Bob Brown's Consulting Intelligence Briefings

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

McAfee's Security Center Update

I downloaded McAfee's latest Security Center update early yesterday morning.

Turned out to be the first act of a major goat rodeo.  Many calls.  Lots of "hold time" listening to really bad guitar versions of the classics.  Resolved problems were -- and continue to be -- replaced with new problems.  I'm still suffering.  The agents I've been speaking with said they're getting "lots of calls."

My suggestion.  Wait till the bugs are worked out before you download it.

The Real Alan Weiss

I've been in Orlando the past few days, attending the annual conference of the National Speakers Association (NSA), an organization to which I've belonged since my days at IBM.  On Sunday evening, at a dinner fund raiser for the NSA Foundation, my wife Laura and I sat next to Alan Weiss and his wife Maria.  Alan was attending both as a member of NSA and as a presenter at the conference.  In this case, he was speaking to the Consultants special interest group within NSA.

I've known about Alan for many years.  I've been reading his books since long before joining IBM.  I've seen him speak at numerous industry functions.  Last year we even presented at the same conference.  However, this was the first time I had actually met him, let alone had the opportunity to have a quiet conversation over dinner with him.

Alan is -- and he'll be the first to tell you -- in a class by himself.  He's a distinctly different breed of cat.  Anyone who has seen him present can tell you that.  He's an extraordinarily successful and well known author, consultant and speaker.  He's also widely known for being very outspoken and for his ability to glibly promote himself, his viewpoint and his work.  He's brash, opinionated and not ashamed to discuss his many successes.  Some people think the guy has an "attitude."  He does, and he wears it proudly.

Alan's opinions aren't just about Alan however.  As a consultant, he takes his work and profession very seriously.  He's openly disdainful of the "crap" produced by some of the large, bureaucratic and very well known consulting firms.  More importantly, he's passionate about the positive role that great consultants can play in helping their clients' organizations -- and the people within them -- achieve new levels of performance and significance.

Over dinner, I didn't get Alan's attitude or bombast.  I didn't get endless recitations of the books he had written or how well they were doing.  Those things, it turns out, come from the Alan that's on the platform.  That's the very public persona.  That's what you see when you see him present.

On Sunday over dinner, I got to meet Alan the serious consulting professional.  I also got to meet the individual, the husband and the dad.  I met his wife -- and childhood sweetheart -- Maria.  We swapped stories and talked about our kids.  My wife and I had a lovely evening.

Two nights later at the conference's concluding banquet, Alan was one of five people the National Speakers Association announced were being inducted into their Speakers Hall of Fame.  The award is the Council of Peers Award of Excellence (CPAE).  He was recognized for his extensive contributions to the speaking profession, especially for helping new and aspiring speakers and consultants.  In accepting the award, Alan was typically brash but you could see that he was touched by the very public recognition of his contribution.  Then he got a standing ovation from over 1,500 professional speakers -- the toughest audience in the world.

It's nice to know that nice guys -- even those who frequently adopt a brash and even aloof public persona -- don't always finish last.

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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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