During a recent chat with a respected friend and former colleague, I heard him say ‘… and that’s why we hate consultants’.<\/p>\n
It got me thinking. \u00a0And I asked a few more friends who have hired consultants why they<\/em> hate consultants and this is basically what I got:<\/p>\n This all got me thinking about how I can best serve my clients and avoid falling into the traps that these other consultants apparently have. \u00a0 \u00a0I began to break down the different types of errors.<\/p>\n Some of these errors are the flipside of each other, with the midpoint being the best (too much listening, not enough listening), there were also a few common threads: misalignment of expectations, lack of understanding as to what would be useful.<\/p>\n Were these just failures of communication? \u00a0 Why wouldn’t these consultants ask their clients whether they were on the right track? \u00a0Why wouldn’t they see if the client was unhappy during the project? \u00a0Or did they see it and just not care?<\/p>\n I empathize with the consultant who is trying to take the client through about 6 of the 8 steps in the Kotter Change model<\/a> at once. \u00a0Taking someone through meaningful change while keeping them happy all the time is pretty much impossible. \u00a0That old exercise adage of ‘no pain, no gain’ really is apt here. \u00a0 Change, by definition is a difficult, murky, complicated process, and you need someone strong, experienced and impartial to get you through it.<\/p>\n To further complicate things, if you’re going to do good work for the client, they are going to hate you a little bit! \u00a0Ideally, though, even while they are feeling the pain of the change, they see overall progress and be bought into the overall direction. \u00a0That’s my job as a consultant to keep them fixed on that bigger picture.<\/p>\n In my experience by the end they are thrilled with the progress they have achieved, and they have gotten exactly what they expected. \u00a0Now they are either building a plan to keep it going once I’m done or signing me on for another engagement – to help them with the next steps. \u00a0Both sides can speak freely about what they liked or didn’t like, and would do differently next time to make even better.<\/p>\n My happy clients are my bread and butter, and it is worth it to bust my butt to keep them that way! \u00a0Ask and they will tell you, you work together to make a plan, then you do it! \u00a0But perhaps, rookie consultant that I am, I thought, I am oversimplifying.<\/p>\n Then I found this very elegant article<\/a> by Harvard Business Review columnist Nilofer Merchant<\/a> reinforcing many of the same ideas around hating consultants. \u00a0She says it’s perfectly normal! \u00a0But avoidable, \u00a0if both sides are authentic, and willing to face the very human side that underpins all of business, no matter how technical the project or complicated the industry.<\/p>\n So in the end it seems like both sides have a part to play in the problem: \u00a0Consultants cling to their methods, and undercommunicate to protect themselves and project prestige. \u00a0Then they end up over their heads delivering something that the client finds useless. \u00a0Clients don’t ask for what they really need – because they don’t know, assume they won’t get it, or aren’t willing to see a good idea that feels too different.<\/p>\n\n