8 things a Consultant can do for you

In my blog on consulting, I explained that consulting covers a lot of areas and activities.

The purpose of this article is to present what consultant do or the functions of consulting in order to highlight what can accomplish for an organization.

Generally, consultants provide advice in the form of recommendations and may be involved in the implementation of the recommendation.

If he/she is involved in the implementation, then his activities may include initiating corrective actions or measure through training to improve organizational effectiveness.

The activities of consultants are as follows:

1. Provide information

The main function of consultant is to provide information for their clients and this is the main reason for requesting his/her assistance.

To be candid, information is all that the client wants.   For a consultant to provide the right information, he may be involved in conducting a survey (like market survey), carry out some studies (like feasibility studies) and performing some analysis (like competitive structure).

Therefore, the consultant must use his/her professional’s special expertise and all relevant resources to provide an up-to-date information for the client. The information is provided to the client in the form of objective advice and assistance relating to the strategy, structure, management and operations.

Some clients may have resources and expertise to develop the required data internally but may not have the time to spare. Often times, the information that the client needs may be different from what the consultant is asked to provide.

One easy way to synchronize the information that the client needs and what the consultant is to provide is for the consultant to ask the client what he/she will do with the information.

The answer will be a good guide for the consultant. However, many clients may not have thought about it. From this question, it may be interesting for the consultant to note that the client just needs a better use of the data already available to him/her.

The consultant must understand the information that the client needs and how he/she is going to use in order to know where to find them and how to present them to the client.

2. Solve problems / issues / challenges

The primary reason why a client needs a consultant is that he/she has a problem to solve or challenge to tackle without engaging the employees of the organization. The problems are often difficult to solve basically if it has to do with finance, investment, and strategy, change management, restructuring the organization, financial policies, and solution to human resources problems like compensation, morale, efficiency, control, succession, management and internal communication.

The starting point for a consultant to explore the problem, identify that it is well posed and it is is what the client needs to be solved. Most times, clients need assistance in defining the real problem. This is very important because is the client could define his problem very well, he may not need a consultant at all. Also, the consultant must be able to find out the solutions that the client has attempted in the past and the result that he/she got. Furthermore, the consultant must understand the untried solutions that the client has in mind, the aspects of the business that is not doing well, how the solution will be implemented and the necessary measures that will be put in place to ensure the acceptance of the solution. This is necessary to identify the needs of the client and provide the right solution.

Therefore, a consultant must explain to his clients that there is the need for him to explore the problem before starting to solve it and this may lead to redefining the problem as the study proceeds. This will lead to providing the right solution to the real problem that the client has. These solutions are provided in the form of finding and recommendation.

3. Realize latent opportunities

It is not always advisable for a consultant to accept a client’s description of the problem from a client.

It is professionally advised that the consultant work with the problem as defined by the client while exploring related factors such as the sensitive issues that the client is aware of but has difficulty in discussing them with outsiders.

This will help in redefining the problems as you work along with the client asking the why this and how that question. Naturally, this may lead to identifying some latent opportunities that lies in the problem that must be tapped. These opportunities must be highlighted in the consultant’s report.

4. Diagnose, and redefine problems / issues / challenges & opportunities

From 2 and 3 above, the consultant must be skilled in diagnosing and redefining problems and be able to identify opportunities that lie in the problem.

Most times, this will cover the nosiness internal and external environment, technology, economics of the business and behavior of the staff both managerial and non-managerial. It involves the consultant asking why managers made choices that now appear as mistake and why did they ignore certain factors that seem important now.

However, the process by which this is done can strain consultant-client relationship, since the client staff may not like their mistakes to be uncovered and blames passed on them. Thus, the consultant requires political and administrative skills to manage the process of diagnosing the problem.

On way of performing effective diagnosis of the problem without straining consultant-client relationship is by including members of the client organization into the diagnosis process.

In this manner, the consultant can understand the strategic problems connected with the organizational issues and the client staff acknowledge their role in the problems and accepting the redefinition of the problem. This makes the acceptance and implementation of recommendations  or corrective measure easier.

5. Recommending Actions

Most times, the engagement of a consultant end with a report that is submitted to the client. It may be followed by an oral presentation summarizing the consultant finding and recommendations to the client on what they should do to solve the problem.

Most consultants devote a lot of efforts in preparing their report to ensure that the findings and analysis are clearly presented and the recommendations are convincingly connected to the diagnosis of the problem.

The consultant recommends and the client decides whether to implement the recommendations or not. If the client wants to implement the recommendation, they will decide on how to implement it.

Making recommendations is not always easy for a consultant because some consultants feel that it is of no use to make a recommendation that will not be implemented. Such consultants continue to strive to understand the necessary actions that will be implemented if recommended.

Thus their recommendation may be confined to actions that they believe will be implemented well. On some sensitive issues, some consultants may only recommend what they feel that the clients want to hear.

One of the major challenges of a consultant is whether to recommend what is right or what will be accepted by the client. However, if the client is committed to building organizational effectiveness and encouraging learning there is the need to recommend actions that are right and that will be implemented by the client.

Although, this seems simple, there is the need for the consultant to be involved in the implementation of their recommendations. This will enable the consultant to translate the recommendations into action plan, identify the impact of the recommendations on the organization and if need be amend where necessary.

6. Implementing Recommendations and Changes

In consulting, the role of a consultant in implementing recommendations is not clear.

Some believe that when a consultant is involved in implementation, it is taking on the role of the client’s managers.

Others believe that the consultant has the professional responsibility to implement his recommendation because a bad implemented recommendation leads to waste of money and time.

The aim of this article is not discuss the role of consultants in implementing recommendations. However, it is believed that as the consultant and client are able to work together to diagnosis and define the problem very well, they can both collaborate together to implement the recommendations to solving the problem.

It is very important that the consultant and the client’s employees to maintain a level of trust and cooperation in order for the implementation to be successful.

Let us examine the role of a consultant again from the beginning, the client needs information, the consultant have inquired what the clients wants to do with the information, what actions he has taken to get these information and worked with the client’s employees to diagnose the problem. Now the consultant has determined the actions to be taken by the client to solve the problem, therefore it is natural that both the client and consultant should cooperate to lunch the actions in implementation.  Simply put, it is very necessary to include the consultant and the client’s employees in the implementation team.

A consulting engagement is only effective when the consultant is able to convince the client to take some action (that is implement recommendation). The implementation is easier and successful when there is enough support from the client’s employees. The consultant must be able to identify the key players that have stake in the solution, their interest,  and involve them in the implementation process. Therefore, there is the need for a consultant to have good problem solving techniques and persuasive ability through logical analysis.

In order to have an effective implementation, the clients and employees must ready and be committed to change, encourage innovation and learn new ways of solving problems to improve the organizational performance. If the implementation of an innovative solution is successful, they are institutionalized more effectively.

7. Build consensus and commitment around corrective action

The degree of success of any consulting engagement greatly depends on how both the client and consultant understand the problem, make recommendation, implement the recommendations and explore the opportunities that may have been identified.

Therefore, for a consultant to be able to provide a sound and convincing recommendations he must have persuasive and analytic skills. For the consultant to implement the recommendations effectively, he must be able to design and conduct the implementation process which entails agreeing with the client on the necessary implementation steps and the pace of the implementation process.

The consultant must increase client’s employees’ commitment and motivation by involving them in all the stages of the engagement.

During the facts finding stage, interviews should be conducted skillfully to gather information, build trust and encourage commitment to improve performance and encourage change in the organization. Thus, the consultant’s approach must demonstrate that the reason for the interview is not to find fault and allocate blames but to encourage constructive ideas for improvement so that all members of the organization can understand the importance of the engagement. There may be resistances during interviews and this should help the   consultant to know the kind of corrective actions that will work effectively and understand how to encourage them to be committed to the engagement. Staff motivation can be improved if the consultant is able to identify a staff that understands the problems and the consultant’s purpose very well. The consultant can exploit the staff in gathering information on how the company functions and its politics.

The effective relationship with the principal client is especially important in developing consensus and commitment. This can be exploited through regular meetings since both of them are searching for a solution to the same problem. The consultant should always make the meeting a two-way reporting and discussion meeting and it should include discussion on what both of them should do next. It is necessary to always necessary to focus on the project at hand. To build consensus and commitment to the project, both the client’s managers and consultant must collaborate throughout the engagement.

8. Facilitate client learning

An effective consultant will always like to leave a valuable thing behind at the end of an engagement. As part of the engagement, the consultant must solve the client’s immediate problem and assist them in enhancing their ability to deal with it. A consultant that wants to invited back again and be recommended by the client to others will help the client to learn ways of coping with future challenges.

This is easily achieved if the consultant includes the client’s employees din the assignment process through collaboration. It helps the consultant to understand the client’s employee’s professional skill and ability and identify necessary gaps that need to be filled. Also, the employee can also learn some skills from the consultant during the period of engagement which can be perfected through guidance and experience.  Therefore, involving the client in the solution process will create opportunities to identify skill gaps, learning needs and it will help the consultant to recommend necessary training that the staff need.  Every consulting engagement is an opportunity for the consultant to learn at least how to be effective in designing and conducting such assignments and engagement. Collaborating with the clients can also provide an avenue for the consultant to learn from the client.

Well, these are what I have been doing as a Business Computing consultant for past 5 years. It may be that there are more to what consultants do. What a consultant does in many cases is defined by the assignment, the prevailing situation and the consultant himself. In this article, I have presented what consultants do from the perspective of a collaborative relationship in which the consultant presents his/her skill, knowledge and experience to the client to solve a problem including recommendation, implementation and training to the client.  If other consultants have a different view, there is the need for us to share them. Finally, it is necessary for all consultants to strive to make a difference in performing our assignments and do our best for our clients.

Thank you.

Augustus Zekaryah

 

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About the author

Augustus is a management, banking and business computing professional with over 20 years of documented success in the field. Augustus is recognized for the application of software to solving business problems, Software Project Management, Enterprise Architecture Strategy, and Delivery of learning solutions with focus on adaptability, Development and execution of business plans, General management and administration, Operations management and  Best practice development. Augustus founded and manages FirstPlus Integrated Business Solutions (https://firstplus-ibs.com.ng) as a Software and Business Consulting outfit that specializes in Software development and integration, E-Learning development, Business and Marketing Planning, Consulting and training. Augustus brings to his work a high level of energy, passion, commitment and humour. He is married with children.

Other articles published by the author in this series at https://firstplus-ibs.com.ng that may be of interest are.

1. Consulting
2. What is a website?
3. Benefits of e-learning
4. 9 reasons why your business needs a website
5. How ICT can solve Nigeria’s socio-economic challenges

As you read them drop a comment because your feedback is very important to us. It will help us to improve. Regards…