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.

Are digital coaches real consultants?

Seth Godin, in a post on his blog entitled “A shortage of digital coaches,” describes the absence of a certain type of individual – a digital coach. His thesis is that there are a large number of individuals and small businesses using an increasing array of digital technology that could be getting a much better return on their investment.

He posits that there is a huge market for people with the skills to “hear what you do and how you do it and then show you how to do it better.” He goes on to give examples, describing these digital coaches as “People who organize data and put it in the right place” and “People who overhaul the way small groups use technology so they can use it dramatically better.”

If such people existed and they were to charge $100 per hour -- or some set amount per day -- for their services, could they be considered true consultants? I think the answer is yes. Certainly the good ones would be more than temporary help, more than contractors. To be effective, these individuals would use both issues-based and solution-based consulting skills to move their clients further along the digital competency continuum.

Are these digital coaches around? Sure, but finding them and vetting them doesn’t seem to me to be an easy task at the present time. Simply having technology skills does not automatically equate to having consulting skills. In an effort to help make the desired connections, Seth has set up a Squidoo group for digital coaches.

Being both a consultant and small business owner, I’m intrigued by the possibility of bringing these skills to the marketplace in a rational manner. Is this a natural extension for The Geek Squad or Firedog, or are they already providing such services?

Finally, is this something the larger consulting firms might consider in an effort to provide a “starter service” to small businesses to get them familiar with their range consulting services – and hopefully turn them into long term customers?

Consultant Satisfaction Survey Closing This Weekend

Our current survey – The 2007 Consulting Satisfaction Survey – will be closed to input as of 11:59 PM on Sunday evening, January 21. This is 2 days later than originally announced and is being done to allow the maximum number of responses on this important topic.

The variety of the responses has been very interesting [we can view responses prior to the closing of the survey] and will add to our store of knowledge about the wants and needs of clients of consultants.

If you’ve dealt or worked with consultants in 2006 and haven’t taken the survey, please take notice. The final hour is fast approaching. Share your experiences with consultants – both good and bad -- and help improve the quality of the outcomes of future consultant-involved projects.

Warm and toasty consulting secrets

Over in Belfast, an imaginative fellow named Peter Kerr, who runs a design firm by the name of Atto, Ltd., has developed an intriguing way to raise money for charity. His innovative web site, Your Name on Toast, is racking up the hits and the donations to charities to be named later – based on voting by the donors.

These kinds of web site, which Seth Godin refers to as “link promo pages,” are a great way for individuals and organizations whose web sites aren’t in the top 1,000 to get some additional exposure. In this case, each piece of toast links to a web site specified by the person who makes a donation.

Peter’s new web site just happened to coincide with the introduction of our new “consulting secrets” marketing campaign. The result is that we’re one of the contributors.

Results? Our web traffic is way up. Now more people know more about the types of specialized services -- including troubled project resolution -- that are available from Consulting Intelligence.

The 2006 Consulting Attitudes Survey

Over on the Consulting Intelligence web site, we’ve just released our latest survey. If you’ve worked with external consultants in 2006, we’d like to hear from you.

Our latest survey deals with the experiences and perceptions of clients that have recently worked with external consultants. For example, we ask how well their consultants performed. We also ask for their opinion on the primary benefits to be gained -- and risks to be concerned about – when they consider dealing with external consultants.

We also give them an opportunity to rank order how they feel about consultants as compared to other professions.

The online survey can be completed in less than 20 minutes. Click here to take the survey.

For those of you that choose to leave your name and email address during the online survey process, we’ll be happy to send out a summary of the survey results at no charge.

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.

The Value of Real Values

How much actual value does your consulting provider place on the values they publicly espouse on their web site and in their promotional literature? Are those value statements there as window dressing or do you feel they really believe in them – to the point that they actually live and breath them?

During the course of interviews for my upcoming book and in many conversations with clients (not always mutually exclusive activities) I’m constantly reminded how much weight actual clients give to the values demonstrated by the consultants with which they work. Those conversations get really interesting when the clients have perceived the values demonstrated by individual consultants were not at all in sync with the values espoused by the particular consulting firm that has supplied the consultant. Generally, clients don’t like this disparity – especially if the project or engagement has not gone as well as the client originally expected.

David Maister, a highly regarded consultant to professional services firms, has just posted a free audio seminar on his blog, Passion, People and Principles that addresses this same issue. It’s directed to professional services firms. It’s well worth a listen, even if you’re just a client of consulting or professional services firms.

Maybe discussing values is something you want to add to your standard list of items to be discussed with perspective consultants. The results of that discussion could help you answer the most important question you have to answer as a purchaser of consulting or professional services, “Just what kind of people do I want to be dealing with?”

Which is More Important: Consultant or Consulting Firm?

Which, from the perspective of the client, is more important? As with many questions concerning the field of consulting the answer is, “it depends.”

In her regular column in the current – and unfortunately last -- edition of C2M, Fiona Czerniawska ties the question to the explicit implicit and explicit promises the client receives.

The bottom line here – at least from my reading of the column – is that when an engagement does not go very well or a consultant behaves poorly – or worse, badly -- the client quickly shifts the blame from the individual consultant(s) involved to the consulting firm.

On the other hand, when an engagement goes particularly well, Czerniawska states that her evidence indicates that it is the individual consultant(s) who are credited, not the firm.

This is consistent with the results of our research to date. Clients have repeatedly told us that they consider the single most important determinant of the success of as consulting engagement is the caliber and competence of the individual consultant participating in the engagement.

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.

Consulting Knowledge Bargain!

Have an interest in consulting?

For over 24 years Consulting to Management, also known as C2M, has been a source of invaluable information and insight into the world of management consulting.  Unfortunately, they have ceased publication.  The reasons are many but primarily revolve around the decline in the number of subscribers who received their copies as part of their membership in various professional organizations such as the Institute of Management Consultants USA.

This is a sad time for those of us who were loyal subscribers and avid readers as well as the volunteers who supported the Journal of Management Consulting, Inc., the not-for-profit educational corporation that published C2M.

But, it's an opportunity for you.  Over 600 hundred articles -- going back to the original issue -- are available in electronic form to download for the very reasonable price of US$ 49.  You can download a few, a hundred or ALL of them for that US$ 49.  Follow the C2M link above and scroll down till you see "Special Archive Pass" on the right side. Then, just follow instructions.

If you're interested in consulting and would like to add to your personal library or -- like me -- are writing a book and are looking for a source of well written articles on a wide variety of subjects to add to your reference material, it's a great bargain.

One catch however.  You have to complete the downloading by September 30th.  After that they'll no longer be available.