We’ve all heard the definition of a consultant. Someone who turns up, borrows your watch, charges you a fortune to tell you the time and keeps the watch. Good consultants enable you to have the resources to buy a better watch, but they seem to be few and far between. Which begs the question how to ensure your consultant is effective?
Do You Need A Consultant Or A Freelancer?
To a large extent that depends upon you dear client. Before engaging the consultant do you really know what is the objective? Is it to bring skills to the organisation which it does not possess? In which case what you need is an employee or a freelancer, not a consultant. Is it to assist in the completion of a particular project? In which case you need a freelancer, not a consultant. Is it to help bring about change in the organisation and enable those within the organisation to implement change to move it toward the ultimate objective? Now you need a consultant.
The role of an effective consultant is twofold:
To quickly identify those things within the organisation that are stopping or slowing down the achievement of the objective and
To assist those within the organisation to enable them to eliminate the obstacles and move toward the objective.
How To Ensure Your Consultant Is Effective
First of all, check the above and decide if you need a consultant or a freelancer. Many will actually need a freelancer who will actually do all or part of a job.
Second, and this is where so many organisations go wrong. Don’t engage a professional consultant!!!! Let me explain. There are literally thousands of “consultants” out there who are professional consultants. In other words, they have no experience of anything but consultancy. In many cases they have come straight out of university and trained to be a consultant. Let’s consider the case of a medical consultant. Say I have a problem with my eye. I go to see a consultant. My consultant says don’t worry. I’ve never performed any eye surgery, I’ve never even worked in a hospital, but I’ve been on all the courses on being a consultant and I’ve read books and paper by all the leading eye specialists. Now let me tell you what’s wrong. Sounds crazy put like that but that’s exactly what so many “consultants” do. What you need is someone who understands your organisation, your methods and your markets because they have been there, done that and got the tee shirt.
Third. Ensure your consultant is up to date on what is going on in your area. You don’t want someone who retired five or ten years ago and is “doing a bit of consultancy” but hasn’t kept up to date. Experience is vital but so is up to date knowledge.
Fourth. Agree the objective of the consultancy engagement, the time period and the definition of success.
Fifth, and this is where you find out if your consultant is likely to be effective or not. Agree failure compensation. Why would you pay a consultant a huge amount of money to do a job if the results do not achieve the original objective within the original timescale? Agree milestones and agree the amount of the refund from the consultant if they are not met. With most “consultants” stand back when you suggest this as their eyes will pop so far out of their head they will smack you in the face. Remember Ivy Lee was so convinced that his consultancy and methods would work that he told Charles Schwab to pay him nothing for the consultancy and after three months only pay what he felt the advice was worth based on the results achieved. Now that’s an effective consultant.
It all comes back to the old story of set the objectives and find the person to help you achieve them.
Happy consultant hunting!!!
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