So you’ve been invited to a meeting with the consultant your company just hired. Ugh. What do they even know? They’re going to come in with their glossy PowerPoints and get everyone riled up, and then they’re going to leave you holding the ball.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
While I’m still relatively new to helping companies solve supply chain problems, I’ve started to see patterns in the clients I help. Today’s article is about what to do if your company hires a consultant, and how to maximize their value to you personally.
Emotions
Know that every consultant I’ve ever worked with or beside truly wants to help. They do what they do because they get satisfaction from solving problems, improving the life and work of their clients, and doing it quickly.
Even knowing this, it’s natural to have some emotions about having your company (or particularly your boss) bring in a consultant. There might be some resentment (why didn’t they think I could solve that problem?), fear (are they replacing my role with a consultant?), and skepticism (we are different here; how could they possibly understand the issues we face?) along with a host of other emotions. All of these are valid, normal, and reasonable.
First, acknowledge your emotions as real, valid, and acceptable. You’ll have trouble moving past those feelings and being productive for your team if you simply try to bury them. If you’re having trouble moving through difficult emotions either at work or in general, the podcast episode by Brené Brown where she interviews the Nagoski sisters about their book Burnout changed my life and is worth a listen.
Second, it’s ok to pull the consultant(s) aside and talk through your emotions and fears. Don’t do this in your larger group; it will look like heckling and may undermine you to your team. Have a candid conversation about what you fear, what you suspect, and your concerns for the project and let the consultant(s) help answer those emotions or take them into consideration. A good consultant or consulting team will be able to allay your fears and address your concerns.
Third, the company hired that consultant to solve a problem quickly and efficiently. If you feel you could have solved the problem well, ask yourself if your leadership team knew you could do so. Sometimes it’s very hard for leaders to understand all the skill sets of their teams, and sometimes what they’re looking for in a consultant is an outside perspective. Be willing to be very self-reflective and honest with yourself here about why the company might not have tasked you with solving the problem. Ask a trusted colleague their perspective. And realize that if you truly could solve the problem well and the company leadership team isn’t listening to you, that company might not be your best fit.
Current Project Management
Now that you’ve faced and moved through your emotion, let’s focus on getting the best value out of the current project. A consultant is here to solve a problem, and it’s probably a problem that also makes your life harder. One of the most interesting things about consultants is they very freely give away credit for their work. They’re there to get work done, do it efficiently, and then hand off the credit. It’s so rare for me to find a consultant that wants the credit – the credit goes to the team that worked with the consultant and the one that hired them. Would they like a testimonial saying they were a big help to the team and brought value? Sure. But in the end, the company leadership team tends to credit the internal team with getting the right resources to solve the problem instead of the consultant for solving it.
If you have a “pet project” you’ve been trying to get done, now is your chance. Having a consultant add their voice to yours can help make something you’ve been proposing for years a reality. Alternatively, they might help you understand why it’s been hard to move that project forward or how to tweak it to be more appealing to the company executives. Sometimes front-line team members know exactly what would bring value and help everyone, but haven’t been able to communicate the idea in “executive-speak” well enough for it to be heard. The consultant(s) can translate your awesome idea into the right language to get it pushed forward.
Don’t be afraid to hold the consulting firm to the scope of work they committed to. Scope creep is tricky and a common issue, but also make sure the consultant is delivering on what they said they would. If they promised a guarantee of results, find a way to measure those results and hold the consultant to them. If they are supposed to cleanse or hand over data, make sure it’s in a clean, readable format and that you understand it. The list goes on and on, so just realize it’s easy to deviate from the original plan and for both parties not to realize the scope and the deliverables aren’t matching up.
Future Planning
Once the main part of your project is underway, it’s time to think about future planning. Make sure you dig deeper in your interactions with the consultant. Don’t stop at the shiny PowerPoint (yes, those are often part of the deal), but make sure you understand the work behind it. Get to the substance of any recommendations and especially focus on how to make the problem’s solution sustainable. What kind of resources does it require to get the results proposed one year from now? What about five or ten? Make sure those are visible and allocated. After the consultant’s project is done, you are often on your own to keep that momentum going. A good consultant will set you up for success, but if they’re handing off tools, make sure you know how to use them. For example, if a deliverable is a Visio process map, make sure you know how to modify it (and have the Visio license to do so!) when life inevitably changes. If you don’t have the needed licenses to modify the deliverables, make the consulting team reformat or move into different software until it meets your need.
Keep the consultant’s business card. This can be both to call with questions or issues in the future and as a personal resource. If you can bring a consultant back for future projects, they don’t have to spend nearly as much time learning your company, you, and the unique challenges in your space. A consultant you work with is also now part of your personal network, which is a key part of your career success. Consultants get asked surprisingly often if they “know someone” in their space when clients are looking to hire for their teams.
Personal Development
We’ve had some pieces on how a consultant can help you personally earlier in this article, but there are a few more. First, get as much information as you can out of the consultant while you have them. They were hired for niche expertise, so use them as a resource to learn about that niche. While there are a few consultants who are generalists and know a little about everything, most are the opposite and have extremely deep knowledge about a couple topics. You never know when a little extra knowledge will come in handy, and sometimes their area of expertise is not well documented in books or other resources.
Second, realize a consultant might be a power broker. What I mean by this is that they are often asked their professional opinion on a team, team dynamics, and skills of the team members. While a consultant is not there to interview you, realize they may have more influence on your career than you think. Be engaged and show your best side and you may find you have an advocate for your career.
If you really like a consultant or think they did a particularly good job, the absolute best thing you can do for them is to refer them to someone in your network. If you send an email to your referral and copy the consultant, they should handle everything from there and you shouldn’t have to do anything further. It’s a huge compliment to them and costs nothing, and it really makes them one of your advocates for life to get a warm referral.
If you’d like to talk to me more about working with consultants, let’s chat. If you’d like to get these articles weekly straight to your inbox and never miss one, sign up for my newsletter.
