Last week I spent a couple of hours as half of a two-person panel answering questions on consulting. The audience comprised the staff from one of our clients, a funding agency that is also providing technical assistance to some beneficiaries of its funding. These are the points that my co-panelist, Irvin Henderson, and I made during the session.

1. To consult successfully, substantive expertise in the area you are consulting in is absolutely necessary. It is not, however, sufficient. Whether through rhetorical or analytical skills or some combination of them, you also need to be able to alter perceptions and behavior. This is not a function of your substantive expertise but of your consulting skill. Some people with substantive expertise are natural consultants, others learn, and others just don't have the basic aptitudes or appetites for facilitation. Consulting is not for everyone.

2. Early in the process of consulting you need to reach agreement as to who your client is (the board, the CEO, the chair of strategic planning, whoever) and what constitutes a successful assignment – what you and your client can reasonably feel good about after the event. Always get your commission anchored at the top of an organization. Without this, the first tough insight will be mired in domestic politics. It often is anyway.

3. Consultants are always working at the intersection of three sets: the set of correct solutions; the set of solutions acceptable to the client; and the set of solutions the consultant knows. Take time to reflect on whether this intersection of three sets is, in fact, a null set!

4. Even if one is by temperament intellectually aggressive, aggressive questioning in interview rarely takes a project forward as it makes people close down rather than open up. Short, simple questions followed by silence often work well. Most people hate silence in discussion and fill it. You are licensed to ask a few daft questions for short time at the beginning of a project, but don’t ask factual questions to which the answers are in written material you should have assimilated unless you are conciously testing their veracity or your interviewees understanding of the facts. Read around your subject matter and use an assignment as a context for increasing your awareness of the client’s broader operating environment. It is almost always rewarding.

5. Strategic consulting with small organizations is often frustrating if one treats them as though they were large organizations. They usually have neither the organizational capacity nor the financial resources to implement recommendations. The organization’s strengths and weaknesses are usually an immediate extension of the strengths and weaknesses of one – or perhaps two – individuals in the organization. Consulting for small organizations often ends up more bout therapy than strategy.

6. Consulting, technical assistance, mentoring and training are often justifiably viewed with skepticism by arts organizations. This is especially true when being on the receiving end of a consulting assignment is a compulsory adjunct to financial assistance from a funder. How do you overcome this? Absolute integrity; seriousness of purpose (rather than seriousness of manner); close identification with the clients’ interests; high energy; intellectual rigor; and engagement – ‘active listening’.

7. Professionalism in small things (time keeping, accuracy, etc.) is indicative of professionalism in larger things (analytical insight, accuracy of data.). Sloppiness in small things (e.g. an air of harassed preoccupation during interviews) suggests the opposite. Professionalism is about a way of working not a skill set. Secretaries can be – usually are – more professional than their bosses. ‘Late’ is a deceit that robs its victim of time, money and emotional reserves.

8. Allow yourself to bring your experience and common sense to bear early in the exercise by mapping out the problems and the likely solutions soon after you’ve been commissioned. Be prepared to be amend this when new are insights gleaned, but at least you have a clear starting point and can avoid the key issues all piling up unresolved and ambushing you and your client late in the day when budget, timetable and good-will are exhausted.

9. Find out how your client likes to work, and their experiences—good or bad – of consultants, and adapt working practices accordingly.

10. Some good books on consulting are: The Consultant’s Calling by Geoffrey M Bellman (Jossey Bass, San Franciso, 1990); Practical Management Consultancy by Calvert Markham (Accountancy Books, London 1991), True Professionalism by David Maister (The Free Press, New York, 1997; Consulting for Dummies by

11. Never criticize a colleague until you have walked a mile in their shoes ….. because then there is a safe distance between you and your colleague and you’ve got their shoes!

AE
January 2000