fails to see that what they have is just a model and not the truth that applies equally well to all situations.

Making complexity simple can add huge value and give powerful insights, but you must always remain modest enough to know that at best the theory or model will approximate to reality and is not reality. Business theories are not scientific laws. You must be alert enough to identify when Simplifications and models do not work. By all means see the value in models and other simplifications - but also see the limits.

Related to simplification is the modern tendency to reductionism. A reductionist breaks a problem into parts, treating the problem as the sum of its parts. Some problems can be resolved by breaking them into small simple components and resolving the individual parts. However, some business problems are related to the complexity of a business and the dynamic interaction between its components. In these situations, trying to resolve real issues by solving small parts may never work.

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Be wary of following on from someone else's findings, recommendations or plans.

In Chapter 4, I introduced the concept of the client's change process . This can be summarised by saying that most activities have followed on as a result of some previous activity, and the activity that is currently being done will flow on to another. Hence, you may be involved in some strategiC thinking which follows on to an operational review, which then follows on to some change planning, and then carries on as a change implementation project.

As a consultant you will be involved only in a part of this process, and often will have to carryon using data, findings, recommendations or plans someone else has developed. For instance, a client may have devel- oped a change plan, but realise they do not have the skills to implement it and ask you to help them run the implementation project.

There is always a risk in taking over from someone else. You may not agree with the prior findings , or what was suggested by the previous person may not be right . Taking the previous example, a client invites you in to complete a project they have planned but do not have the skills to implement. On the surface this may sound fine, but think about it for one minute. If the client does not have the skills to implement the proj- ect, do they really have the skills to develop a plan for it? Almost certainly not!

You cannot always start from the very beginning of every change cycle. You will not always be involved in the first stages of strategiC thinking through to the end of change implementation, and may just pick up one part of this work. Therefore you must be able to take over from someone else, but at the same time you should be wary.

The solution is not to reject engagements that require you to take over from someone else 's work, but always to build in the opportunity to review previous findings, recommendations or plans . Clients do not

, , reviews do not need to take long , ,

always like this , as they can see it as simply an attempt by you to increase your fees . But reviews do not need to take long, and if you have an open

13 Key consulting tips

conversation with a client about your need to manage risk then they will normally accept this . It is usually in the client's interest too, since anyone who is involved for part of a change process, but hands over to someone else, may have little incentive to make sure what they propose will actually work . If the client will not allow you the opportunity to review the previous work, it is often better to decline the engagement than take the risk.

Successful engagement findings and recommendations should match the client's time horizon.

Different people work to different time horizons. We all know people who cannot plan or think beyond tomorrow, and others who are not interested in anything that is not measured in months or years. Typically, more senior managers think in longer timescales, but this is not univer- sally true.

If a client only thinks in terms of weeks or months there is little point providing advice that will take years to implement or vice versa. The client will be incapable of utilising your advice, no matter how theoreti- cally perfect it is.

Sum mary

In this chapter, I have described a number of tips gained from my experiences as a consultant. No doubt in 10 years' time I will be able to add to this list as my experience and knowledge continues to grow. Many of these tips will apply to all consultants, but of course the lessons I have learnt are a function of the type of engagements I have undertaken. The best tip I can give to all consultants is to be observant and learn from the experiences of working on multiple engagements across a variety of clients. It is this diversity that gives consultants their value, in being able to consider a client situation from a broader perspective than the client.

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If you have read each of the preceding chapters you have read all the contents of the book directed primarily at consultants. As your career progresses, you will learn, develop and build your own set of tips and techniques. They will be the basis of your growing success. And if you have

any different tips, I for one am more than happy to hear them.

chapter

I The cI ient's perspective buying consultancy

ThiS book is primarily for consultants, but I know the readership includes buyers and users of consultancy. Therefore, in this last chapter, I have taken a client-centric viewpoint, and describe tips

and techniques concerning selecting and controlling consultants. These tips should not only be useful to clients. By thinking through these points consultants who want to adopt a client-centric approach will be better prepared to deal with any client objections to proposals and, most importantly, more able to fulfil client needs.

When writing this chapter I thought of the Latin phrase caveat emptor (let the buyer beware), because the buyer does need to beware when purchas- ing consultancy. There are knowledgeable clients who can handle every consultant and get the most from them . But like going to the dentist or the garage, the consultant is the expert in a field (or should be), and you are in their hands. Naturally, you have your own knowledge and experi- ence to check a consultant's advice: you can robustly probe and challenge it, perhaps even test what they tell you, but in the end, for pragmatic reasons, you may have to accept much of it in good faith. This means the consultant is in a privileged position. Any time we buy serv- ices from someone in such a position we are sensible to be wary. To paint a slightly bleaker picture, whilst many professional management consult- ants are paragons of virtue and ethical behaviour, a few are not - and you can pay a price for naivety.

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There is a more positive mindset to adopt. Consultancy is most effective when there is a productive relationship and working partnership between the consultant and the client. These tips can be thought of as review pOints that help in ensuring there is a productive partnership. All these tips relate to areas which it is reasonable to have an open and constructive dialogue between consultant and client as prospective business partners.

There are complex issues to consider when buying and getting the best from your consultants that are unique to your context, but there are some key tips common to every situation. To keep the detail to a reason- able level, I have assumed a relatively simple situation in which you wish to engage a consultant: you have a problem or issue and you want a con- sultant to give advice on how to solve it. My list of 20 key tips for anyone engaging a consultant or consultancy is shown in Table 14.1.

niOfjGlI Client tips for buying consultancy

Tip

1 Start with an unde rstanding of why you are buying consultancy.

2 Take time clarifying the scope and de liverables of the engagement.

3 Don't forget you always have a choice - not to buy or to use someone else.

4 Check the proposal matches your needs and expectations.

5 Agree the billing arrangements up-front.

6 Clarify who is the client.

7 Decide how much freedom you will give the consultants.

8 Expect a lot - but don't expect miracles!

9 Confirm precisely who is in the consulting team.

10 Read the small print in the contract.

11 If you don't trust the consultant, don't buy.

12 Before saying yes, be clear about what happens when they finish.

13 Plan check points in the engagement.

14 Prepare for the consultants' arrival.

15 Keep an eye on who the consultants are talking to within your organisation.

16 Pay for work, not for sales activity.

17 Delivery is a partnership.

18 Check back against the proposal.

19 Check the deliverables - don't just accept them.

20 Only pay the bill if you are happy with the work and the invoice is reasonable.

14 The client's perspective - buying consultancy

Let's go through each of these in a little more detail

Start with an understanding of why you are buying consultancy.

Consultants are often engaged on the vaguest of pretences. I have had many discussions with clients who have a confused understanding of what it is they want the consultant to do. Perhaps there is a tangled knot of issues, or the problem is felt rather than verbalised. Clients can be tempted to hire consultants because they are under pressure and have a general feeling of discomfort which they would like to go away, rather than for a clear reason. The difficulty with this situation is easy to under- stand. If you do not know clearly what your problem is, how can the consultant clearly provide an answer? In general terms, the vaguer your thinking is, the more risk there is that the consultant will not provide a solution of value to you.

In the ideal situation you can concisely and unambiguously define the issue you want the consultant to resolve in a sentence or two. The more specific and precise you can be, the more specific and precise the consult- ant will be in helping you. The shorter the definition of your issue, the less chance there is for misinterpretation.

There is a related point. You should not only understand what your issue is, but also have a rational justification for why using a consultant is an effective and efficient way to resolve it. I am a strong advocate of consul- tancy, but it should not be the answer to every problem. You have some

, you should give yo ur in-house staff a chance first "

capable people already within your organisation. Whatever your issue, why not see if they can resolve it? In addition, if your problem is clear-cut and of a common nature - why not try buying a book? It will be much cheaper. I am not trivialis-

ing the situation: often the most sensible way to get a rapid solution will be to hire consultants. But you should give your in-house staff a chance first, at least on some occasions.

If you cannot clarify what your objective in hiring a consultant is, you can ask for a consultant to help facilitate developing the definition. It is

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often effective to engage consultants to help you structure your thinking, or to identify and scope a problem. If you do this, be clear that the reason you are using consultants is precisely that: to identify and scope a problem, not to solve it. Good consultants are adept at helping clients understand problems. The same consultants may then be used to go on and solve the problem. But it should be a separate piece of work, and remember that the skills needed to facilitate the definition of a problem are not always the same as those required to solve it.

Take time clarifying the scope and deliverables of the engagement.

In tip 1 I described how it is important to understand your objectives. The way a consultant will meet your objectives is by carrying out an engagement to a certain scope and producing a set of deliverables.

The scope should be determined as a process of discussion and explo- ration between yourself and the consultant. A broader scope may mean a better quality of outcome, but it is also likely to mean a longer and more expensive engagement. What factors you need to consider when setting the scope will depend on the nature of your issue, but also how con- strained you are in terms of time and budget. Such factors can be described in terms of questions, such as: which areas of the business must the consultants interact with to understand your issue fully? How many people should they interview? Is there anyone you do not want them to interview? Do you have an absolute time or cost limits? What corners can be cut, and which must not be? Are there any previous reports or documented analysis available? Are there any reasonable assumptions the consultants can make to speed up the work?

The deliverables can take many formats. In traditional consulting engage- ments the deliverables are a report, but they may also be a presentation of findings, a workshop or some staff training. The point in checking deliverables is to ascertain to your own satisfaction that the set of deliver- abIes the consultants is proposing will enable you to resolve your issue. You may be tempted to expand the deliverables, and it is always worth pushing consultants to maximise the value they provide to you, but if you push too hard you may simply get an increased price.

14 The client's perspective - buying consultancy

Don't forget you always have a choice - not to buy or to use someone else.

I have observed that clients often find themselves engaging consultants reluctantly, because they feel they have a unique problem and only this consultant can solve it - or they are in a hurry and this consultant is available now. The client may be under pressure from a more senior man- ager to get on and solve the problem. However, the client is not comfortable with the consultant or their fees.

The truth is that rarely does a consultant have an absolutely unique skill set. Even when they do, ask yourself - do you really need it for this piece of work? For all really important work, get a competitive quote. This is not just an issue of fees, but more importantly to check whether you are offered the optimal service.

Check the proposal matches your needs and expe~ Assuming that you have given a clear scope and objectives for an engage- ment, the consultant should be in a position to write a proposal that meets your needs. Life is rarely this simple. It is only when writing a pro- posal that a consultant realises there are gaps in their understanding. It is only when reading a consultant's proposal that you determine that what you thought was a clear and unambiguous definition of needs was not really understood by the consultant.

A proposal should do several things. First of all, it should play back to you what the issue is that you want the consultant to solve and , without being a history of your organisation, identify any relevant background information, constraints or assumptions. Secondly, the proposal should define how the consultant intends to resolve your issue . Finally, it should include the commercial terms. There may be other items in a proposal, but these three items are core. You need to be happy with all three. Even though you are not the expert, you do need to check how

High-performance consulting

the consultant intends to resolve your issue and ensure you have some confidence that the consultant's method will work within the culture and context of your organisation.

Consultants find it irritating when a client constantly quibbles over every single detail in a proposal. This is largely a commercial issue - con- sultants cannot afford to spend a huge amount of time writing proposals as no fees are being earned whilst doing this. Do be reasonable and only quibble if there is a real need to, as it is helpful to start an engagement with a good relationship with a consultant. But in the end you are the client - the consultant is just someone trying to sell you a service. If you are unhappy with the proposal, ask for it to be changed. If they will not or cannot, there are plenty of other consultants out there.

Agree the billing arrangements up-front. J Clients can be surprised by the timing and scale of fees when the invoices arrive. As a client you should check up-front what you will be paying for and when. The sorts of items that can cause surprises are administration and expenses costs, which often can add 20 per cent to the overall fees. You may find fees for people you have never heard of, such as the consultant's quality assurance team or a junior consultant who had to do some background research for the engagement back in the office. Remember a consultant will charge VAT and this will usually be on top of the quoted fees for the engagement.

Part of the billing problem is the concern amongst clients that consult- ants will try their luck and add additional charges to the engagement. This is a risk to avoid. But there is also a risk the other way. It is almost

impossible to specify absolutely a consulting

consultants often engagement with total clarity up-front. Like most

experience scope creep, where the client constantly adds extra work

service contracts there is a degree of ambiguity. Consultants often experience scope creep, where the client constantly adds extra work into the engagement. This is difficult to manage as the client's requests are often individually reasonable, but once several have been made the consultant is

14 The client's perspective - buying consultancy

in danger of an unprofitable engagement unless fees are increased. You may not be concerned whether the consultant makes a profit or not, but you should be. A consultant working on an unprofitable engagement is more likely to cut corners to get the work finished quickly.

The best way to avoid any conflict is to agree what will be paid for, when invoices will be raised and to agree a process to discuss any exceptions or changes to this. If you are on a restricted budget, you can always negoti- ate a cap on things like expenses, or even ask for a fixed rate for the whole engagement.

Do not expect fixed fees to be a solution to all problems. If you do nego- tiate a fixed rate, do not then track how much time a consultant is spending on a piece of work as this is no longer your concern. Your con- cern should be: 'Have I got a quality result for the fixed fee I am paying?' Also, if you ask for a fixed rate, do not be surprised if, when you ask for additional areas to be covered in an engagement, the consultant asks for additional fees.

~arify who is the client. ~mx. When you involve consultants in your organisation you may consider yourself to be clearly their client. This may seem obvious to you and not in need of any clarification. This may be true, but it is worth directly confirming with the consultant that you are the client and they are taking instructions from you and you alone. For all sorts of reasons (see Chapters 2 and 5) consultants have a very fluid concept of who the client is on many engagements. Their idea of the client can vary between the person who engages them, other managers in the organisation, the organisation itself (whatever that means) and sometimes other stakehold- ers such as shareholders.

If you have engaged the consultant, and it is your department's budget that is paying their fees, and if what you are asking them to do is reason- able and in the organisation's interest, then you are correct to consider yourself as the client for this engagement. No one else is. Of course, sometimes it is not directly your budget, and sometimes what you are

____ H ... ig, h-performa nee eonsu Iti ng

asking the consultant to do is in your personal interest as well as the organi- sation's. It is fair to say that then the concept of client is less clear cut.

Why worry about this? One reason is that you do not want the consult- ant seeking changes to the scope or incurring extra fees because someone else in the organisation has asked them to do additional work. You also do not want the consultant to be drawing conclusions based on informa- tion or assumptions you regard as invalid. Further, you do not want consultants going behind your back and talking about you to more senior managers (although, in reality, this is very rare).

'Who is the client?' can be a difficult question for a consultant to answer, as there may be many people who validly consider themselves as the client of a consultant. This is especially true if a consultant has a long- term relationship with an organisation and knows many different managers there or is running several engagements in parallel within your organisation. As a client you should understand that difficulty and make it clear that you personally are the client on this engagement.

Decide how much freedom you will give the consultants.

There are different ways of getting a consultant to resolve a problem for you. At one extreme you can tell them the problem and leave them with complete freedom as to how they resolve it. At the other extreme, you not only tell them the problem but give them detailed step-by-step instructions as to how to do it. In most cases a client works somewhere in the middle. Usually you can give some freedom or discretion as to how people working for you complete their tasks, but there are some constraints in any organisation which mean they have to do certain things in certain predefined ways.

Try to see it from the perspective of a consultant. Generally, if you define the problem the consultant will come up with a solution in any way they see fit. As the consultant is the expert this is reasonable, because they should know the best way to do something. You may have to put some limitations on how the consultant works for legal, regulatory or your own organisation's rules. For example, you may tell a consultant that

14 The client's perspective - buying consultancy

their work must be done in compliance with the relevant health and safety regulations . You may want to put additional constraints on the consultant for political or organisational reasons. For instance, you may say, 'Please, do not involve the sales department in this piece of work.' Additionally, you may be tempted to tell the consultant how to do the work. You could say something like, 'I want you to do this by running a workshop for three days in March.' There is nothing wrong with any of this, but the less freedom you give the consultant, the less of their expert- ise you are letting them use. On the contrary, the more discretion you give to a consultant, the more able they are to add value and use their specific skills and creativity, and come up with an innovative and power- ful solution to your issues.

To give someone discretion, we normally have to trust consultants. If you do not trust your consultant you have probably hired the wrong one (see tip 11). If what you really want is someone who will not only try to help, but will help by working in the precise way you define, with little or no discretion, don't pay for a management consultant. Save the money. There are many very competent contractors as capable as any consultant to follow your instructions at a much more economic rate.

Expect a lot - but don't expect miracles!

Successful consultants can charge what are perceived to be high daily rates. They can justify charging such rates because they should add sig- nificant value. From a client perspective, if a consultant wants to charge you a high rate it is reasonable to have high expectations of what they can deliver.

Consultants are only human, even if they are highly skilled in a specific area . Be demanding and do not accept any second-rate advice or deliver- abIes. Expect interesting and innovative solutions . But do not expect them to suddenly resolve the fundamental issues that have been at the

expect interesting and innovative solutions , ,

root of all of your business problems for years and years. If they do, then great, and sometimes they will , but do not risk your personal reputation on it happening.

High-performance consulting

Confirm precisely who is in the consulting team.

Whenever a major consultancy tells you about the wonders of buying a service from them and all about their fantastic intellectual capital, meth- ods and tools and years of experience, remember that you are paying for people, not a company. Consulting is done by the productive interaction of consultants and clients - human being to human being. Whenever a major firm tells you that it does not matter who they provide as all their staff are brilliant, smile but ignore them. Even in the firms with the high- est recruitment standards there are significant variations in skills and performance, and there are massive differences in the relevance of indi- vidual consultant's skills to your circumstances. The situation faced by many clients is that a brilliant team arrives to make a sales pitch, but the team who turns up to actually deliver the engagement is not the same.

Before a consulting engagement starts, confirm who exactly is on the team, and make sure that you are happy that the individuals being pro- posed have skills and abilities that are commensurate with their individual fee rates. If you delay the start of an engagement, do not be surprised if the consultancy firm cannot offer you the staff they origi- nally proposed. Even so, any replacement must be acceptable to you. Secondly, get some comfort that the people being proposed not only have the necessary skills, but are people who you and your team can work with. There is no point paying for a brilliant consultant who cannot effectively work in your culture.

Read the small print in the contract.

You may sometimes feel a little inexperienced about detailed legal and contractual issues and want to believe that a consulting firm would not pull the wool over your eyes. I think most consulting firms do not want to play games with contracts, but for various reasons clients often find themselves surprised when they are subject to legal clauses they signed

14 The client's perspective - buying consultancy

up to unintentionally. It probably happens because when a contract is drawn up it is not drawn up as a friendly little agreement between a nice consultant and an agreeable manager - the contract is drawn up by lawyers representing two different legal entities . There is an inherent assumption that when two organisations interact they are competent to do so. Caveat emptor.

Do not enter into a contract of any scale without getting your lawyers to check it. But you need to read it too. Your lawyers should ensure you do not sign up to a contract that is detrimental to your organisation in ways that lawyers consider are important, but your lawyer may be less worried about some aspects that should concern you.

There can be all sorts of potentially troublesome clauses in a perfectly valid legal contract from a consulting company. Examples include:

• What you pay for (expenses, fees and other costs).

• What you own at the end of the engagement and what the consultants retain ownership over (intellectual property).

• Client confidentiality: what can the consultant do with any information they find whilst performing the engagement?

• Changing consulting staff and whether this needs your approval.

If you don't trust the consultant, don't buy.

Everyone has instinct and gut feelings about certain people. Sometimes, for reasons you cannot quite verbalise, you do not trust someone. Of course you must avoid simplistic thinking and rejecting consultants because of your personal biases, but generally if you do not trust the con- sultants you are about to hire, then don't sign the contract. There are plenty of consultants in this world, and you can find someone else.

Why do I say this? Because if you do not trust the consultant, you will waste too much time checking their work and fretting and feeling nerv- ous because you are uncomfortable. You are a busy manager and cannot afford this. You do not owe a consultancy work, and should feel no qualms about rejecting a consultant you do not trust.

High-performance consulting

You can go too far the other way. You should not buy consulting just because you trust someone, and just because you trust someone you should not accept their advice without critical review. You should always be sceptical about any consultancy offering. As a professional manager, you should be a little wary of anything any supplier offers you. Your responsibility is to look after your organisation's interests, and you cannot do that without being constructively critical of what any supplier offers. But there is a big difference between a workable level of ongOing critique of a consultant's work and true distrust.

Before saying yes, be clear about what happens when they finish.

A consultant will work with you for a limited period of time to produce a set of deliverables. One common pOint of contention between consult- ants and clients is the situation in which a consultant believes they have finished their work and wants their invoice paid, and the client is not satisfied because they cannot use the deliverables from the consultant.

It is easy for a client to develop a dependency on a consultant or consul- tancy company. Consultants are often highly skilled and productive, and can produce deliverables, recommendations or implementation plans which are meaningful to them and usable by them given their skill level, but may not be appropriate or easily usable by the client.

Ask yourself: will you be able to use the consultant's advice or are you opening the door to an endless stream of future sales? There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the latter, but you should get into this situation with your eyes open and sufficient budget to deal with it. Will your staff need training to be able to apply the recommendations of the consult- ant? Again, this is a normal situation, but if it is the case you should ensure there is some degree of skills transfer built into the proposal. Overall, the best approach is to define as one of your requirements for the consultant that any deliverables they produce are appropriate to your organisation and usable by you and your staff given your current level of skills.

I discuss this issue in more detail in Chapter 8.

14 The client's perspective - buying consultancy

Plan check points in the engagement.

Many consulting projects are difficult to define in a way that you are absolutely sure that your and the consultant's understanding of the prob- lem are the same. More importantly, in productive consulting engagements understanding evolves as the engagement does. Part of the reason for many engagements is as much to improve understanding as it is to fix the problem. This means the structure and scope of the engage- ment often changes as progress is made. Having regular check points in a consulting engagement enables you to make changes to the structure or scope in a controlled way. If you are employing consultants, I recom- mend having some form of review at least once a week.

Additionally, if your finances are tight and the consultants are working on a time and materials basis, regular updates enable you to track expen- diture and ensure you are both getting value for money and that the work remains within your budget. You can easily make sure the spend-to- date is reasonable and you are not going to get an unexpected surprise.

Good consultants will ask for this - even insist on regular meetings with their client. Both for cost and scope control, regular updates with any consultants you are employing are essential. Most managers have busy schedules, so plan these check points and fix them in your diary at the start of the engagement.

Prepare for the consultants' arrival.

Consultants are typically expensive beasts to have walking around your organisation. They can add tremendous value, but they can also rack up significant fees doing mundane administrative tasks. Some parts of the engagement can be just as well done by your staff. Of course, you may be working for a cash-rich company that really does not mind a few thou- sand pounds of extra fees, but this is not true for most clients.

High-performance consulting

If you can do up-front work it can save you a lot of money and make the consultants more efficient. There are obvious administrative tasks - for example, arranging building passes, car parking spaces, office space and so on. Additionally, usually at the start of an engagement consultants need to collect information about your organisation_ Much of this data collection needs the consultants' specialist skill, but some data will be quite straightforward. For example, consultants often need basic com- pany information such as turnover, last year's annual reports, organisation charts and so on.

Of course consultants can perfectly well manage the process of getting building passes and a desk - but do you really want to be paying some- one at top rate to do this? Ask what administrative and facility needs are required, and, if they are reasonable, fulfil them. Feel no qualms about saying no if the consultant has unreasonable requests, or refusing ones that do not fit the style of culture of your business. Also, ask them what information they will need to do their work, and, if any of it is straight- forward then source it for them. Finally, ask if there are any tasks on their project that can be done easily by a member of your staff.

Sometimes you cannot help the consultants simply because your staff are already too busy. However, you may be able to reduce consulting bills by hiring cheaper contractors or temporary members of staff and getting them to do some of the less value-adding parts of the consultants' work. Consultancy companies do not like this as it decreases their fees, but you are the client.

Keep an eye on who the consultants are talking to within your organisation.

If you are the client for a consultancy team working in your organisation, it is worth keeping some track of who the consultant is talking to in your organisation. You do not want to constrain unnecessarily the consult- ants, as this may limit the quality of their resulting recommendations, but you need to be aware of a few risks.

Common things to be wary of are:

14 The client's perspective - buying consultancy

• Paying for consultants' business development activities (see tip 16) as they spend time talking to other potential clients in your organisation.

• Consultants interacting with managers who, for political reasons or business sensitivities, you do not want included within the scope of the consultants' work.

• The impact and impression the consultants can give in the organisation. It is easy to start false rumours running, for example about impending redundancies, simply because of a consultant's loose talk.

• The impact the consultants have on your reputation. If you are the client, what consultants say and do will, to some extent, reflect on you.

Pay for work, not for sales activity.

Selling consulting engagements is one of the costs of running a consul- tancy business. Experienced consultants know how to manage the balance between chargeable client work and business development activi- ties such as selling. When a consultant is working in your organisation, they usually have the freedom to move around and talk to all sorts of people. This freedom is often essential to the consultant being able to make quality recommendations. This freedom is also a huge temptation for the consultant, as it is a wonderful opportunity to make new relation- ships and sell other work.

Don't be paranoid about consultants selling other work: it is perfectly legitimate for a consultant to try and gain other

, don't be paranoid about consultants selling other work , ,

business within your organisation. A consultancy is a commercial enterprise and needs to sell prof- itably to continue to exist. But you should not be paying for their sales time. Make it clear that you

will not tolerate paying for any time that you perceive to be business development activities.

High-performance consulting

r-:hfl ; Iivery is a partnership. Unless you want completely generic information, consultants cannot deliver meaningful advice on their own. (If you do need generic information, it's much cheaper to buy a book or a report.) The value from consulting comes from bespoke recommendations which are tailored to your specific context: your organisation's sector, its nationality, the way you are structured, your way of working - all those things that make your business unique. For a con- sultant to understand your uniqueness they need to work with you . Therefore be prepared to give a proportion of your own time to helping the consultants. Consultants will help you, but you cannot simply delegate or outsource the resolution of a problem to them. Additionally, you should be prepared to provide staff time to work with consultants.

Factors to consider in allocating staff to work with consultants are:

• Data and information collection: Consultants cannot provide bespoke advice without information about your organisation. The main source of this information is you and your staff.

• Skills transfer: You may want to have some skills transfer from the consultants to your staff as an outcome of the engagement. To achieve this, staff must have time to work with and be trained by the consultants.

• Cost minimisation: As described in tip 14, the more of your staff you allocate to an engagement, the less consultant time you will require _ Usually your own staff are significantly cheaper on an hourly rate than consultants.

The limitations of consultants' own skills and knowledge: There are many things consultants cannot do and do not know about. For instance, many consultants are not ex-line managers and some of their advice will need to be made practical and workable for you to make use of. Only you can do this.

If you are hiring consultants both to advise and implement, then be clear to yourself that all a consultant can do when it comes to implementation is help. The help may be valuable or even essential to implementation, but it is your organisation that must own the implementation project, and your organisation that will live with the results once the implemen- tation is over.

14

Check back against the proposal.

At the end of a consulting engagement, and at periodic intervals throughout the engagement, check that the work being done is aligned with the proposal. Even if you have set up regular reviews , it is worth explicitly checking back against the proposal. In the intensity of a good consulting engagement it is easy to slowly veer off track compared to what was originally agreed.

There are often valid reasons why the engagement is not following the original proposal. The understanding of the work needed will evolve, and new ideas, different from those originally proposed, are generated. Often a consulting engagement starts trying to resolve one issue and then a dif- ferent root cause is identified. Hence the shape and scope of the work will change. You should ask for an updated proposal or statement of work. This does not need to be a complex document, and can be some- thing very brief. Without it, you risk ending the engagement in conflict.

Check the deliverables - don't just accept them.

All consulting engagements should result in some form of deliverable. The deliverable may be something tangible like a report; it may be some- thing intangible but measurable, such as an improvement in performance in a department; finally it may be intangible and unmeasur- able, such as some skills transfer to staff. Before letting a consultant complete their engagement you should have confidence that the deliver- abIes produced are complete and of a sufficient level of quality. Of course, this is easier for some deliverables than others, but even for those that are completely unmeasurable you should judge completeness and quality. You cannot reject deliverables simply because you do not like them. Ask questions such as: are they comprehensive? Do they cover all the areas expected? Are they of sufficient quality? Are the findings valid? Are any assumptions the consultant has made reasonable?

High-performance consulting

Only pay the bill if you are happy with the work and the invoice is reasonable.

Once the engagement is over and the deliverables have been handed over, you will receive an invoice for the consultant's work. For large engagements you may also receive interim invoices. Your main responsi- bility is towards your organisation, and you therefore must only pay the invoice if you are happy with the work and the invoice is reasonable. By

, , if you are unhappy with the bill, tell the consultant , ,

reasonable I mean that it is in line with expecta- tions and the parameters of the proposal or statement of work. Even if you are happy with the work, you may not be happy with the invoice when you see thousands of pounds for unex-

pected expenses. If you are unhappy with the bill, tell the consultant, and arrange to discuss it and ask them to explain and justify it. If they cannot, ask for a reduction.

Many consultants will not thank me for pointing this out, but if you are arguing over invoices, ask to see copies of all expenses receipts. It is a fair request, but often extremely painful for the consultants, especially if there was a big team on the engagement.

If you do decide to dispute an invoice with a consultant, make sure that the reason for any discrepancy is not down to you or your organisation. Clients often, unwittingly, ask consultants for all sorts of extras and add- ons as an engagement progresses, and may increase the scope significantly. Also, often consultants' productivity is constrained by being . unable to get sufficient time with you or your staff, or slow deci- sion making on your behalf. These sort of factors extend the engagement, and it is usually perfectly reasonable for consultants to expect additional fees in these situations, although this does depend on the proposal and what was agreed at the start of the engagement.

Invoice surprises can be reduced by following the advice in tips 13 and 17.

Conclusion

Management consultancy is a vibrant and dynamic business. Like all businesses it has its ups and its downs, but clients always need help and the range and number of issues they have are increasing. Many clients find consultants useful and continue to buy a variety of consultancy services even in the deepest recession. There are general trends in busi- ness which are helpful to consultants. The ongoing tendency to downsize and outsource functions results in increasingly efficient and lean organisations. Efficiency is great for the bottom line, but it also means there is little capacity for dealing with anything out of the usual. Who do clients call when something out of the usual comes up? Often it is a management consultant.

Not all clients are fans of management consultants, and some profes- sional consultants prefer other titles such as business advisor. This can lead to the incorrect conclusion that consulting is a business in decline. It has its challenges but, in truth, there remains a huge and growing demand for good consultants - a good consultant being one who adds value in a way appreciated by clients. The most successful consultants are those who offer a genuinely client-centric consulting service.

Management consultancy is, therefore, a great career choice. However, there is a growing body of people who want to work as consultants. Consultancy is a career chosen by many graduates, and it is also a result of mid-career changes. There are increasing numbers of experienced managers looking for alternative careers or the lifestyle flexibility that it is possible to have as a consultant. Additionally, more countries are developing their service industries. Geographies that were once seen as territorial opportunities for consultants are now developing their own competitive and high-quality consulting businesses who are selling back into the consultants' home countries. This is a good trend from the view- point of the client, as the greater supply of consultants means that to succeed as a consultant you must increasingly differentiate yourself with better skills and innovative service lines.

Conclusion

As I described in Chapters 1 to 3, to start as a consultant you need a skill that is of use to your clients, but you also need to have or be willing to learn the skills of being a consultant. Even the best and most successful manager may struggle with understanding the processes, tools and art of being a consultant.

Successful consultants build a profitable consulting business by thinking from the client's viewpoint, and developing service lines that are mean- ingful to the client. But it is no good having skills alone. You must be able to convince a client to utilise them, which requires that you not only be capable but credible. Credibility comes from knowing about clients, understanding their issues and coherently presenting your serv- ices as ways to resolve their issues. Of course, you must be able to find clients and potential clients must be able to find you.

There are three main processes you should understand to deliver value- adding consultancy, which I defined in Chapter 4.

The consulting engagement process: These are the steps you should take to go from selling an engagement, through delivering it to closing it down in the optimal way.

2 The client's change process: You should be able to position your services relative to the wider changes the client is undertaking.

3 The client's operational process: You should never forget that the most important part of a client's business is usually its day-to-day operations, and any help you give must fit within the client's operational process.

Chapter 5 looked at ways to go about identifying opportunities, under- standing client issues, developing opportunities and winning work. The fundamental point, and one that potential consultants often overlook, is that to be a successful consultant you not only need to be able to con- sult, you must also be able to sell your services. This is not necessarily hard, but it is essential.

Most of your time as a consultant will be spent delivering client engage- ments, as outlined in Chapter 6. You start engagements by looking ahead and planning what you will do, but at the same time expecting and being flexible enough to requirements to modify the plan. As you progress through delivery, always think from the client's perspective. Is what you are discovering innovative, implementable and acceptable to the client? An engagement needs to be sufficiently wide ranging, but clarity, coherence and usefulness are of far greater value than absolute

Conclusion

comprehensiveness. The best consulting ideas meet three criteria: they are innovative, implementable and acceptable to the client.

When thinking about consultancy, novice consultants tend to think in terms of experts providing detailed advice, but there is an alternative way of adding value to clients called process consultancy. This is described in Chapter 7. Instead of advising a client of what the solution to a problem is, the process consultant helps clients to develop solutions themselves. The effectiveness and wide applicability of process consultancy should not be underestimated.

Having delivered an engagement, you must finish it off and close it down. Often it is the wayan engagement is closed that a client most

often it is the way an engagement is closed that a client most remembers

remembers, and how you leave a client organisa- tion is as important as how you make your first sale. When you leave, the client should have or be capable of delivering a sustained change. If there is no change, you have added no value.

In Chapters 9 to 14 I described some of the higher-level competencies of experienced and successful consultants. You should develop the ability to locate and develop productive long-term relationships. You must some- times be willing to say no to client opportunities, but when you do, think carefully about how you will say no, as doing this in an inappropri- ate way can damage your ongoing client relationship. Consultants face a variety of business temptations, but sustainable consultancies are built on a strong ethical foundation. Working ethically is essential in modern business. Finally, as a consultant one of your main tools is language: learn to use it appropriately and clearly, trying to avoid jargon and other communication traps.

You will never know everything about consultancy. Observe, listen and learn as your experience grows. Share your ideas with other consultants, who are often happy to help you improve on them. Client needs are ever changing, and success is built upon an ability to track these changes and a willingness to adapt your service lines accordingly. I, and most success- ful consultants I know, are always happy to receive comments and suggestions on our approaches.

Good luck with your consulting career.