How do you know a consultant is competent?

Think about it. You understand (I hope) situational competence. We all know people who are extraordinarily competent in one area and hopeless incompetents in other areas.

So the question is really, “How do you know the consultant you’re about to engage is competent to assist you with the issue at hand?” Having the world’s greatest consulting brain surgeon working with you on a factory floor reengineering project might not be the wisest thing to do, no matter how competent the consultant was in her field or how nice she was.

What’s the approach you use to determine and verify the competence of the consultants with which you work? From my perspective, it’s less important which approach you use (as long as it works) and more important THAT YOU HAVE AN OBJECTIVE APPROACH that you use with consistency.

So. What’s the name of your approach? How often do you update it? Who is in charge of updating and maintaining it? Is it used consistently throughout your organization?

Hmmmmm.

Is Your Consultant a Seer or a Peer -- or Worse?

It all depends on the evaluation criteria you developed to select the consultant.

As part of selecting a consultant to address your issue or problem, best practice dictates that you carefully define your evaluation criteria. Understanding the kinds of experience and the specific skills and competencies you’ll need in an advisor is not a trivial matter.

First, you have to be confident that you and your team have actually isolated the root issue or problem to be addressed. You know that’s important because you’ve all heard the yada yada blah blah about solving solutions instead of problems.

Especially in those cases with the potential for a significant impact on your organization, we recommend a non-traditional, but very effective, approach.

We feel that in the long run it’s often more effective – and sometimes even cheaper – to first hire a consultant to define the issue or problem. Once you all agree that the root issue or problem has been uncovered, have that same consultant help you develop the evaluation criteria for a consultant to actually resolve the issue or problem. And, no, the first consultant can’t be considered a candidate for the next job. This keeps everyone honest.

And yes, you still have to develop the evaluation criteria for the first consultant. And no, this isn’t supposed to be one of those Carch-22 type of things. Being a proactive client isn’t the easiest job on earth.

Remember, if things were really easy, any under-educated doofus that flips burgers for minimum wage could be sitting in your plush seat instead of having to stand all day. And where would that leave you?

The Post Engagement Review

One of the more valuable exercises that a client of professional services firms can do is to proactively coordinate a post project or post engagement review.

The effort is – assuming you plan on staying in business and adapting to constantly changing times – usually well worth the time and expense. The results are added to your knowledge base, enabling you to be better prepared next time you need to bring in external consultants or other professional services providers.

First, what’s involved? It’s more than one meeting. Done correctly, it’s a process. The post engagement review involves a number of steps:

1. Have your internal team hold the first meeting prior to the conclusion of the engagement. Do not invite the consultants. Don’t even tell them you’re having the meeting. Review all the previously collected work products and artifacts that have been generated during the engagement. Define the subjects that need to be covered and the issues to be addressed in a subsequent joint review session that the consultants will attend. Document the results and use them as input to the agenda of the joint meeting.

2. Coordinate with your consultants and schedule an engagement review with the combined team of client and consultant personnel. Have the consultants draft the initial agenda. Then add any agenda items you want included. Hold the meeting immediately after the final engagement deliverable has been received or at a similar point if there is no final deliverable due. Conduct a facilitated review and lessons learned session with all participants. Publish the results to all involved.

(This meeting should be scheduled before the post project celebratory function – if you were planning on having one.)

3. After the consultants have left, conduct an additional facilitated review and lessons learned session, with the internal team only, in order to produce a final report. Be honest. Use the lessons learned to enable your organization to be a better consumer of consulting services on future projects and to help you interact more effectively with the consultants on those future projects.

The reasons post engagement reviews aren’t usually conducted as thoroughly as they should be are simple; time and money. As usual, it all comes down to priorities.

If time or money is a real problem, a much shorter method is also available. It involves doing nothing and hoping for better results next time. Unfortunately, results can’t be guaranteed.

Life as a McAfee Lab Rat – Week 2

In a prior post, I told how I had been prompted to download an update to McAfee’s Security Center program and that I was awash in a sea of problems and enduring very long hold times while trying to reach their tech support people.

Eight days after the download, my machine is still not working properly and I’ve been waiting for a promised return call from their “priority” support team for over 48 hours. After a telephone conversation on Tuesday, which I had initiated to complain that I had not received a previously promised return call, I was told the person I was speaking to could not help me – that I had been assigned to an escalation team and only they could help me. That person went on to say that I would be getting a call back on Wednesday. Didn’t happen. Nor on Thursday. I’m about to call in to McAfee to see what their “story of the day” will be today.

Normally I wouldn’t be so cranky – and certainly wouldn’t be ranting about it on my blog – but this is the second time I’ve been taken out of production or had my machine seriously compromised by a McAfee update in the last 18 months. How would you feel?

All this time I thought I was a customer. Guess that’s not the case. McAfee apparently thinks the first batch of people they dump a major upgrade on are nothing more than laboratory rats that will help them debug their code – even if those people might suffer a few inconveniences.

That’s certainly how they’re making me feel. They may be soon be feeling like my former supplier.

Level Ground or Upper Hand?

Which approach would you choose in a relationship with a consultant – or any other provider of professional services? Which do you think they would choose?

Based on a few decades of experience, on both sides of the table, I believe that cooperative is usually better than adversarial; that “mutually beneficial” is better than “beating them.”

Let’s assume you’ve found the “right” consultants to help you with the issue you’re addressing. You believe they’ve got the experience and expertise that you need. You trust they’re looking out for your best interests. Do you want to control the relationship? Do you think they should want to control it?

The consultants will bring experience and expertise to help resolve your issue. You’ll bring currency (real money) and the potential of a reference -- if not future work.

The best relationships are based on a tacit understanding that both parties are bringing something valuable to the table and – that by working together in a cooperative fashion – both will benefit by the exchange of the value that each brought.

If you’re not working cooperatively – in an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect -- with your consultants, you may want to reconsider your options.

Why Intelligent Consulting Management (ICM)?

It beats the alternatives.  Of ALL the ways to manage your consultants, we have found this approach works best.

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