Professional Consultancy

FAST TRACK TO PROFESSIONAL CONSULTANCY

 

This manual will improve your effectiveness as a business consultant and provide you with a structured process for consultancy to share throughout your organisation.

 

The emphasis throughout is on practical and proven approaches, providing a series of checklists of things to consider rather than slowing you down with masses of theory.  In bringing this wide range of material together in one publication we provide you with a document that will grow in usefulness as your experience grows.

The manual summarises the skills needed by a good consultant to undertake successful assignments, describing tools and techniques that will give you the confidence to approach any consulting opportunity including;

  • The Role of the Consultant, defining and managing the working relationship between consultant and client.  Ensuring a high level of involvement, co-operation and satisfaction with your deliverables.
  • Assignment Framework, planning and agreeing terms of reference, deliverables and payment conditions to ensure a professional result. 
  • Information Gathering is the first of eight sections that describe specific consultancy skills and provide guidelines on the most effective ways of applying those skills. 
  • Interviewing Guidelines and questioning techniques as a means of eliciting information.
  • Analysis of Raw Data and 12 recommended approaches to gather and explore core information.
  • Report Writing describes an approach that will deliver written work with good Content, Structure and Style and provides a set of guidelines on the use of English.
  • Negotiating Guidelines can be applied to negotiations both with and on behalf of the Client.
  • Groups and Meetings, the dynamics of group sessions with techniques for structuring meetings and group sessions to make these effective.
  • Workshops run for maximum impact and benefit.       
  • Presentation Guidelines and checklists to enable you to give presentations to a high professional standard.

 

Excerpt from Fast Track to Professional Consulting – The Role of the Consultant

 

What is a Consultant?  A good working definition is:

 

"An expert who provides professional advice or services at the request of a client within a business environment." 

 

Consultants bring to the client:

  •  An external perspective - gained from a wider view of the products, practices and marketplace of the client's business
  •  Expertise - usually in a particular area in which the client recognises a shortfall.

 

A Consultant is a key part of the client’s team not just a
source of short-term manpower - that is a contractor.

 

The approach to an assignment will depend upon how closely the client understands what is required.  Three situations can be distinguished: 

  1.The client fully understands their problem and the potential consequences of its resolution.  The consultancy and/or consultant are chosen because they have the skill set to fix it.
  2. The client understands they have a problem but lacks a clear view of the way forward.  The consultant is called upon to diagnose the problem and to identify and define the remedy.
  3. The client is simply asking for help.  The problem or problems are not clearly defined and the consultant must work with the client to understand and elucidate ways forward.

 

Whereas in the first case clear terms of reference will be a given, in the last the consultant will have to help define the problem and the solution and then propose terms of reference to the client.

Maintaining the relationship with the client is a fundamental part of the consultant’s role.  The consultant, therefore, must:

      •  Take personal responsibility for all aspects of Client satisfaction and hence for the quality of Client deliverables.
      •  Reach a common understanding with the Client on the scope and objectives of the assignment and the respective responsibilities of the Company and the Client - and keep this under review.
      •  Manage change within the Client.  The good Consultant will appreciate that change has human and political aspects as well as economic and technical ones.  The same change can be both an opportunity to one part of the organisation and also a threat to another.
      •  Always keep the Client informed of progress. 
      •  Present proposals rather than problems when issues are encountered.