I survived a life career in consulting without being murdered by clients or colleagues. That isn’t to say I made no mistakes, nor suffered no injuries, just that I learned quickly enough to recover, if not on that project then on the next.

These days, in comfortable retirement, I’m looking back with wonder that clients, bosses, or fellow consultants didn’t call “Vinny from Providence to take me for a ride.” In gratitude, I thought I’d share some things I observed that make individual consultants fail.

Most consultants have done one or more of these, and some continually get away with more than one for no reason other than their confidence and charm to skate over thin ice. I was never that good on ice skates; I just learned to avoid these mistakes.

The “smart guy” aura

Consultants are often naturally insecure, but want to appear confident. They think dressing like the CEO, pricey suits, fancy cufflinks and watches, helps them. Some show up in a polo, ball cap and chinos, but the watch is still there. It’s a form of self-promotion that is read as arrogance.

Consultants understand that arrogance is off-putting, but there are little things they can’t seem to stop, like:

• Mentioning their degrees and alma maters in introduction.
• Name dropping clients they worked for.
• Quoting the latest management best-seller.
• Sharing everything learned about the client company and industry from the pre-read.

Presenting yourself as a smart guy just puts up a barrier to empathy, which is what will distinguish you.

“The worst I’ve ever seen”

Selling by fear was common when I worked in reengineering. Those who did this believed that it raised client urgency to hire consultants. I observed that was true for underconfident clients. Other clients were angered.

“The worst I’ve ever seen” produced a “you don’t understand” response, or worse a “don’t let the doorknob hit you on the way out” retort. Even when we were hired, the negative sales approach made it harder to get clients to move as rapidly as we wanted. People lower in the organization tended to hide data that made them look bad, or work extra hard to justify the “way we’ve always done it.”

Crowing about early findings

This is such a rookie mistake. Early in the analysis, a young stream lead or project manager finds an anomaly, too much inventory, two initiatives with the same objective, an unhappy customer complaint that hasn’t been resolved, or one department with a 1/5 span of control when others have one manager to ten staff members.

Sure you are excited. You are already earning your fees. So you run to tell the buying client and anyone who’ll listen.

Then you find out. We stock extra inventory from that supplier because they are shutting the factory for maintenance, the two initiatives do entirely different things and are coordinating on the shared objective, the CSR solves the problem she’s been waiting for her manager to return from holiday to approve, and the low span of control department staff are all new and being intensively trained by the manager.

What you wanted to do was impress the client and you undermined your credibility because you didn’t ask enough questions.

Just look at the numbers

One of my earliest projects was to help decide whether a can manufacturer should rent enough warehouse spare space to manage a biannual peak in capacity or to buy an extra warehouse and rent out the extra capacity at non-peak timeframes. We were given spreadsheets of manufacturing output and warehouse costs and the real estate transaction costs for an empty local warehouse. We were expected to do multivariate correlation analysis.

I suggested that we interview some manufacturing staff. There was a lot of staring at their shoes and one said, “you should interview customers, especially at the soft drink plant.” The soft drink plant manager stared at his shoes a lot, too.

We did some more analysis and uncovered a deal between the plant managers at the can manufacturer and the soft drink plant. The two firms were on fiscal years three months apart. Cans were shipped and returned to maximize each manager’s bonus. There was no need for more warehouse space.

I have worked on downsizing projects that looked at what people were paid in total but ignored overtime that was cause by understaffing in some departments. I have looked at excess inventory numbers, as described above, where a colleague wanted to fire the inventory manager.

Numerical analysis can identify a potential problem, but you have to verify the root cause. Sometimes that means you have to talk to real people.

It’s simple

I admit this is a pet peeve. Murphy is right: “Nothing is as easy as it looks.”

Consultants are hired to help companies change. The client may want to increase revenue, or increase profit, by reducing cost. There may be inefficient processes, antiquated equipment or systems. There may be some “people issues” in the way, wrong people, too many or not enough people, a lack of integration between departments or divisions. Or many of these things at the same time. If it was simple the client would figure it out on their own and never hire a consultant.

Why then do I see consultants advocate a “ten percent across the board headcount reduction” that treats growing understaffed businesses the same way as declining overstaffed ones? Why do they offer staff a buy-out to leave, “eight months salary,” so that the most competent, i.e., anyone who knows they can get another job, leaves? Why do they design an organization by drawing redlines through names on a spreadsheet with people’s names, grades and salaries without ever talking to people or looking at personnel records? Why do they start new systems or processes without running the old in parallel? Or just copy a strategy, metrics, or other solution from another client without analyzing potential differences and conflicts?

It’s because they think it’s simple. Easy peasy. It’s not. And it’s just another disrespectful, arrogant failure mode born of the belief that we’re the “smartest guys in the room’, which is what the Enron guys used to say, and that worked out so well.

What is simple are the words that describe the antidote to all these failure modes: gratitude, humility, empathy, the foundation of being helpful when asked.

That’s simple to describe, but it does take some self-awareness, discipline and humility to apply.

There are more stories of success and failure from my life in consulting in Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates and Their Mentors. Click here for details.