Shaun MacRae

My wife and I chose very different career paths, but we got to chatting the other night about the joys of consulting work and I was surprised by how much we did have in common. I was also reassured to know that my consulting woes were not entirely uncommon.

Most of what we talked about came down to consulting fundamentals, and how we don’t tend to see organizations in the consulting space fulfilling the requirements.

There are a number of basic principles that genuine consultants stand by, all of which are support for why I got into this kind of work. These include (among others) Leadership, Professionalism, Expertise, Quality & Efficiency, Integrity & Ethics.

Consulting involves delivering services or products that add value for clients beyond their own capability. Consulting organizations are brought in to analyze business processes and systems so that they can provide training, coaching and advice to their clients. They need to be entrusted with valuable internal information, and they are handsomely rewarded for their insights because their insights add value. This two-way relationship is healthy and benefits both the consultants and the clients. At least, that is the way it is supposed to work.

So, are you really in the business of consulting?

Leadership – Does your firm stand out as a leader in your industry?

You can’t claim to be consultants otherwise. Clients look to their industry leaders for consulting, not their equals. Also, to be leaders, consultants need to play active roles in the community in order to remain current and exchange ideas with like-minded individuals. In the IT community in Calgary we have groups like CAMUG, and the Calgary .NET User Group to facilitate knowledge sharing. Consultants with the right attitude are very active in groups like these. They also present at conferences, and publish literature, and contribute to open source projects.

Professionalism – Does your firm have a reputation that you are proud of and a reputation that earns new work?

Long-term, healthy client relationships are the largest contributor to a firm’s reputation. Dysfunctional relationships are usually a result of entering into destructive contracts. That said, relationships take work, and even promising contracts can lead to poor relationships if accounts aren’t properly managed. In either case, the stake is the firm’s reputation and can not be taken lightly.

Firms that exercise professionalism do not need to look for work. They have the pleasure of turning down work and not feeling pressured to enter into destructive contracts in order to pay the bills.

Expertise – Does your firm attract consultants with expertise?

Experts or individuals striving for expert level status will want to work with experts. This is all about facilitating an environment were consultants can learn and grow and encourage each other. If your firm actively pursues staff augmentation opportunities (body shopping), then you are probably in trouble. This is not consulting. If consultants wanted that kind of work, they would work for the clients directly or work as independent consultants for the clients. Consultants pay a large portion of their billable rate to the firm in order to secure interesting project-based work where they can collaborate with other consultants working for the firm and grow and develop accordingly.

Quality & Efficiency – Does your firm guarantee quality and efficiency to clients?

Remember that quality and efficiency require funding. If clients aren’t willing to pay, your firm needs to be willing to turn down the contracts.

Integrity & Ethics – Does your firm try to add value for clients whenever possible (even if it means less revenue in the short term for the firm)?

I spoke with a consultant working as a project manager for an IT project recently who was telling me how with great difficulty he managed to convince his client that every time his consultants were stopped from their work for any length of time, it was costing the project thousands of dollars. As he found out, getting push back on improvements that could save the client money, only meant that he wasn’t going high enough up the ladder. This is the kind of information clients are paying for. This is the kind of information that establishes your firm as a trusted adviser.

Another example would be advising your clients to purchase top of the line hardware for system development because you know that the savings in development time will far exceed the costs of the hardware (even though your firm is providing the developers at an hourly rate).

Clients aren’t stupid. They will reward you with new work if you treat them well.

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