Many organisations are planning to work with consultants over the coming months to craft new visions, design new organisations and develop new business plans. We thought it might be helpful to share our top tips for getting the most from your relationship and investment.
Susan
Joint working
Employing a consultant is a form of joint working. Like all joint working projects it takes more time than you wanted or expected and will repay upfront investment in building the partnership. Be clear about your own motivations for initiating this joint project – why do you want to bring someone else in, is this about capacity, capability or both?
Be honest
As a client you need to be prepared to be honest with your chosen consultant about the real problems and the obstacles that might hold up or derail your process. That kind of honesty doesn’t materialise overnight so give yourselves time to build trust. This is particularly important when you cannot meet in person.
As a consultant you need to be honest about your own skills, interests and motivations. Are you the right person for this assignment? Before I commit to a new role, I always ask myself two questions to hold myself to account.
- What do I bring to this role?
- What do I want from this assignment?
You also need to be ready to be honest with your client and that can feel pretty scary sometimes. But, if it was easy or they could see the problem and solution clearly for themselves, they wouldn’t need you.
Keep the brief/s flexible and be willing to re-negotiate
This is not a call for open ended briefs or ‘send me a CV”. The processes of pulling a brief together as a client and responding to one as a consultant are important for clarifying your thinking at an early stage. But the key phrase is ‘at an early stage’; your thinking will change as you learn, think and design together. Straitjacket briefs are not a mechanism for ensuring accountability, they are a way of ensuring you got what you wanted at the beginning of the process even though it has become clear that you need something different.
Spend time on designing the process
This is about much more than a project plan, although you need one of those too. It is about the learning journey you want to go on. Imagine standing at the end of your project -what story do you wish that you could tell?
- What principles or values are going to shape your approach?
- Who needs to be involved? How can they best be involved and when?
- How can you keep people interested, engaged and creative whilst working online?
- How can you create opportunities for real collaboration?
Embrace stupid questions
Both client and consultant need to be willing to ask and answer what appear to be ‘stupid questions.’ Consultants should have a licence to do this given their lack of familiarity but sometimes hold back because they don’t want to look dumb. A good consultancy project will create a space in which dumb questions can be tackled openly. If your conversations never get uncomfortable then you probably haven’t got to the root of your problem or found a realistic solution.
Speak into silence
It can be the things that people don’t talk about within an organisation: the unwritten rules, the unspoken assumptions and the failures that get airbrushed from organisational memory that are most helpful in understanding how to find a productive and exciting way forward. Bring them into the light and something amazing often happens.
Whoever you choose to work with and however you choose to work on your project we hope that you have honest conversations, generate some great ideas, test your thinking rigorously and find a good way to ride the Covid-19 rollercoaster.
Dawn
Point of contact
This is a very pragmatic point but can sometimes cause confusion for consultant and client alike. Be clear about who your main point of contact is, and it should be someone who has the ability to make decisions and/or act on issues as they arise. This can sometimes be a point of tension between board and executive. Whoever it is you need to have a communication plan to ensure everyone is kept informed on progress.
Ownership
At the end of the process the consultant will leave, and you will have to take forward whatever has emerged from the process. It is tempting to see the consultant as an extra pair of hands but be mindful of handing everything over to them. It is important that any work you do together is embedded in your organisation/project so you have understood fully its outcomes, and you can take any actions forward. This is also a great way to ensure any learning during the process stays with you and doesn’t leave with them.
Timing and focus
I was fortunate while I was at the Arts Council to work with some very experienced and specialist consultants. One of the most common pieces of feedback I got, particularly from lawyers and HR specialists, was that they were often called in too early or too late and clients didn’t know the right questions to ask. This reflects on Susan’s earlier point about being very clear on what you are seeking from an external adviser.
Build trust
In many cases this will be an in-depth and intense relationship. Together you may have to face some difficult questions and challenges, which means you need to be able to trust each other. I sometimes refer to the process as ‘holding up the mirror’ and that is not always comfortable for everyone. If you have worked with a consultant before and it hasn’t worked out, let a potential new consultant know, you don’t have to break confidences just give an overview of the issues that might concern you with the new relationship. Equally, if you have never worked with a consultant before it is important to be honest about it. This makes sure no-one makes assumptions about the process and the consultant can help walk you through their approach. As much as possible I try and explain to my clients what I am doing and why.
Keep your expectations realistic
All the consultants I know will go the extra mile to deliver for their clients, but they are not superhuman. Like everyone they too have been deeply impacted by the last ten months. It is important that on both sides of the relationship you can be honest with each other about what’s feasible.
Review
This may be a personal preference, but I like to have an agreed point or points where we can review progress, check we’re still on track and re-contract if necessary. Although a consultant will do their best to get to know you well they are obviously not with you 24/7 so it is really helpful particularly at the end to have an open conversation about how the work has gone.
When it works well bringing in external advisers can blossom into very special relationships that endure long after your specific project is done. It is wonderful to see organisations we have worked with gain confidence and develop. Putting some basic steps in place can help everyone get the most from the experience. We’d be really interested to hear your experiences and any other tips you would add to our list.
Dawn and Susan