Last year, I got a note from a prospect (I call him ‘Jim’) who had worked with many consultants over the years. He was very frank and told me exactly why he didn’t like consultants. He enumerated these 3 reasons (this is almost verbatim from his email):
- Consultants just tell clients what they want to hear
He actually had a name for this type: ‘sounding board’ consultants. He said that leaders unknowingly love to hear someone else (preferably an outsider) validate what they already believe as ‘the problem’. “Consultants have an uncanny ability to pick up on what leaders feel and rephrase it with supporting data”, he said. He added explicitly, “this is a waste of money and time.” - Consultants work for time, not results
Jim would not accept a consulting project with goals such as ‘make recommendations’ or ‘improve quality/processes’. Instead, he insisted they identify core problems (not symptoms) and provide actionable solutions. Each solution must lead to measurable results. - Consultants create dependent relationships
In Jim’s experience, a consultant’s performance is measured by how many of their projects lead to other projects with the same client. In addition to making a customer happy, he saw consultants driven to spawn one project from another. He was very skeptical when seeing reports that included things like “future recommendations” along with what seemed like an unending trail of contracts and statements of work.
When I first saw this list, I was almost tempted to get a little defensive. He seemed overly critical, even cynical. But then I saw this as a great opportunity to, as we say at The Table Group, “get naked.”
I regrouped and reached back out to Jim and essentially said, “Thank you!” I thanked him for being honest and direct. Heck, if he had this much energy to eradicate bad consulting, maybe he could use the same energy to help transform his own company? I took his list and asked him to hold me accountable.
I told him, ”Here’s what clients can expect from Naked consulting…”
Naked consultants are not afraid to be embarrassed
They are willing to call out the elephants in the room – We provoke leaders like Jim and his team. We might tell them things they already know, but we don’t tell them what they want to hear. We ‘speak the kind truth’ and enter dangerous territory even if we are not sure where it will lead.
Naked consultants are not afraid to be inferior
They are willing to let other smart people solve the problems – We do not have to be the one to solve all the problems. We do put leaders and teams to work, but some might say, “Aren’t the consultants supposed to deliver the goods?” Yes, but The best consultants get the team more productive than they have ever been. We want them to achieve their goals whether we can help or not. We oversell the process and undersell ourselves. We help clearly define the outcomes in advance and keep our eye on those outcomes. Organizational Health is admittedly difficult to measure, but not impossible. If we need to spend more energy to ‘get it done’, we will. We don’t approach the engagement as a coin-operated resource.
Naked consultants are not afraid to lose a client
They give away the business and want clients to thrive without them – We ‘work ourselves out of the job’ from Day 1. If our clients are not making money, and we are not making any progress with their teams, we’ll fire ourselves. Additionally, we equip and enable internal resources to carry things forward long-term. It doesn’t help us to have clients take a nosedive after engagements. So, we want to be their ‘next’ consultants so that we become their ‘last’ consultants.
In the end, we value generosity — an endearing trait that leads to loyalty and good things down the road. As consultants, we commit to the client’s results, not our own. Being generous and committing to their result is the right approach — giving away the business, taking the bullet, being easy to do business with, etc.