An Executive Guide to Employing Consultants

Citation

Russell, A. (2001), "An Executive Guide to Employing Consultants", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 22 No. 5, pp. 249-252. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.2001.22.5.249.5

A potentially useful and accessible guide that does exactly what it says on the cover!What the book lacks in balance and objective coverage of the field of consultancy is made up for in the provision of straightforward, practical examples, checklists and self‐assessment tools. The book provides a focused, logical, step‐by‐step guide through the decision‐making process and the subsequent management of the consultancy assignment. Primarily focused on the inexperienced purchaser of consultancy, the checklists and decision‐ support tools would be useful touchstones for any client. In addition, whilst focused on the client, I feel the book would be an equally valuable reference point for a consultant new to the sales and marketing of consultancy or to consultancy itself.

From my perspective, both as an experienced consultant and a member of an academic institution, the ideas and arguments are over‐simplified and sometimes un‐helpful in their stereotypes and categorisation. For example, the idea that it is important to consider the consultant’s motivation in any client‐consultant relationship is well made. However, the development of this idea to the conclusion that academics do not make good consultants because their motivation is their own research is unhelpful. The argument is that academics’ motivation is not to work with the client organisation to solve a problem or develop the organisation, but to develop his or her own knowledge. This over‐simplification is, in my view, unhelpful to both the client and consultant community. I would have preferred the presentation of ideas that are more fundamental and models covering, say, consultant style, nature of the intervention, consultant motivation rather than the extension of these ideas to presenting stereotypical pictures of process, expert and training consultants. However, given the focus for the book and the target the audience, the author’s decision to present the book in this way is probably justified, although an acknowledgement that life is not quite as simple as portrayed in the guide, would have added to the credibility of the text.

The guide is presented in four parts, using a life‐cycle model as the framework. The four parts focus on the key stages of the client‐consultant relationship:

1. 1.

   1 identifying the kind of help required, what type of consultant is required;

2. 2.

   2 building the selection criteria against which prospective consultants may be assessed;

3. 3.

   3 choosing the best consultant for thejob, conducting selection interviews;

4. 4.

   4 managing the consultant project, including the evaluation of the consultant intervention.

In each part the authors present two or three chapters that walk you through the key steps. The authors use brief, “cameo‐style”, case stories to illustrate their key points, and then a number of checklists to help the client to structure and think through their requirement for consultant support.

Of the points made, there are a number of particularly important and valuable ideas for both client and consultant. These include:

• •

  Do not assume that you need to go outside your organisation to find ex‐pertise to solve a problem.

• •

  Indeed I would extend this point to suggest that the best solutions are those that are developed by individuals within the organisation and the role of a consultant is to reframe or enable in some way the organisation or indivi‐duals to develop their own solutions.

• •

  Consider what type of consultant is required, recognising that each consultant will have their own agenda, motivation, preferred approaches and tools.

• •

  Consultancy is often a “distress pur‐chase”, so if possible, it is good value to establish an ongoing relationship with a consultant to significantly reduce the learning curve and ensure that the consultancy organisation and its individuals can add value at the earliest possible point in the engagement.

In conclusion, a useful book, for thosenew to either side of the client consultant relationship.