Monday, January 24, 2011

3 Ways to Use a Consultant

Several times in my career, I have been a consultant--both external to the organization and internal as a leader or member of a task force. Being an expensive option to generate improvement, consultants should be used for the right reasons.

1) Bring experience or knowledge to your team that you don't have. If you have a successful small business, your staff may be home-grown, which is not an entirely bad thing. Some experience, industry knowlege and cross-fertilization of ideas can occur at conferences, workshops or seminars. Another good way to infuse new ideas quickly is to bring in a consultant who has worked on the very problem or strategy you want to energize.  Just be careful of rejecting ideas because they're NIH (not invented here).

2) Bring out the good ideas percolating within your organization. For various reasons, good ideas can flounder and die before they get heard by the 'right ear'.  If you don't have good ways to elicit and evaluate everyone's suggestions, then a consultant will be the disinterested third-party who can ferret out the good ideas. A good consultant will also attribute those ideas to the person within the organization. It's an inherent bias that executives listen more carefully to concepts for which a lot of money was paid than for ones that came free.  Thus, your team will appreciate the consultant carrying their ideas to you.

3) You need a revolution.  Consultants are expensive and you want to maximize the effort for the time. If you are looking to change the culture, and create a new way of operating the organization, be prepared for a lengthy contract. Or else your organization (and maybe you) will just wait it out till the consultant goes away and then return to "business as usual". If that happens, you may either go out of business or end up hiring another consultant.

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