Monday 12 January 2015

Find the Right Consulting Engagement

Have you ever taken an engagement that appeared to be a good fit only to have it morph into something less, maybe a lot less satisfying? Well they do say hindsight is a wonderful thing and we can all look back on roles we would not take again, but surely it would be better to assess them beforehand and avoid the (mutual?) disappointment. After all, an unhappy client is unlikely to recommend you to others.
There is a simple review one can perform that will help weed out the less appropriate assignments. In this piece I will outline what that review is, but first in order to keep it simple, I will make some reasonable assumptions
  1. The consultant is smart, a term refers to the many dimensions of intelligence rather than dress ie they can read, write, listen, analyse and generally communicate and interact with others in the top 10% of the working population. I won’t attempt to assess that here, just be honest with yourself and take on board all the feedback you receive.
  2. The client wants “smart” else they would be taking on a standard temporary or contract resource. There is nothing more draining for a person than having their intelligence under-utilised over a sustained period of time.
  3. The client has a good enough understanding of what they want to achieve through engaging the consultant. One would like to think this was a given, but experience shows that it is not always so. If they don’t have the necessary understanding, then your first task, if you want the role, is to help them build it.
  4. We will not consider in this piece the readiness/receptiveness of the client’s organisation to your work and capabilities. These do need considering and will be the subject of a future piece, but not here and not now.
So we come to a classic two-by-two matrix.
The axes in this matrix are “Leadership” and “Experience”.
To expand in these simple terms the leadership axis illustrates the degree of leadership (of the desired outcome) expected of the consultant by the client. At the right hand end the consultant is considered to be fully accountable for delivering the expected outcome/product and is expected to be fully “hands on” while at the left hand end the client retains full accountability and provides all the necessary leadership.
The experience axis is an indicator of specific and direct experience of having delivered an identical or very similar outcome before. It is not a comment on more generic skills and industry experience, but those specific to the engagement in question.
While there is inevitably a continuum of values along the two axes, we will divide each in two to simplify consideration. This gives us the ubiquitous four squares that deserve individual inspection.
Starting bottom left and working clockwise I have labelled the first “Resource”. This is where the client is looking at the consultant as living, intelligent body that can be directed by the client, but does not necessarily bring related experience to the work that will be assigned.
The next one is labelled “Advisory” and is where the client is looking for deep and proven experience/expertise that will inform and/or augment their own resources. They are not looking at the consultant to provide leadership in delivery of the final outcome.
The third is labelled “Repeated Change” and refers to delivering, with leadership and relevant experience and expertise, a change that is the same as or very similar to something they have done before. An example could be delivering the operating model for and the eventual outsourcing of a business function.
The last, and possibly the most exciting, is where a consultant’s intelligence and leadership skills are engaged to deliver a new change; new to the consultant, almost certainly new to the client and possibly new to the industry. The consultant is expected to skilfully navigate unknown waters, bringing others with them to deliver the desired outcome.
I hope you can see the value of this visualisation? Firstly consider where you as a consultant work best and/or want to work and identify that location on the matrix. If you don’t know yourself then it will not be surprising if you end up in the wrong roles. A couple of simple questions will help. Do you like leading or being led? Do you prefer to do and learn new things or repeat what you are familiar with?
Next consider what the client is asking of you and indeed what they need; not necessarily the same thing. If you plot these on the matrix you can start understanding (and possibly discussing with the client) the gap in expectations. As a rule of thumb the greater the gap, the more uncomfortable and possibly unsuccessful the engagement will be.
Does this resonate with you? Are you prepared to share any instances where you might have been mismatched and your account of that experience?

No comments:

Post a Comment

If something I have said has made you think, angry or simply feel confused, please to leave comment and let me know.