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In Chapter 14 of our text, the author discusses 22 consulting tips

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In Chapter 14 of our text, the author discusses 22 consulting tips. After reading the chapter and reviewing the tips, choose the five (5) tips that you found the most interesting and applicable to you. Rank order the tips from 1 (most important) to 5 (least important).

For each of the 5 you chose, answer the following:

1. Why did you choose this tip and rank it the way you did?
2. If you were working as a consultant how would you implement each of these tips to improve your work?
3. At the end of the chapter, the Author asks you to share any other tips you come up with. List one tip that is not one of the 22 listed or included by your classmates posts and explain why you think it is important

The Management Consultant The Management Consultant Mastering the art of consultancy Richard Newton PEARSON EDUCATION LIMITED Edinburgh Gate Harlow CM20 2JE Tel: +44 (0)1279 623623 Fax: +44 (0)1279 431059 Website: www.pearsoned.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2010 © Richard Newton 2010 The right of Richard Newton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ISBN: 978-0-273-73087-3 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Newton, Richard, 1964The management consultant : mastering the art of consultancy / Richard Newton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-273-73087-3 (pbk.) 1. Business consultants. I. Title. HD69.C6N495 2010 001--dc22 2009050850 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the Publishers. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 14 13 12 11 10 Typeset in 9/13pt Stone Serif by 30 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press Ltd, Gosport The Publisher’s policy is to use paper manufactured from sustainable forests. Contents Acknowledgements / vii Preface / ix Introduction / xi part 1 Understanding consultants and consultancy 1 Consultants and consultancy / 3 2 Why does anyone buy consultancy? / 23 3 Your consulting service / 41 4 The three core processes of client-centric consulting / 58 part 2 Consulting engagements 5 Finding and winning work / 77 6 Delivering consulting engagements and satisfying clients / 108 7 The alternative approach – process consulting and facilitation / 132 8 Closing engagements and sustaining results / 147 part 3 9 High-performance consulting Developing long-term client relationships / 169 10 The ethical dimension / 181 11 The language of consulting / 199 12 Knowing when to say no / 220 13 Key consulting tips / 234 14 The client’s perspective – buying consultancy / 251 Conclusion / 269 vi Contents part 4 Additional resources for consultants A The tools, processes and materials of a consultancy business / 275 B References / 279 C Sample proposal letter / 281 Index / 285 Acknowledgements I would like to thank five consulting colleagues who I started working with years ago in Coopers & Lybrand. Although our careers have moved on in different ways, we still work together from time to time. More often we meet up, share stories and enjoy laughing about the occasionally pretentious side of the profession. They are: Graham Jump, Peter Meredith, Perry Childs, Richard Ellis and Andy Macey. Dedication This book is dedicated to my son Konrad for inspiring me to write the book, when he admitted that he really did not have the faintest idea what I did. Preface This book is a personal guide to the art of management consulting. It sets out to help new and experienced consultants to do one thing: to become better consultants. In simple terms, better means providing help that is of the most long-term value to your clients. The approach is also simple: to identify what it is that the best consultants do that their less effective colleagues do not – and how you can do it, too. Underlying this is my belief in client-centric consulting. The contents are derived from three sources. The first source is my experience as a consultant (working for Coopers & Lybrand, A.T Kearney, Ernst & Young and my own company Enixus). Secondly, my experiences in industry as a client – negotiating, buying and managing consultants. Finally and most importantly, I have a network of trusted consulting colleagues whose ideas have flavoured the book. Like a magpie I have picked up ideas and concepts throughout my career. I have shifted through them, throwing away most, keeping hold of the ones I like and think are precious. Many ideas in this book are my own, but of course I have learnt from others. I can’t remember the sources of all of these, so I am sure more credit is deserved than I have given. There were several reasons for writing this book, but two of them stand out. Firstly, there are comparatively few books on consulting, unlike many other management disciplines. Look at the business book selection in a good bookshop or online, and you will find many on strategy, leadership, marketing, delivering change and project management, to name a few areas. But consulting books are relatively scarce, scarcer than an industry of its size justifies. There are a few good books on consulting, but they do not approach the audience in the way I want to. x Preface The second reason comes down to my frequent frustration when I work with or engage other consultants. The simple truth is that the profession often does not live up to its own hype. This is not to deny that there are many brilliant consultants out there, and I have been lucky enough to work with and learn from a few of them. But there are many consultants who know they should be better to justify their fees. Worse, there are some very mediocre consultants who mistake being paid a lot with being good. As supposed experts in business, it is amazing how often consultants provide inadequate value to their clients. Management consulting is a large and very varied industry. The range of skills and services that fall under this title are huge. The difference in the type of work of the most expensive strategy houses compared to a project management consultant is so great that they may not even recognise each other as being in the same profession. There are some books that set out to address components of this industry. They tend to describe various tools and techniques of consulting. The best tools and techniques are only applicable in some situations and even if you know them it does not make you necessarily an effective consultant. I wanted to write a book for all management consultants. The book contains tools and techniques, but it is also intended to make you think like a consultant: how do effective consultants think about their work and their clients? Consulting experiences are varied, and each is unique. By thinking like a consultant, irrespective of the situation you are in, you will be able to deal with any situation in the most effective way. Introduction Ask someone in business to define the title ‘management consultant’, and you will get a wide variety of responses, not all of them complimentary! The title covers an extensive range of roles providing a variety of services. There are no universally recognised standards for being a management consultant and as a result there are very varying levels of quality. In addition, many people want to be management consultants but do not know what it entails. There are many consulting success stories, and numerous people have become comfortably well off as consultants. Given this success, it might be thought that the world was full of praise for management consultants. Yet, if you ask many customers in the private and public sector about their feelings and experiences of consultants, you will often be met with sceptical and even highly negative comments. There are numerous causes for these responses, but they can be summarised into three major categories. Firstly, too many consultants simply do not provide sufficient value to their customers and rely on churning out the same old work time and time again. Secondly, even good consultants with valuable knowledge often fail to understand true client needs. Thirdly, it is unfortunate to say, but there seems to be a number of very poor management consultants. This problem is compounded by the already mentioned lack of widely recognised standards for consultancy which can be used to judge or benchmark consultants against. A key reason for the negative perception of consulting is the fact that too many consultants are focused on what they have to offer and how they make money, rather than what clients need. Too many consultants provide context-free and generic advice, whereas what clients need is advice that is tailored to their specific culture and context. Overall, too many consultants spend too much time trying to be clever, rather than asking themselves what actually makes a good consultant? xii Introduction This book will describe those factors that make good consultants and how consultants can go about providing client-centric consulting. It describes consulting from the viewpoint of the client, and so will help consultants understand what will make them successful. The book will help in deciding on how to provide the most the book focuses appropriate services and advice to clients. Rather on the skills of success- than considering the tools and processes of consulting, as most other consulting books do, it ful consultants focuses on the skills of successful consultants – what they do that makes them successful, success in this context being defined as client results, not only in terms of financial returns for the consultant. Finally, the book contains many tips from the author’s and his colleagues’ years of experience in consulting. “ ” There is a huge number of management consultants and business advisors of one form or another. Management consultancies have been one of the great business success stories of the past 40 years, with some now employing tens of thousands of people in worldwide businesses, delivering significant profits to shareholders and partners. At the other end of the scale there are thousands of small consultancies and independent consultants. As employment patterns change, more and more people are choosing to work as consultants. There are many attractions to a career in consulting. For some, consulting may seem the only choice following redundancy from a senior position. There are many examples of initially despondent redundant managers finding not only a better income, but more enjoyable work in consultancy. For others, it is a lifetime career choice that starts from university, even though few students have any real concept of what being a consultant entails. Many people enter the consulting profession for a more flexible lifestyle, although this is harder to achieve in practice than it might seem. Whatever the reasons for considering it, consultancy is a great opportunity. Companies appear to have an increasing and insatiable demand for advisors and interim managers. Providing services can be very profitable and give consultants a high standard of living. But consulting also has risks. It’s an increasingly competitive environment as more people are drawn to the profession. Select the wrong services or sales approach, and consulting will be a stressful profession. There is also the constant uncertainty about what happens when the current engagement is complete. Many people assume that simply because they have some specialist expertise, they can be a good consultant. Certainly, expertise is an Introduction essential foundation. This book assumes you have an area of specialist knowledge and can competently apply the techniques and tools of your specialisation. But specialist knowledge is not enough. It is not intended as a tautology when I say that the core competency of a successful consultant is the skill of being a consultant. It is not a profession for everyone – there is a specific art to being a consultant. Although the consulting industry is successful, that success is in jeopardy. Fee rates for many organisations, including some of the largest firms, are lower in real terms than they were previously. Clients are becoming more adept at controlling consultants and extracting the best value from them. More and more people are entering the consulting industry, meaning that to excel the standards are rising all the time. Consultants need to raise their game. This book sets out to provide you with guidance to what makes a great consultant, irrespective of where you fit amongst the incredible variety of management consultants. It avoids the constraints of focusing on specific elements of consulting or approaches to consultancy, and instead takes a client-centric view of what is needed to provide expert consulting. Although this book contains approaches, the fundamental questions it seeks to answer are what makes a great consultant and building on that, how do you achieve this? Contents and structure There are 14 chapters and two short additional reference lists in the book. The book is broken into three main parts. In the first part (Chapters 1–4), I explore what it means to be a management consultant and how to go about setting yourself up as one. In the second part (Chapters 5–8), I discuss how to go about winning work and delivering value to clients. In the third part (Chapters 9–14), I discuss a range of broader issues which set the context for consulting and will give you some additional tips and techniques to being a successful consultant. The book has been designed to be read from cover to cover, but you can dip into it as you require. If you want to reference parts individually, the detailed contents of each chapter are described in the following table: xiii xiv Introduction Chapter title Chapter summary 1 Consultants and consultancy Introduces the key terminology and concepts used in the book and provides an overview of what being a consultant means. 2 Why does anyone buy consultancy? Explores how successful consulting starts by understanding the reasons clients have for buying consultancy. This is essential knowledge for anyone wanting to provide client-centric consulting. 3 Your consulting service Looks at the range of services you can offer as a consultant and how to position your skills and experience as a saleable client service. 4 The three core processes of client-centric consulting Discusses the core engagement process and then puts it in context with the client’s change process, and the client’s operational process. Understanding this relationship is at the heart of client-centric consulting. 5 Finding and winning work As a commercial business, consultants must find opportunities and sell their services to clients. This chapter discusses the processes and approach to winning work. 6 Delivering consulting engagements and satisfying clients Investigates the central work of a consultant – delivering consulting engagements which add value to the clients. 7 The alternative approach – Describes an alternative approach to expert process consulting and facilitation consulting – process consulting – which can be used to deliver entire consulting engagements or as a tool on an engagement. 8 Closing engagements and sustaining results All consulting should result in some change in a client, otherwise it delivers no value. Often the change takes place and must continue after the consultant has finished their work. This chapter considers how to achieve change, and how to sustain it after a consulting engagement is complete. 9 Developing long-term client relationships Describes the advantages of having long-term client relationships and how to develop them. 10 The ethical dimension Considers the ethics of consulting, and the potential ethical dilemmas that regularly face consultants and ways to deal with them. Introduction Chapter title Chapter summary 11 The language of consulting The central tool of the consultant is language. This chapter describes some approaches to communications and explores the topic of consulting jargon. 12 Knowing when to say no Not all consulting opportunities are worth pursuing. This chapter describes the characteristics of engagements which consultants should avoid if possible. 13 Key consulting tips A summary of useful key tips from experience. 14 The client’s perspective – buying consultancy A short review from a client’s perspective of issues to consider when purchasing consultancy. Conclusion A brief summary of the role of the management consultant and topics covered in this book. A The tools and processes of a consultancy business A summary of the key processes and tools any consulting business requires. B References A short list of references that have influenced the author’s thinking, and may be useful to readers. C Sample proposal letter A sample proposal letter for readers to adapt. xv part one Understanding consultants and consultancy chapter 1 Consultants and consultancy T his chapter answers the questions: what is a management consultant and what is management consultancy? You may be an experienced consultant who wants to pick up a few new tricks. On the other hand, maybe you are new to consulting and want to gain a better understanding of what it is all about. This chapter is aimed primarily at the novice consultant, whether you are considering joining a major consultancy, are starting out as an independent consultant, or have been recruited as an internal consultant. It provides an overview of some of the fundamental concepts in consulting. Most of the book is about how to be a consultant. As an opening to the subject this chapter answers what being a consultant means. To gain the most from this book it is important to understand what a management consultant is, to be familiar with some common consulting terminology, and to appreciate the difference between being a consultant and other roles. If you want to be a management consultant, it is helpful to recognise why you want to be a consultant and to think through whether or not it is a profession that can meet your desires. To achieve this it is useful to have at least a basic grasp of the economics of a consulting business. This chapter sets out to do all of this. There is nothing complex here, but it is important as it provides the foundations for the rest of the book. This chapter covers a disparate range of topics that combined give a basic, but essential, picture of consulting. 4 Understanding consultants and consultancy One small, but noteworthy point: rather than write the phrases ‘management consultant’ and ‘management consultancy’ repeatedly, I shorten these to ‘consultant’ and ‘consultancy’. There are other types of consultants and consultancy, and many of them could find something useful in this book, but the focus is on the management variety. What is a management consultant? There is a large and growing band of people who call themselves management consultants. Some people are management consultants but do not use this title, preferring labels such as business advisor, strategy consultant, operational consultant or even leadership consultant. These and related job titles encompass a divergent and eclectic group of individuals. The work such people do varies enormously. The fee rates range from low to very high, and the length a consulting project may vary from hours to years. Clients who use consultants can be the owners of firms, managers of one level of seniority or another, or the main board directors of major corporations. Clients can also be staff in the public sector and not-forprofit organisations. Some consultants are employees of the firms the consulting takes place in, others are external but it is not easy to regular faces within an organisation, while many come up with a concise are individuals who appea.