A free tool to help you get more from your consultants
I know from my experience as a Chief Executive how you need to get tangible value from every pound spent on consultancy. My time working as a consultant has brought to light a surprising truth: I could have squeezed even more value from those commissions with a few small changes.
Here are four things to consider to help you squeeze even more value from those commissions with a few small changes.
1. Set a realistic timescale
The most common mistake made in commissioning consultancy work is setting an unrealistic schedule. Most often, the time taken to get meetings into busy senior team or board diaries has not been taken into account.
Add to this the fact that deep rooted, strategic issues need time to brew. The best strategy timelines strike a balance between setting pace and carving out sufficient time for reflection. Setting your strategy review timeline around existing board meetings, staff conferences or SMT awaydays injects some realism into your timeline and can even stop some of the agonising chase for dates.
And finally, avoid the temptation of setting an immediate start date for your consultant – it might mean you end up selecting consultants based on their availability rather than quality of their work.
2. Get the right people in the room at the start
Consultants make the biggest impact where they have the trust and confidence of the most senior sponsors within your organisation and that is why having the right people in the room at the start is so critical. If there are senior stakeholders who are likely to be “tricky” or resistant, even more reason to involve them in the selection process. Not only is this a check on chemistry, it will give key people the space to share hopes and underlying concerns at the outset.
3. Don’t be tempted to outsource your problems
Where there is a complex problem to solve, it can be tempting to think that consultants can find a simple solution. Consultants can bring independent perspective and fresh insight to help you frame your old problems in new ways. New thinking and a new sense of possibility follow. But none of this takes away from the fact that the hard work of implementing solutions has to come from within an organisation.
4. Ask more of your consultant
Through the course of our work, we see and hear things of value or spot parallels with other organisations we work with. Get more from your consultant by actively asking “Who else could we be learning from?” and “How have you seen others resolve similar problems?” or “What else have you seen in the course of this work that we should be aware of?”.
Keeping these in mind will help you get more value from the independent insight, support and challenge of your consultant and, in turn, help your organisation make an even bigger impact.
Just drop us a line to hello@lucentconsultancy.co.uk if you want to know more about how to get the most from a strategy consultant.
By Katherine Rake