The Art of Consultancy

Calvert Markham

• Editorial: Legend Business
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789550825
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Consulting

This is the practical approach I wish I had come across much earlier in my career. Cynthia Pexton-Shaw

Whether you are just starting out, considering or already working as a consultant this book is essential reading, enabling you to understand the needs of your client and to get the result they want.

There are more factors to consider in order to be a successful management consultant than simply subject matter knowledge. Problem solving and solution delivery have to be accomplished in usually tight project timescales while keeping clients happy. This book, based on the experience of training thousands of consultants, provides insights into the key processes of selling and delivering consulting services, together with the essential underpinning tools and techniques, and the commercial imperatives for running a successful consulting practice.

This book contains the tools, tactics, secrets and attributes to develop and become a successful management consultant. The contents include chapters on the key processes such as:

• The business of consultancy
• Marketing and selling consultancy projects
• Overview of the delivery process
• Entry, Contracting, Diagnosis, Intervention and Closure

And the essential underpinning skills such as:

• Analytical tools and techniques
• Reporting and Influencing clients
• Designing, delivering training sessions and workshops
• The practice environment

'This is the practical approach I wish I had come across much earlier in my career. Calvert provides a strong guiding framework for delivering consultancy projects from beginning to end. His writing makes consulting easily accessible for anyone who wishes to deliver their particular expertise into a client organisation.' Cynthia Pexton-Shaw, Elevation Learning

'A book that gets to multiple editions is clearly a classic of its sector. Calvert's is in its seventh and will probably go on to many more. It achieves a threefold feat: of being useful to the expert and to the recently qualified and to the student. Even those of us who have spent decades in this profession need a consultancy bible to refer to. Calvert shows how to be rigorous and systematic, but the book is packed with practical advice from one who is both an academic expert and a senior practising consultant. This is both The Art and The Science of Consultancy.' Ian Watson – Immediate Past Chair ICMCI

'This book explains in plain English the role and daily challenges of life as a management consultant, and has been an excellent source of reference in building our business. Calvert presents a practitioners view covering the requisite soft skills as well as the mechanics of solving the client's business problems.' Martyn Evans, Consulting Director, Altus

CHAPTER 1

OVERVIEW OF THE DELIVERY PROCESS

They said that the job could never be done,

But I with a will set to it;

And I tackled that job that couldn’t be done —

And found that I couldn’t do it!

Anon

The purpose of the consultancy delivery process is to enable the consultant to add value to the client.

At a basic level, a consultant can simply provide a piece of advice. For example, a lawyer might be asked a question on a basic point of law and be able to provide the answer in a short telephone conversation. Such an instant response is not appropriate in addressing most of the predicaments which motivate organisations to involve consultants; usually a programme of work is involved and this is embodied in a project. So, the project is the vehicle by which value is added to the client.

Clearly, the detailed programme of work needed will vary from project to project, but a practice may have developed its own methodologies based on previous operating experience or research. These can be categorised as follows.

1. The standard service: this is a highly product-orientated approach. The client is buying a standard service that will vary very little in the amount of time required (or, if it is likely to vary, the swings and roundabouts cancel each other out). Examples might be:

• a house conveyance by a solicitor;

• personality profiling using psychometrics.

In each case, the service will be much the same on each occasion and its design requires little or no new planning. Very little management consultancy falls into this category.

2. Royal roads are again standard approaches, but adapted to the circumstances of a client. Examples might be:

• introducing a job evaluation scheme;

• computerising a stock control system.

The work content of ‘royal road’ type projects can be predicted with some certainty — not only because it is fairly well known, but also because of previous experience. The amount of time required to conduct a ‘royal road’ approach will depend on the nature of the application. The details of the work involved may also vary.

In both these cases the consultant is mediating a standard process; a lot of the value that the client is buying lies in the process rather than in the capabilities of the individual consultant.

Much of management consultancy however consists of a journey of exploration rather than a walk along a well-worn track. These projects must also be planned, which presents more of a challenge than the ‘standard service’ or ‘royal road’ approaches. What is needed is a delivery process that sets out the generic phases that comprise a consultancy project which can be applied generally.

These are shown in Exhibit 1.1, and this short chapter provides an overview of the process. Each phase is described in more detail in the following chapters.

Exhibit 1.1 The delivery process

Before embarking on a description of the process — a health warning. The process is empirical, based on observation, rather than a statement of absolute and exclusive truth! It should, therefore, be regarded as a tool — a servant rather than a master. So, use it but if the circumstances of your situation cannot fit the process, then adapt it, or indeed abandon it.

Let’s now take a look at each stage of the delivery process.

ENTRY

A consultant’s first contact with a client may be either in the course of selling an assignment¹ or starting a project that has already been sold. In either case, careful preparation is required and you should aim to make a favourable impact.

Preparation should ensure that you know:

• background client information — nature of their business, key people;

• key aspects of their business, for example, how they make money, recent performance, current issues in the public domain;

• the history of any previous relationship between your consultancy and the client, and particularly any previous discussions that might have a bearing on the project;

• what the objectives of the introductory meeting are;

• what expectations the client has of the first meeting (often you can set these yourself by a preliminary email or telephone call).

The client will be seeking to form an impression of you throughout your early contacts, whether written or telephone, but the first meeting is when the client will be particularly able to do so. There is no second chance to form a first impression and so you should aim to make as favourable an impact as you can.

Early in a project, it is important to allow time for familiarisation. This will be necessary not only for practical matters (such as who’s who, office layout, etc.) but also for understanding the informal rules and climate of the organisation. The latter includes such items as:

• specialised language used in the business;

• ways in which people work together (e.g. can you walk into people’s offices, or do you have to schedule a meeting first?);

• current affairs or hot topics for the organisation.

CONTRACTING

EXPECTATIONS AND OBLIGATIONS

As soon as contact is made there will be expectations and obligations created on both sides besides the formal agreement set out in the terms of reference.

A major cause of client dissatisfaction is when a consultant fails to meet the client’s expectations. These expectations relate not only to meeting commitments in the terms of reference, but also in how the consultant carries out the project, for example:

• the consultant’s conduct;

• what the consultant wears;

• when the consultant arrives and leaves client premises;

• the apparent priority the consultant attaches to the work done for the client.

Likewise, the consultant will also have expectations of the client; these will be reflected, largely, in the commitment the client shows towards the project.

The sponsor (the member of the client’s staff commissioning the project) will, presumably, be committed to it, but you will have to consider the commitment of others. Will the project require the co-operation of more senior or more junior staff and, if so, are they committed to its success? Beware of sponsors who do not appear to be committed to the project or who are carrying it out as a personal crusade.

Also consider the impact of a consulting project on a client’s workload and systems. Any project will create a demand on client time, but you also need to consider whether the client’s usual management systems will support the project adequately. The way I put this is: ‘ordinary business can be run within the ordinary arrangements in an organisation; extra-ordinary activity may need extra-ordinary support.’ So, for example, during a change programme the frequency of communication with staff may need to be increased.

ESTABLISHING TERMS OF REFERENCE

Consultancy is an intangible product and terms of reference are a way of expressing the product definition. It may seem surprising that this is a topic relevant to delivery; after all, doesn’t the contract that is the product of the sales process express this?

The answer is ‘yes’, but there are several reasons why an understanding of terms of reference is relevant to an operating consultant:

• Operating consultants need to understand terms of reference if they are to fulfil the terms of the contract;

• The consultant may be involved in formulating a contract as a member of the sales team;

• Operating consultants will get to know the client organisation much better than the sales team, because they will be exposed to it for longer. Better knowledge may show that terms of reference need to change.

The key elements in terms of reference are:

• scope: the areas of concern that the consultants are to address;

• deliverables: what the client is going to get.

Larger projects can be broken into work packages, each a small project in itself, with its own scope and deliverables.

WORK PACKAGE MANAGEMENT

The work package is the means by which the deliverables are to be achieved. The key elements of managing a work package are:

1. The methodology or approach to be used, usually described as a series of tasks;

2. The plan, which describes when these tasks are to be carried out;

3. The plan will also indicate the resources required, which may include client as well as consultant effort;

4. How the work is to be managed and integrated into the client’s usual management process.

DIAGNOSIS

THE PROBLEM-SOLVING PROCESS

Diagnosis is based on some sort of problem-solving framework. Problem solving is the route between problem and solution and the process provides guidance on what needs to be done at each stage.

In particular, consultancy is often a journey from the unknown into the known (or making tacit knowledge explicit), and hence necessarily involves data collection. A robust problem-solving approach helps in defining what data needs to be collected.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Paradoxically, you need to consider analysis before deciding what...