Food for thought: Push and pull in the world of consulting

I remember trying to explain to a child what it was that I did as a management consultant. This is a tricky one? The only point of common understanding between us distilled down to "I tell other people how to do things better." I hoped as I said it that it wasn't true. Not entirely, anyway.

Giving advice should just be one of the things management consultants do. Not every situation is helped by an expert opinion. Sometimes the best thing for a client is that we give them "a damn good listening to".

The common thread between these two very different approaches is that the decision which to adopt is driven by what the client needs, not what we wish to offer. To help clients, we need to be able to work across a range of consulting styles.

To understand which approach is most appropriate in a given situation, we have to think about how we add value to our clients. Sometimes we have tangible items to give, in the forms of systems, procedures, reports. Sometimes we impart something less tangible, like advice or opinions. And sometimes what we give is more difficult to understand: a way of working with the client that enables the client to come up with their own answers.

Why on earth would we want to do this? Isn't it better to ensure that our deliverable to the client is highly visible, so they know they're getting value (and we can feel justified in sending them our invoice)?

When we start asking questions like this we miss the point. Management consultants are in business to help their clients deliver sustained business performance improvement. If our clients are not able to realise actual benefits from our engagement with them, we are colluding with them to fail. Not only that, there is little likelihood that they will find our services of interest to them in future.

Consultants may think they are offering the best advice in the world, but unless the client genuinely owns it, they will not be able to act on it with sufficient commitment to realise the benefits of the advice. It has to be the client's own idea - and for that our role is to be much more the facilitator of the client's thinking rather than purely the expert dispensing advice.

Cynthia Pexton Shaw