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The Advisor’s Corner – When Should Consultants Be Used?

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Question:

We’ve brought in a number of high priced consultants to perform a business case analysis. In hind sight, it appears we could have done the same work with internal resources. Why then did we hire these costly advisors?

StrategyDriven Response:

There are many reasons for hiring consultants. One or more of these likely applied in your situation:

  1. The consultants brought unique insights and experiences from outside your organization; enabling them to develop and present points of view that would otherwise have not been available for consideration.
  2. The organization staff did not have the capacity to perform the given task. Therefore, the consultants were hired to augment the labor pool.
  3. The existing staff had the capacity but not the knowledge and skills to perform the work. (Note that this appears to not be a factor given the question asked but is a legitimate reason for hiring consultants.)
  4. The organization is reluctant to implement the recommendations made by those internal resources not viewed as being experts in a particular area. Subsequently, the consultants are brought in because of their ‘expert status’ that leaders know will enable them to move forward with a desired course of action.

The reason for engaging consultants should always be understood prior to hiring them. Clear, quantifiable expectations should be documented within the statement of work that define the value they are to bring to the organization whether that is external knowledge and experience, labor augmentation, skills augmentation, or to drive a particular perspective. The consultants must be held to the achievement of these established goals in order to ensure they have met the return on investment promised by their employment.

Final Thought…

Using consultants should always be on a temporary basis. Some organizations fall prey to hiring consultants for temporary staff augmentation only to find that these individuals remain in position for years if not decades. Such circumstances highlight an understaffing condition that should be alleviated by the typically less expensive option of hiring additional resources rather than engaging costly consultants for extended periods.

Additional Resources

StrategyDriven Contributors further highlight the benefits of using consultants in the article, Independent Assessors.

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 61 – An Interview with John Maxwell, author of The 5 Levels of Leadership

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 61 – An Interview with John Maxwell, author of The 5 Levels of Leadership explores the five level of leadership, how our leadership appears differently to different individuals, and why there appears to be a growing shortage of leaders today. During our discussion, John Maxwell, author of The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential, shares with us his insights and experiences regarding:

  • the five levels of leadership everyone must go through on their leadership development journey
  • the difference between the popularized ‘level five leader’ and an individual who reaches what John defines as the fifth level of leadership
  • how leaders may appear to function at different leadership levels to different people and whether or not a leader should strive to achieve a level five leadership relationship with everyone
  • the leadership level most individuals operate at and how this contributes to the sense that there is a shortage of leaders today

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights John shares in The 5 Levels of Leadership and this special edition podcast are the resources accessible from his website, www.JohnMaxwellOnLeadership.com.   John’s book, The 5 Levels of Leadership, can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us on iTunes by clicking here. Rating the StrategyDriven Podcast and providing your comments online improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

John Maxwell, author of The 5 Levels of Leadership, is the founder of EQUIP and the John Maxwell Company, a leadership development firm. Each year he speaks to leaders at Fortune 500 companies, foreign governments, the National Football League, the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the United Nations. In total, John has trained more than 5 million leaders worldwide. To read John’s complete biography, click here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:43 — 28.5MB)

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Corporate Cultures – Supervisor Initiated, Documented Processes Controlled Environment

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The Supervisor Initiated, Documented Processes Controlled Environment represents a move toward standardized, centralized control. This culture set benefits from greater local control than the leader initiated organization while still maintaining a degree of oversight that enhances standardization and centralized direction setting. Subsequently, organizations where work activities are supervisor initiated and controlled by documented processes tend to exhibit a very limited degree of creativity and flexibility.

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Recommended Resource – What I Didn’t Learn in Business School

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What I Didn’t Learn in Business School: How Strategy Works in the Real World
by Jay B. Barney and Trish Gorman Clifford

About the Reference

What I Didn’t Learn in Business School: How Strategy Works in the Real World by Jay Barney and Trish Gorman Clifford reveals the shortfalls of the principles learned in the idealistic academic environment when applied directly to the messy, unpredictable and politically charged business world. Through a storied approach, Jay and Trish reveal the inadequacies of modeling to fully predict business outcomes and the challenge of creating alignment among leaders with differing points of view and personal agendas. They go on to illustrate the power of moving leaders past the limits of these barriers and their own collective experience to gain significant marketplace advantages and organizational prosperity.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like What I Didn’t Learn in Business School because it so clearly illustrates the premise for our website, namely, that while highly beneficial, academic principles must be adapted from the ideal environment of the classroom to the unpredictable environment of the shop floor in order to provide real value to any organization. Furthermore, no single model or performance measure can adequately portray a given situation in such a way that a definitive decision can be made. Rather, multiple models and measures should be employed to create a complete picture of performance from differing perspectives to enable robust decision-making.

Its well supported, fully illustrated assertion that strong business performance is achieved through the application of sound academic principles tempered by real-world business experience makes What I Didn’t Learn in Business School a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Corporate Cultures – Individual Initiated, Documented Processes Controlled Environment

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The Individual Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment represents a culture that seeks to actively harness and channel worker creativity. These organizations foster creativity among workers in a controlled manner that enables the company achieve its mission objectives while making room for a degree of experimentation. This culture set benefits from some added creativity and consistency but does stifle full-fledged creativity in order to minimize risks.

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