Archive for the ‘Consulting’ Category
Getting the most from your consulting dollar
Consultants are engaged for a variety of reasons ranging from strategic (e,g. help develop corporate IT strategy) to tactical (e.g. augment internal resources). They are so ubiquitous that at any given time an organisation is likely to have a bunch of consultants floating around in one department or another. Given the often outrageous rates billed by high-end consultants, it is important that organisations get maximum bang for their consulting buck. When I worked as a consultant I often came across situations where my services could have been better utilised. On the other hand, as a corporate employee, I’ve seen consultants hanging around doing very little. So I’m convinced that many organisations often underuse or misuse the consulting time they’ve paid top dollar for. This doesn’t have to be so. It’s easy to ensure that you get the best value from the consultants you engage. Here’s how:
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Know why you’re hiring them: One would think this should be obvious, but it often isn’t. Ask yourself why you’re engaging consultants and what (specifically) you want from them. The best way to be specific is to list the deliverables you expect from them. This gives you a checklist you can tick off as they progress through the engagement.
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Be ready for them when they come in: Over the last several years I’ve been surprised at the number of consultants I’ve seen hanging around the coffee machine or twiddling their thumbs (whilst racking up huge charges) , all because the client wasn’t prepared properly for them. This is like keeping a taxi waiting – the meter’s ticking but you’re no closer to your destination – a waste any way you look at it. Be prepared for your consultants: ask them what they’ll need before they come in, and be ready with it. You want them working on productive stuff as soon as they arrive.
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Listen to what they have to say: You’ve hired your consultants for a reason – presumably because they have something useful to offer you (knowledge, skills or whatever). It therefore behooves you to listen to them when they offer opinions (which may well be contrary to yours).
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…but ask for explanations: Listen, but don’t be uncritical – you want the what, but you also need the why. Ask for explanations if you aren’t convinced. Ideally you want hire them only once for a particular job. The next time around you should know how to do it yourself.
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Ensure knowledge transfer: This is really implied in the previous point. However, it is so important that I thought it worth mentioning again. You want to make sure that they’ve transferred all relevant skills to internal staff.
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Document, document, document: This is a frequently overlooked aspect of most consulting engagements. Sure, consultants leave you with a final report. But that report, in my experience, is often less than useful. What you want are working, nuts-and-bolts documents like standard operating procedures. Be sure that your consultant leaves you with useful documentation. Have your people check the documentation before the consultant takes off with your cash.
Few present-day organisations can afford to maintain all the skills they need in-house, so most have to hire consultants every now and then. Your organisation is probably no exception. The aforementioned suggestions may help maximise the return from your consulting dollar.
Positive negatives
The stereotypical corporate IT employee has a reputation for uncooperative behaviour. The most common manifestation of this is his tendency to turn down requests from the business with a resounding “NO!”1. Unfortunately, this trait doesn’t endear him to the folks upstairs2, and a few such refusals soon translate into a company-wide negative perception of the entire IT crew.
Now, as some say, perception is reality3. So, the employee, despite his ever-mounting frustration with (what he perceives to be) ever-increasing workloads, needs to handle his customers with a little tact. He needs to learn how to say “no…” in a softer, exclamation-free, corporately-acceptable manner.
How so? Well, by using positive negatives – i.e. by putting a positive spin on the refusal. There are two ways to do this. By presenting:
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Alternatives: This essentially amounts to saying, “No, but how about <insert alternative here> instead,” or
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Compromises: This is a qualified “yes”. For example, “Yes, but not before next week.”
In either case, our unnamed protagonist would want to ensure that he can actually deliver on the alternative or compromise.
Obviously, the technique of positive negatives works in any area (consultants use it all the time), and the naysaying, nameless IT hack is merely a straw man to illustrate my point. So – and particularly if you’re a present or erstwhile colleague of mine – be assured that he’s a figment of my imagination.
Footnotes:
1 Some members of this mob are known to issue relatively verbose refusals such as, “No, that’s impossible because <insert random reason here >”.
2 We are talking stereotypes so the person’s a male, he’s overworked, and the IT department is in the basement – safely quarantined from the rest of the business.
3 See this post and the accompanying discussion for an interesting, if somewhat philosophical, counter-view on perception and reality.
Many snappy returns
Some weeks ago I played table tennis , or ping-pong as North American residents know it, for the first time in many years. The occasion was brought about by a comprehensive power failure in the building I work in. The UPS held up for a half hour or so, giving our ops mob just enough time to notify users and shutdown servers gracefully. That done, all we could do was to wait for the guys at the power company to do their thing.
Deprive a bunch of IT folks of their computers and they’ll soon start inventing other means of entertainment. Sure enough, within minutes someone suggested improvised table tennis, to be played on the lunch room table with CD cases as racquets and printer toner cartons, lined up end-to-end, serving as a rather wide net. We played several rounds of single-point games, with the loser handing the CD case to the first person on the queue (by this time a large queue had formed since no one had anything better to do).
Whilst engaged in a particular long rally against a worthy opponent from helpdesk, it occurred to me that table tennis rallies are a bit like dealing with clients. Allow me to explain: the aim of the game – table tennis, not consulting (although some practitioners may consider the latter a game as well) – is to lob or smash or return the ball in any way to the other court as snappily as one’s ability permits.
“And what does this have to do with consultants dealing with clients?”, I hear you ask.
Well, consultants are generally engaged to provide a service in return for which they are paid, often by the hour or some multiple thereof. Given that consultants bill by time, it behooves them to respond to all client queries in a timely manner.
If you are a consultant, your clients should never be left wondering about when they might expect a response from you. If there’s any waiting to be done, be sure it’s you who is doing the waiting. Snappy, accurate responses to client queries are of paramount importance. As in the case of table tennis, the ball should as far as possible be in their court, not yours.
Eight to Late 