Organisations use consultants for a variety of reasons. Some hire consultants to facilitate the enhancement of productivity, quality, and other performance imperatives. Others hire consultants to provide solutions to specific problems or to provide specialised expertise. Whatever the reason, it is important to know whether using a consultant is the best option and if so how to select the right consultant for the job and how to make the best of the consultant. Ignoring this aspect has the potential to disappoint both client and consultant.
Surely your internal management and employees know more about your business than an outsider, right? They have been hinting that they already know the problem and they know what to do about it. They only need someone to hear them out.
Well, these may be precisely the reasons you should seek an external consultant. The job of the consultant is to facilitate your team to come up with solutions. Yes, sometimes the consultant may be called upon to provide valuable insight from his experience but the main job is to lead the team in an objective unbiased study of the problem and provide a platform for them to ‘see’ the real underlying issues and justify their solutions. What the team may have thought was the ‘solution’ may not be the right solution at all if it was not arrived at in a methodical way with correct input from the right people.
Here is a list of reasons why you hire a consultant
1. The external consultant is an objective unbiased outsider who doesn’t have the attitude that ‘this is how we always do things around here’. Compared to an internal employee, an external consultant is more likely to see a solution with an outsider’s eye and less likely to resist change because of cultural or emotional issues. He/she is more likely to suggest and justify change.
2. The consultant is not affected (or infected) by internal politics. He or she has no reason to resist suggestions simply because of negative interpersonal history.
3. A consultant is often able to share useful methods, tools and insights from other organisations that may be new to your employees.
4. While internal management and employees may think they already have the answer to their predicament, workable solutions are best arrived at by deliberate and methodical analysis of the problem as a team lead by a good facilitator.
5. It is sometimes easier to convince a team to act on a suggestion that comes from a respected external consultant than one that comes from within the organisation.
6. Using an external consultant could be a quick way to get knowledge or professional service into an organisation where it does not already exist and when it is most needed.
7. The consultant is not bogged down by the day to day grind and workload that makes it very difficult to find time to analyse the issues at hand.
8. While a consultant may seem expensive at first glance, in reality it is actually cheaper to use a consultant on a short term rather than hire a permanent employee to do the same job. Besides, a permanent employee, is at risk of being deployed to some other under-resourced function totally unrelated to the original project objective as so often happens.
Now that you have decided the best way forward is to hire an external consultant, it is time for the big question; how do you go about selecting the right person?
Here are some DOs and DON’Ts.
1. Emphasise the need for excellent process analysis skill and knowledge of a relevant core methodology such as Lean and Six Sigma.
2. Consider someone who has garnered experience in a broad range of functions and businesses. That’s not to say that someone who has only ever been in one field and one industry will be a bad choice but all else being equal, one who has worked in multiple fields and industries is more likely to bring fresh perspectives to the organisation and do a better quality job.
3. Select someone who takes the time to understand your situation, pain points, and real requirements before giving any proposals. Some consultants in their eagerness to get the job will offer solutions without checking the facts first.
4. Select someone who is good at fostering teamwork, facilitating and guiding teams to analyse and come up with solutions on their own rather than one who always dictates solutions to the team. Watch out for consultants who talk like they know it all.
5. Hire someone who writes comprehensive but concise, easy to read, and preferably visual reports as opposed to one who is prone to write unnecessarily voluminous reports full of jargon. Even for projects that necessitate lengthy informative reports, a comprehensive and concise executive summary is important. Long wordy reports are less likely to be read and actioned than shorter easy to read ones.
6. Give preference to someone who works well with people. He or she should be able to connect with staff as easily as with top management. Too often the organisational culture is a hindrance to making progress so you need someone who is able to navigate the complex web of organisational culture. The last thing you want is a consultant who upsets your employees and disrupts business. It is generally more difficult to find a consultant who does both culture/people development and process improvement but if you get one, you may have found yourself a gem.
7. Do seek feedback and testimonials from other clients of the consultant. Generally one who has excellent client feedback, displays confidence, and is able to demonstrate the necessary people and process improvement skills should be a good pick.
1. Don’t over emphasise the need for skill in the same industry or business. Rather a broad industry experience and skill in a relevant methodology and process analysis is much more important than knowledge of a specific industry. After all, no matter how well the consultant knows your industry, the incumbent management will know more about their own business than anyone else. What you need is fresh perspective, not more of the same thing.
2. Don’t hire the person who quotes the lowest unless you are convinced that he or she has what it takes to get the job done. On the same note, the one who quotes the highest is not always the right person for the job.
3. Don’t reject someone because he has an unfamiliar name or because he has a strong accent. You may be missing good talent. This may seem obvious to most people but it happens.
OK, so you have hired the consultant and he or she is about to get started. It’s not time to sit back yet. In fact this may be the most crucial period. If you don’t handle this part well, you may have the best person and still get the wrong job done or not to the standard that you expected. Here are some suggestions.
1. Communicate clearly the mandate, project objective, scope and expectations. Too often, management is unable to articulate their requirements accurately or say what they really mean. Make sure the consultant is fully aware of all the reasons and background of the project.
2. If the project is going to take more than a few days, it is important to schedule meetings to gauge progress at the different milestones. In any case, always schedule opening and closing meetings.
3. Request the consultant to present his approach and timeline. Schedule the right people from the project team to be available to work with the consultant when required.
4. Top management should discuss openly and honestly with the project team specific business issues and requirements. Top management should also be actively present during the opening and closing meetings and if possible even in between to support and be seen to support the consultant and the cause. Merely handing over a project to the consultant and taking a back seat approach will only lead to disappointing results.
5. Top management needs to ensure that the organisation is being open and honest about the company’s situation and problems. If employees hide or sugar coat issues, it will almost certainly hinder the achievement of project objectives. The team is more likely to cooperate if they are aware of top business issues and pain points and the reason why the consultant was hired.
6. Even before looking for a consultant, top management should take care to alleviate any fear that internal management and employees may have. Perhaps they may feel that their own skill and performance is being undermined by bringing in a consultant. The job of the consultant is not to replace them or to make them look unimportant but to facilitate their work. In fact their input and cooperation is vital to the success of the undertaking.
7. Get the consultant to sign a non-disclosure agreement. You may need to share some business information in order to progress the project and you don’t want confidentiality to be compromised.
The above is written based on my long experience as consultant as well as one who has had to recruit experts. I would love to hear from my readers who may have a different experience or who feel the need to fill in something that I may have missed. Thank you for taking the time to read the article and hope it has been of value to you.
Contributed by Gurbachan S Balia, Managing Director at ACTZEL Consulting
Contact: gurbachan@actzelconsulting.com