What ordinarily comes to mind when one hears about a consultant?
In the old business world, the picture would have been one of a man wearing spectacles, pinstripe suit and carrying a briefcase. The new world still has glasses, a suit but has replaced the briefcase with a computer.
By definition, a consultant is a party who is engaged to share their expertise to help organisations improve the attainment of their goals. The main areas of consultancy in business are strategy, operations, finance, human resources, and information technology.
This article looks at trends and missteps encountered in the business world involving consultants. These range from those who shift from being the ones being consultedto the drawing of expertise from the client but still get paid, to those who become sticky and become candidates for long-service awards.
The hangman consultant
Organisations may develop a culture where the truth is a dangerous and sometimes career-and-life threatening commodity. There may also be instances where management, for various reasons, are unable to say or administer the truth. In such cases the consultant’s role becomes not one to share expertise, but rather the conduit through which the truth and consequences are delivered. Such truth encompasses delivering unpleasant and somewhat bad news to recipients and management would normally want to play it smart by hiring a consultant to do such work. The consultant would become a cover or a wrapper of such news.
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Sticky consultant
My dear spouse once told me a corporate story of a “roofing consultant” who was almost permanently on the company’s roof effecting his own recommendations. The operations team was always in support given the perceived risks to theirproducts emanating from leaky roofs. One day the managin director(MD) who was involved in the payments approval process queried why the consultant’s name repeatedly came up for payments and why the consultant seemed permanently perched on the company’s roof. By Jove, the consultant learnt of the MD’s personal predicament regarding a gate at his residence. The consultant then used his expertise to permanently fix the gate free of charge. The consultant then lived happily ever after on the company’s paycheck until his tenure was disrupted by a change in the company’s ownership.
Some sticky consultants deploy themselves permanently through deliberately avoiding skills transfer as happened to an entity that I know of. External Consultants came to the country for an eighteen-month equipment supply and installation assignment whose scope included sharing of manuals as well as training on use and maintenance of the equipment. In the end the assignment took three years as the consultants somehow delayed sharing manuals and drawings and the training only took off after tense confrontations. Each time they were asked to leave, the company’s operations would start staggering. The consultants’ recommendations always involved bringing back their full staff complement yet there were local staff who had been shielded away from learning the technology.
The repackaging consultant
I once worked for an entity that brought in consultants for a project that involved installation and training on the operation of manufacturing equipment. The process involved the use of reagents which the same consultants claimed ability to provide at better quality than a well-known global supplier. They also claimed that their brand was more suited to their equipment. The consultants won the bid and they supplied the material which was truly in distinct packaging complete with Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) sheets per requirements. One day a curious process manager realised that the material somehow looked like the one from the well-known global supplier and a closer look at the inner most packaging exposed the original packaging to be of the global supplier!
A consultant is expected to provide their expertise in solving the problem but may be out of depth, clueless or may be an absolute fraud regarding problem-diagnosis and subsequent solutions.
They can then cover themselves by literally commanding the client to compile the list of the problems as well as the possible solutions.
The result is that the same information is then repackaged with fancy titles, irrelevant theories and references, and an overdose of quotes fully attributed to the consultant. There have been instances where success has arisen from implementation of the same thereby giving the consultant double joy of being praised for both a report and subsequent implementation results neither of which they were truly involved in.
The prophetic consultant
This is a consultant who is hired and already has the medication in place. The individual then works backwards from the solution or recommendations to the problem. This is like the informal market where the eager seller claims that their product solves allproblems. One tell-tale sign of such is when reports for work done at different companies have very identical content despite the expected peculiarities of either entity.
Midwife -turned meddle-wife consultant
The true consultancy role has some similarity with a mid-wife’s one where it is often by invitation, for a straightforward mandate and for a limited season. The midwife does not often have a residual interest or stake after “delivery” of the baby and is not expected to be deeply involved in the affairs of the parents of the baby.
There are instances where the midwife morphs into a meddle-wife and thus becomes entangled in the affairs of the consulting organization. In this instance it becomes very difficult to separate between adviser and operator. The situation can end in various unsavory outcomes such as resignation of existing staff, consultant subsequently employed in a substantive position in existing position, or a special role or title is created sometimes with a usurping threat for existing roles.
The meteorite consultant
Meteorites are rocks that fall to earth from space and meteorite consultants are those that get foisted upon an organisation or its management by forces or powers higher than management e.g., board of directors or owners.
These, like meteorites, come with superpowers sometimes to the extent of overlooking or disregarding management. They sometimes bypass management through providing reports that go straight to the appointing or deploying power without considering inputs or any other experiences that can be drawn from management. One potential scenario can be that management then jumps ship to leave the “all knowing and all powerful” consultants to steal or run the show. Another scenario can be a self -preservation strategy where management enamels itself to the consultants to stave off potential adverse career limiting reports.
The cover-up consultant
In some instances, some organisations have taken consultants on board for the wrong reasons thereby draining corporate resources along the way. The appointing powers, due to conflict of interests, hire non-performing staff who will be on the payroll and then they will go on to hire a consultant to do the actual job. Both the consultant and the non-performer are paid, and the job of the consultant will be to protect the staff in question from further scrutiny.
To consult or not to consult?
Whether or not consultancy is worth its salt depends on how the decisions on consulting are made which may include some of the considerations indicated below:
Full and true background checks of the consultant rather than reliance on curated and framed information that may come up in various media.
Clarity on the need for consultancy and the scope thereof to avoid outsourcing of “thinking and execution” elements that normally fall under the ambit of management.
Creation of culture and systems where capability is internally created and buttressed with consultancy as an occasional supporting mechanism rather than the core of operations.
Promotion of a “listening culture” where open communication is a way of life in an organisation. This is helpful in that most of the challenges befalling organisations are not alien and often the best problem-solvers are those who do the work including those without exposure or predisposition to fancy theories and overloaded graphs.
Open-mindedness in cases where consultancy has been deemed necessary. This avoids the risk of highly rating a consultant who thinks and speaks in the same way as the appointing powers over one who may assess and assert matters in different directions.
Chipangura is a fellow of ICAZ with more than 20 years working and consulting experience in Central and Southern Africa and the Middle East regions. He has experience in both for-profit and not-for-profit organisations. — kchipangura@gmail.com