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Consultant's
Role
We believe that their are many roles that
a consultant plays and he or she must be able to fluidly move
between those roles as the situation demands.
The Consultant as
Advisor
The typical role of a consultant is to
provide trusted advice. That is what you seek out a
consultant for in the first place. A high role for a
consultant is to be trusted to provide solid, reliable advice that
is likely to be right. A consultant must be a problem
solver. When they don't actually solve problems, they create
fodder for consultant jokes, the gist of which is that the
consultant just regurgitates the clients problems in complex
charts. So a good consultant must be a trusted to solve real
problems at a minimum.
The Consultant as
Teacher
But the highest role a great consultant
will play is to be a teacher. To not only provide advice,
but also to provide guidance on how to think about that
advice. To clarify the options and teach a client how to
think about them so that he or she can make the best decision, now
and in the future. A poor consultant will simply assert the
answer, a great consultant teaches the client how they arrived at
the answer. This is not to prove the consultants infinite
and profound wisdom, but rather to help the client learn the principles
behind the conclusions, so that the client can make decisions. The
client must deeply internalize the decision and the logic behind
it to be able to advocate it and defend it with out the consultant
present. This is why many consulting engagements fail to
translate into actually building the business. The client
pays the consultant millions to "figure it out," but in
the end the answer while right never gets used. It is
because the client doesn't ever get taught the underlying
principles of the decision.
At SagePoint, we go out of our way to make
sure the conclusions of our work are truly and deeply
understood. We realize that our clients are very, very
bright people, but we take that extra effort to insure that they
will come away really knowing, not just hearing the insights and recommendations.
We use experiential learning exercises, stories, compelling
visuals, silly demonstrations, or what ever it takes to drive home
the principles we need to communicate. This has proven to be
an extremely valuable tool to our more senior clients in helping
to pull their whole organization together behind a common
vision.
We sincerely believe the greatest
consultants are the greatest teachers.
The
Consultant as Conduit
A consultant must be a conduit for
communication; a knowledge sharer. A consultant is placed in
the unique position of being able to gather and coalesce
information from many parts of the organization (both internal and
external). By crystallizing and sharing this knowledge the
whole organization is able to learn better how the other parts
work. A great consultant is a conduit for communication.
The Consultant as
Provocateur
A consultant should also be a provocateur.
The consultant must push the thinking of the client and
company. The consultant must stimulate new perspectives,
must make the clients see what they would otherwise shy away from
seeing, must be a catalyst for change. Business is complex
and the right decisions often come down to balancing off many considerations.
The consultant must be able to deal with contradictions and
conflicting information. The consultant frequently must deal
with the most controversial and painful discussions a company is
dealing with. A consultant must be a provocateur, but
not a jerk. There is a time and place to provoke
The role of the
client?
To shape the engagement, to learn the
facts, insights, principles and recommendations, and to ultimately
be the judge and jury over their prosecution in the organization.
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