This 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.
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.
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-for-profit organisations. Some consultants are employees of the firms the consulting takes place in, others are external but regular faces within an organisation, while many are individuals who appear in a client organisation for a short time and never reappear again. Their areas of specialist expertise go from obscure pieces of business to generalist management advice. Given this huge variety, what is it that is similar that enables them to be bundled together as management consultants? It is not easy to come up with a concise definition that covers this assortment of roles.
The problem with describing the role of a management consultant is compounded by the fact that some existing definitions have been written by people who are not consultants, and who do not understand fully what consultants do. But listening to professional consultants can equally be misleading. Those who are consultants have a vested interest in making the role sound majestic and magical, and to bias any description towards the type of work they specifically do. I have read definitions of management consultancy in sales brochures, books, dictionaries and various online encyclopaedias. A few definitions are the hopeless summarisations of people without any real understanding, some are correct but focus on irrelevant aspects of the role, many are good, but do not quite manage to encapsulate the role and its variations.
Given the wide variety of consultants, rather than starting with a definition, I will list characteristics to provide an appreciation of the role of a consultant. As little in this world is absolutely black and white there are caveats with each one of these characteristics.
Consultants do the following seven things:
If we take these seven characteristics of a consultant and take the most pertinent points it is possible to develop a definition of a consultant that is true in most situations:
A consultant is an independent advisor who adds value by helping managers to identify and achieve beneficial change appropriate to their situation.
To get the most from this book it is important that we start with a common understanding of the basic terminology surrounding management consultancy. Some words, or pieces of consulting jargon, will be used repeatedly through the book, and if you are new to the industry then it’s important you become familiar with these concepts. I am not generally a big advocate of jargon (see Chapter 11), but there are words and phrases that are continuously used by consultants. Most of these may be obvious and intuitively understandable, some are not specific to the consulting industry, but they are essential to know.
Consultants tend to talk about clients, rather than customers. The concept of a client is explored in the next chapter. In general terms, the word is used both to refer to a specific manager who gives the consultant direction on a consulting project, and the organisation in which that manager works. Hence a consultant may think of the client as Mr Peter Smith of the XYZ Company, or may consider it to be the XYZ Company. To differentiate, when I refer to a client I am talking about a person (or group of people), when I am talking about the organisation the client works for I use the term client organisation.
Once employed by a client, the specific consulting project being undertaken is usually referred to as an engagement or sometimes a live engagement. A client is one of a larger group of stakeholders a consultant must deal with. Stakeholders form a set of individuals who consultants must take into consideration when delivering an engagement.
To win some work consultants engage in business development. Business development relates to time that is not (usually) chargeable to a client, and includes activities that are associated with marketing a business and pursing specific sales. The aim of business development is to identify opportunities, and then convert these opportunities into live engagements and hence have some chargeable time. An opportunity is the situation in which a client has a need for some consulting support. To convert an opportunity into an engagement and hence be able to charge fees, consultants must normally write a description of the service they will provide to the client. This description is called a proposal. Chargeable time is the time when a consultant is billing fees to the client. Once an engagement is complete, consultants often seek to sell on, that is to sell a subsequent consulting engagement to the client so the consultant can remain chargeable.
In order to sell regularly, and for proposals to be successful, consultants may have service lines. A service line is a specific area of expertise that a consultant or a consultancy company invests in (see Chapter 3). For instance, one consultancy may have a service line in improving the management of IT departments, and another may have a service line to increase innovation in business. Service lines may be the informal labelling of expertise of individual consultants, but they can also be the formal documentation of processes and approaches to consulting by larger consulting companies. Service lines and any other knowledge or approaches are often called intellectual property or intellectual capital by consultants. Intellectual property has a specific legal meaning, but many consultants use this phrase in a looser fashion than the legal definition requires (see Chapter 3).
One of the most important measures of a consulting business is utilisation or chargeable utilisation. Utilisation is a measure of the proportion of time a consultant is working on fee-paying work on a client site. Hence, a consultant who is billing three days a week is 60 per cent utilised. It is normally not possible for a consultant to be 100 per cent utilised because some time must be spent on business development, the creation and maintenance of service lines, and holiday.
Developing a full understanding of the role of the consultant is helped by understanding the difference between a consultant and an employee, a manager or a business leader. The boundaries between being a consultant and, for example a manager, are grey, but there are important and definite differences.
Let’s start by considering the role of a consultant versus an employee in the organisation using consultants. The obvious point is that a consultant is not an employee of the organisation they are helping, but an employee of a consulting business. Why does this matter? Most consultants want to do a good job that satisfies a client, but their performance assessments, pay increases, promotions, ongoing praise and criticism are not done by the client organisation. All these are influenced by their performance with clients, but consultants have different motivations from client staff. Consultants are never fully part of a client organisation’s team. For example, a client may regard a consultant as having done a brilliant job by providing fantastic advice. A consulting company may judge the same consultant to have only done an average job because he did not manage to make any additional consulting sales.
A consultant can be part of a client organisation’s project team, and in doing this share some goals with other client staff, but consultants are always to some extent independent from the client organisation. Their incentives and performance drivers are different. This is true even for an internal consultant. Obviously, an internal consultant is employed by the same company as their clients, but is not employed by the same department or part of the same management hierarchy. This is not necessarily a bad thing – a consultant who is as much part of your team as any other employee will struggle to give truly independent advice.
What about the difference between being a consultant and a line manager? Like managers, consultants often are hard working and want to produce a quality result, but this is relative to the scope of a consulting engagement. They do not and arguably cannot deliver an end result in a client organisation, and do not live with the outcomes of their recommendations. If a consultant is providing advice, then, if the advice is accepted, a line manager has to implement this advice somehow. Even if consultants help with implementation planning or a change implementation project, they do not end up working with the results following the implementation. Consultants are temporary visitors to an organisation – it is line managers who must live with the results of any consulting engagement.
There is another point about consultants compared to managers. Many consultants are ex-senior managers with a good understanding of the challenge of managing a department. On the other hand, whilst all consultants advise, some have never managed anything of any significant complexity. Even relatively senior career consultants, who became consultants from university, may never have managed a team of more than 20 people. For someone in an operational role with several thousand staff and a budget of hundreds of millions, a consultant’s understanding of the reality of dealing with this number of people and scale of budget will appear limited. The consultant’s response to this should not even attempt to be an expert line manager, but to provide focused specialist expertise beyond that of a normal manager.
Finally, what about a consultant compared to a business leader? Many consultants fancy themselves to be great leaders, and some have the potential. There are well regarded business gurus who have come from a consulting background, but a guru is not a leader – a guru is an influencer and a shaper of opinions. Sometimes you see a successful chief executive with a background in consulting, and they are probably a great leader. But on the whole I am sceptical about professional consultants as leaders. The consultancy profession encourages the development of a range of skills which sometimes can be mistaken for leadership, such as strong communication and influencing skills. Normally though, consulting does not require significant leadership skills. You can be a very good consultant without having the ability to lead or inspire.
The fact that consultants are different from employees, managers and business leaders should not be taken as a criticism of consultants. Consultants are not employees, managers or leaders – because that is not what the role entails or requires. Consulting is a very different role from being an employee, manager or leader. Consultants must appreciate these roles, be able to work with them and be able to influence them. Some consultants may have a background in organisations which required them to manage or to lead, but this is not universally true. Consultants should not forget that the role of the consultant is to consult, not to manage or to lead.
Now, having said all this, comparing consulting to other roles does to some extent depend on the type of consultant being talked about. There are two dimensions of consulting we should be aware of and differentiate:
Another thing to consider is whether the work being done is consulting or another related profession. There are several job titles in common use which are often employed in relation to consultants, or in relation to people doing work that can seem similar to that of a consultant. The main examples are:
It is worth understanding the differences in these roles, which can be real, but the boundaries are often exaggerated for commercial or personal reasons. Professional interim managers, facilitators and coaches have valid reasons related to the nature of the roles to differentiate themselves from management consultants, but it also makes commercial sense to do so as well. Many consultants have the necessary skills and often work in one or more of these roles, but you should not assume that all consultants can or even need to be able to perform such roles effectively. Put another way, you can be a successful consultant without, for example, having the capability to coach or be an interim manager.
There are many different organisational structures you can work in as a consultant, and the choice is important as it will affect the type of projects you do, the nature of the day-to-day work, and the level of risk and uncertainty you expose yourself to. There are essentially four ways you can work as a consultant:
To some extent the choice depends on personal preferences, and what opportunities are open to you. I have worked in organisations in all these models.
The independent consultant is usually either someone who has worked in a larger consultancy but wants a more self-sufficient lifestyle, or an ex-senior manager who now wants to advise rather than manage. There are many reasons for choosing to become independent. I now prefer to work for my own company as it enables me to maximise my personal flexibility. The cost is that I am completely dependent on my own ability to find projects and generate an income. However, once you have an established reputation this is not that hard. Organisations always need help. Additionally, as my business costs are comparatively low, and I have other revenues, should I choose not to work for a few months I do not need to generate significant revenues to cover my business costs. I have access to a wide variety of work. I even undertake some very large engagements as I have a network of trusted colleagues, and we work together often to deliver larger engagements than a single consultant can manage.
At the other extreme are the major consulting companies. If you have little experience, are a recent graduate or like to combine consulting with a corporate culture these are the organisations for you. The big consultancies can be attractive places to work. For example, they tend to give great opportunities for professional development, international working and arguably reduce your personal risk as you have teams of people around you also helping to win and deliver engagements. Additionally, the larger firms often win massive projects which may require leading-edge thinking and techniques, although on the largest projects you can feel like a cog in the machine rather than a real consultant. If you become a senior manager (or partner) in such organisations the rewards can be high. But it does mean all the baggage that comes with corporate life such as annual appraisals, fitting in with company culture and worrying about things like brand risk. Big consultancies are also notoriously political environments. Some are focused on people who fit their specific organisational culture, which can give the consultancy a very defined feeling that will not suit everyone.
Companies offering a portfolio of services beyond consultancy provide a large variety of career options. However, if your firm is not purely a consultancy, there is always the tension over how independent the consulting advice is and whether it is really just a sales channel for other services. Some outsourcing firms have very successful consulting divisions, but there is always a doubt in some clients’ minds as to whether the consulting is impartial advice or a funnel to win outsourcing contracts.
Whilst I am happy not to work for a large firm any more it is fair to say that I probably could not do what I do now had I not learnt what I did working for the major consultancies I was employed by. It is by no means a bad place to start.
There are many smaller consultancies, which offer a compromise between the complete self-sufficiency of the sole trader and the corporate hierarchies of the larger firms. Some of the smaller consultancies are industry leaders in specific consulting niches. For instance you can find consulting firms who specialise solely in financial regulation, telecommunications, customer services or cost control in manufacturing. If you have a particularly focused specialisation there may be a firm for whom you are a perfect fit.
If you roughly understand what a consultant is, then it is time to reflect on whether and why you want to be one, and if your reasons have a realistic chance of being fulfilled.
The best reason for wanting to become a management consultant is simply because you enjoy the process of consulting with clients. Of course, if you have never worked as a consultant what ‘consulting with a client’ means will be unclear. If you do know, and this is the reason for becoming a consultant, then you are well set for a successful career. However, most people have more pragmatic grounds for becoming a consultant.
A common reason to join the profession is the potential variety of the work. Although as a consultant you may work in a specialist area, you will work in many organisations. The context and culture of the organisations and details of the problems will vary significantly. I find consulting work highly varied. I have worked all around the world, for companies in a wide variety of sectors, with clients of differing levels of seniority, to help resolve a divergent range of problems. However, if the service you will provide to organisations is very specialised – for example, helping them to be compliant with a specific piece of industrial regulation – what variety you gain from different clients you may also lose in essentially doing the same piece of work again and again.
Some people join consulting for skills development. This typically arises from one of two sources. Development may happen because of the wide variety of challenging work you are involved in. And there is no quicker way of improving your skills than doing a wide variety of challenging work. Alternatively, and this is most true for graduates coming into consulting, it is because you join a company who understands that its key asset is people and hence is willing to invest significantly in their development. Consulting does provide a great way to develop a powerful set of useful skills, such as problem analysis, communication skills and influencing skills. One important exception to this is that if you want to learn how to manage people then you will be better off seeking an operational line management role.
However, this brings me to another potential advantage of consulting. If you want to, you can avoid much of the burden of line management that goes with a corporate role. Some individuals love managing people, some hate it. If you work for a large consultancy you may still have staff whom you have to performance manage and motivate, but the teams tend to be small. As an independent consultant staff management is not something you have to worry about.
Graduates often want to join consultancies for the lifestyle and travel. There are a few professions which enable you to travel even more and to wilder places, such as mining and oil exploration, but generally there is a fantastic opportunity to travel as a consultant if you want to – especially if you are multi-lingual. Such travel can be exciting and rewarding. Working in foreign countries gives you a perspective that other travellers never gain, but it is a double-edged sword. Travelling all the time can be dull. You have to be a little shallow to be really interested in having gold frequent flyer cards with several airlines. Often the locations sound exotic, but an office is an office wherever it is in the world. Continuous travel will also play havoc with your social life.
Some people want to enter consulting for the money. The money earned as a consultant can be good, but of course it depends what you are used to. Few consultants achieve the rewards of the chief executive of a major company, unless they happen to become a senior partner in a big firm. On the other hand, most reasonably successful consultants earn more than senior middle managers and junior executives in most other industries.
There are much more down-to-earth explanations for becoming a consultant. Some people just fall into it. I was recruited by Coopers & Lybrand out of industry, and frankly I had no idea what consulting was but it was better money, which for a young man with a family seemed an attractive proposition. I was lucky in that it is a career that has suited me immensely. Other people come into consulting because they feel they have no other choice. Perhaps they have been senior managers who find themselves late in their careers having been made redundant and, irrespective of age discrimination laws, cannot find a suitable alternative role. These are not necessarily bad reasons for entering the consulting profession. We are all, at times, hard-nosed about our careers, and just because you entered the profession as way of overcoming redundancy does not mean it will not be a huge success. On the other hand, simply because you have some business skills does not mean you will thrive as a consultant.
A phrase that has become common recently is the ‘portfolio career’. This is a career in which you mix various different types of work together. This is definitely possible as a consultant, especially if you are self-employed. Some types of work can complement consulting very well. I know many people who manage to control this mix very successfully. I have several professions: as well as running my consulting business I write, deliver training courses and seminars and take regular time out to study.
Whatever your reasons for considering consulting, don’t fool yourself that it is always an easy ride, or that it will give you a completely flexible lifestyle. For example, as a self-employed consultant you may well be able to take more holiday, you may well be able to work part time – but, and it is a big but, within the constraints of your clients’ needs. You may decide to work only nine months a year, but that does not mean you can definitely choose the three months you don’t work to be 1 November to 31 January every year whilst you are in the South Pacific, and expect at the same time to be 100 per cent fee earning until 31 October, and have an immediate start again on 1 February of the following year. Clients won’t usually wait for a particular consultant: if they have a problem they want someone to fix it, and if you are not available they can usually find someone else to do the work just as well. Consulting opportunities cannot simply be turned on and off. They have to be searched out and won. Clients and engagements do not easily fit a predictable pattern. If you want flexibility you do need to have some flexibility yourself.
Whatever flexibility you want from consulting is effectively a constraint on your ability to service clients. If you are clever and pragmatic there is no reason why the constraints cannot be overcome and you can manage to balance your own and your client’s desires very well. But you cannot both maximise your income and maximise your personal flexibility (unless, perhaps, you really are a world renowned industry guru).
I know many people who love working as a consultant. But consulting does not suit everyone’s personalities. If you are constantly working in different organisations, it changes the relationship with the place you are working. To some extent you will always be an outsider, which does not suit everyone’s personality. Consulting can leave many people with an ongoing feeling of uncertainty and risk. As one project ends, where is the next and when will it start? If you are an independent consultant there is no career path as such – you may want to vary your work, and may over time increase your rates, but there is no management hierarchy to be promoted through. If you work in one of the large consultancies, promotion is possible, but for most firms seniority beyond a certain level does not just depend on your consulting skills and expertise, but on your ability to sell.
Consulting offers great opportunity, but it is different from other types of employment. It offers potentially high rewards and significant flexibility. If unmanaged, it can intrude into your personal life, but arguably so does any senior role. If you are pragmatic and flexible, then you can get a good level of rewards and flexibility in return.
The past few decades have brought an increasing stress on the work–life balance and less on the financial factors of employment. However, a key aspect in deciding whether to be a consultant is whether you will make the income you desire. Whether a career in consulting can provide you with the money you want depends on your expectations (or income needs), your degree of success, but also the inherent economics of consulting. Before entering this profession you should understand your potential income. I am going to look at this only very, very simply. This is not a business plan for a consulting business, but it does explain the basics.
Let’s start by considering the case of a single independent consultant as this is the simplest to understand. I will only look at revenues. Costs for independent consultants are generally low, and most of those that are incurred are attributable to clients and can be recharged as expenses. So, I am going to ignore them for now. This is of course a gross generalisation, but it is fine to begin with as it will not change the overall outcome. There are two factors that determine how much money you generate as a consultant:
(Not all consulting projects are charged on a daily basis, but this basis is accurate enough to understand the general economics of the business.)
It is really as simple as that. So how do you know how many days a year you will work for and what daily charge-out rate you will achieve? There are huge variations between different consultants. Taking account of fee rates and number of chargeable days it is quite easy to find two apparently similar consultants, one of whom has an income three or four times higher than the other. At the extremes, comparing the lowest to highest revenue-generating consultant then the multiples are much greater.
To estimate the daily rate you will achieve it is best to do a little research, but it is not straightforward finding accurate information. There is no easily available database of rates as there is no transparent market in consultancy, and it is generally not in consultants’ interests to make it transparent. A good place to start is the internet. There are websites dedicated to sourcing consultants and other temporary staff that will give you a rough idea of potential daily rates, but they do tend to focus on the lower end of the market. There are studies of the industry, but they are not always freely available. Even if you get hold of one, their categorisations of consultants may give you some ideas, but generally are too broad to base your own fees on. A good source of information is your personal network. Ask a few friends who hire consultants regularly, and you may be able to get a feel for the sort of rates the big firms charge. These tend to be higher than independents achieve, although this is not always true. The best way to get a feel for rates is to find someone with some experience of the industry and ask them what they think you will be able to charge. Never forget, whatever fee rate you expect or want, it actually depends on a client being willing to pay it.
Next you need to estimate how many days a year you will work. If you are new to consulting, do not be overly optimistic. Can you really work 5 days a week for 52 weeks a year? That gives you 260 chargeable days a year, but you should never assume that what you make is 260 times your daily rate. You will rarely be 100 per cent utilised – and even if you can be, do you really want to be? As a rule of thumb, assume you will be busy 100 days a year. You may well be a lot busier, but if you cannot afford to be a consultant working only this many days you are taking a significant risk. Many consultants make a very comfortable living on this, and many more are busy for considerably more than 100 days a year. But it is best to be conservative at the start of your career.
There are several other factors you must consider. There are possible tax efficiencies of being self-employed or running your own business. You need professional advice to understand these fully, and tax legislation can change at any time. Remember, if you are becoming a self-employed consultant after a career in industry there are none of the benefits that you may have received in your previous job. There are no extra pension contributions, no bonus, no paid holiday, no health care or sick pay, no car allowance, etc. Additionally, you should not confuse income with cash flow. Consulting tends to pay big bills in dribs and drabs, and some clients can be very slow in delivering cash into your bank account. I am usually paid reasonably promptly, but some invoices have languished for six months before finally being paid. You need to have a float of money to cover for these periods.
For a consulting firm with multiple employees the economics are much more complex. Costs cannot be ignored. Business costs for premium office space and facilities may be high. Staff you employ will naturally expect many benefits on top of salaries. There will be the costs of non-fee-earning staff and senior staff: although they may be able to charge some fees, these may not cover the full cost of their salary and expenses. Bad debt has to be considered – that is clients who will not or cannot pay. I have never (yet!) experienced this and it does seem to be rare. However, in the largest firms, simply because of the volume of work they undertake, occasionally a client may not pay. Whatever the size of firm, slow payment remains a far bigger issue.
Profitability of consultancy companies can be very high when chargeable utilisation is above a certain level, but drop below this level and all those large salaries and fancy offices can soon lead to big losses. Hence the tendency of some firms to recruit heavily in the boom times, but also to be quick to make staff redundant when the economy is struggling. In the end, although an accountant could find a million flaws in my simple views, the profit of a consulting company can be approximated by a very simple piece of arithmetic:
Profit = (days charged × average charge-out rate) – cost of business
The rate you charge and the number of days you work are dependent on clients, but your costs are largely under your own control. With modern technology and services you can run a consultancy on a shoestring, and still look completely professional. Therefore the most important considerations will always be making sure you charge enough days at a high enough fee rate to generate the income you require. If you are committing yourself to significant costs before you have started to generate revenue, think again. You can always make those commitments once you are sure of your income.
Finally, what about the situation in which you take a job within a consultancy, as an employed consultant, rather than someone who runs their own business? Here your salary is to some extent divorced from the economics of the consulting business, and is down to what you can negotiate. The big firms tend to have a standard package for graduates. For more senior staff the salary and package will depend on how valuable you are to the consultancy and what you can negotiate. At a more senior level your value to a consultancy is more related to your relationships and personal network than your pure consulting skills. Generally, the large consultancies pay well and provide a good set of other benefits. There are professions paying higher, but consulting has to be considered as towards the top end of the market in terms of salaries. As an internal consultant it is different, and your salary will depend on the market rates associated with your specialisation and the remuneration policies of the specific firm you are being employed by. Generally, salaries are lower than in the consultancy companies.
By this point you know what a consultant is, why you might want to consider it as a profession and whether you will make any money. In this final section I want to consider what makes a good consultant. Much of this book is taken up with giving advice on how to be a good consultant; this short section is concerned with what would be assessed as a good consultant.
When I told a friend of mine, who is a successful and experienced consultant, about this book he responded with the comment that there is little to write. He said the book would only be about 10 pages long, but then went on to advise that I should not write a book, but a haiku! The truth behind this jibe is that it is quite simple to define what a good consultant is – but most of this book is about how to achieve this rather than defining it. My poetry skills are limited, so I will stick to prose rather than the haiku. A good consultant: continuously adds value to clients commensurate with his or her fees.
We will explore what adding value means in later chapters.
There is a significant difference between being good at something and being a good consultant. There is an old joke, aimed rather unfairly at teachers, saying: those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. This joke can be extended to become: those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; and those who can’t teach, consult. The joke for teachers is unfair, but it hides an important truth – there is a difference between being good at something and being a good teacher. As many students will attest, being a good university lecturer is quite a different skill from being a brilliant academic. I am sure we have all experienced the giant brain who cannot explain anything, and the person with a nominally lesser grasp who explains it very well. While most teachers are perfectly capable of doing, that is not what they are employed for – they are employed to impart and embed knowledge and skills in their students. Whether or not they can actually ‘do’ is to some extent irrelevant. It is similar for consultants. There are many advantages in having management experience, but consulting is not about managing. Equally, having been a great manager is an advantage for consulting, but it does not guarantee that you will be a successful consultant.
From your perspective you are a good consultant if you achieve your personal objectives through consulting. I cannot tell you what your personal goals should be, and the rest of this book is about how you can continuously add value for your clients. However, you may wonder whether you have the right type of personality to succeed as a consultant. There is no single personality type who makes the best consultant, but I will pick on a few factors which I think are important.
Firstly, as a consultant you should be a people person. It is not necessary to be a natural extrovert, but you must be happy engaging with others. You will constantly be working and interacting with people, and if this does not excite you then consulting is not for you. Next, you should be flexible and adaptable. Client needs and expectations vary enormously, and you need to flex to the situation. It may surprise some people, but it also helps if you are not status conscious. Although you may end up as a hugely successful consultant earning much more than most of your clients, when you are on a client’s site you are just a consultant doing a job for them. Consultants must be orientated to resolving problems. A client has engaged you to help; there are many forms this help can take, but all of them must result in resolving a client’s problems. Next, whilst a consultant is there to help, they must not be over hasty in determining solutions. You must have the personality that wants to solve problems properly, rather than resolve the most apparent symptoms. You want to be like the doctor who finds out why a patient has spots rather than the one who just gives a cream to make them less itchy. Finally, you must be someone who listens. To be objective and to provide a diagnosis that is most helpful to the client requires listening and assessing the situation. Solutions must be tailored to the specific context.
There are many other factors which influence your ability to be a great consultant, but the above are critical.
If you are new to consulting there are some essential concepts you must understand. You should now be familiar with the main concepts covered in this chapter. They are:
The rest of this book explains how to be a good and successful consultant.