“What? Me Worry?”

Consultants, especially young consultants, take some stick from time to time. There are consultant jokes. There is some under-the-breath name calling. It is all born of envy. It isn’t easy work for a company for ten years and watch the company hire a team of consultants, many younger than you, but making more money. So some hazing happens.

I arrived at a client site with a young team. We were shown to our dedicated office space, which was an old storeroom “cleaned” for our use. The was one eight foot table and two electrical wall sockets for six people. This was pre-WIFI so we had one ethernet connection so we could get on Lotus Notes and one old laser printer, for which we had to go buy a multipin connector cable, and access to an ancient photo copier and one landline phone. The room had no windows, but the door could be locked and we had one filing cabinet that also locked. Over the filing cabinet someone had hung a plastic framed poster of Alfred E. Neuman, the mascot of Mad Magazine from the 1960s, complete with his catch phrase: “What? Me worry?” Alfred was a symbol of complete cluelessness.

Nobody on the young team recognized Alfred, but I grew up with him and got the joke and the insult instantly. When I got a moment I spoke to my client “work-with” who was closer to my age. “None of the kids get it, but I think the addition of Alfred E. Neuman is hilarious. You know though, that poster’s probably worth some real money; they sure ain’t making ‘em anymore.”

Next day Alfred was gone, but the message was clear. “Until proven otherwise,  you kids don’t know anything,” We had our work cut out for us.

Why do clients hire consultants?

First off, the parts of the client system who were most offended by our presence and the folks doing the hazing were not those who hired us. The hiring client was two or three levels above the people who were asked to “cooperate” with consultants. So from the start we were foisted on those we had to work with. Sometimes even the “hiring” client was told to hire us. Division heads were directed by the CEO; CEOs were directed by the Board. So proving our worth was often the order of the day.

There was usually a problem to resolve. Sometimes revenue was declining; sometimes costs were increasing squeezing profits. Sometimes the causes of the problem were clear. A new competitor had entered the market; a new technology changed the cost profile. Most times the causes weren’t clear. And that was part of why we were hired.

When I was an independent consultant I was frequently hired for “people stuff,” e.g., the leadership team couldn’t agree, or a project was behind schedule, or critical customer information wasn’t getting to decision makers. There was always “people stuff’ that complicated revenue or cost projects that I worked on at larger firms too. Consulting is always about changing something and that means people have to do more of something, less of something, or do something differently.

Therein lies one of the reasons for the hazing. People don’t like change that is imposed upon them and that’s what consultants represent.

There are times when a client hires a consultant to “shake things up,” or to implement the latest management fad. I am sorry to say that too much of the reengineering work I saw at Gemini Consulting fell into that category. Sometimes there was real resistance to that work, which nearly always resulted in “POP” (people off payroll). When I worked at Gemini, a chemical industry team was working one night in a site Quonset hut when someone fired a rifle shot through the wall. Thankfully no one was hurt. The team de-crewed immediately and the project was ultimately cancelled.

However, most times, even during reengineering work, Gemini consultants were able to earn respect, demonstrate their worth, get people on board, and solve the presenting problem. Even when you are taking steps out of a process, which eliminates jobs, you can treat people well. My role on many of those projects was to look at redeployments within the company or to ensure severance to cushion the blow and/or outplacement to help people find other jobs. I still didn’t like that kind of work much, and when I graduated to continuous improvement work later, I made sure that I had client commitment that no one would lose their job as a result of CI work.

What do consultants contribute?

Some consultants bring unique expertise that would be too expensive to hire and keep on staff, e.g., a level of content knowledge about a technology, or a new market the firm is entering, a once-in-a-generation skillset like a major acquisition.

Some consultants bring a process adeptness that truly saves time. My work in leadership team facilitation around strategy and organization design as well as my work with innovation and improvement initiatives might be so described. I always worked to transfer as much of this process adeptness to others as I could, which is why a lot of my work included training.

It’s funny, but trainers don’t get hazed nearly as much as other consultants, because when people are learning they tend to value the person who facilitates that learning. I liked training  and I got reasonably good at it, but the challenge I faced was not to get defined as a trainer. Training only solves the knowledge and skill part of the problem, not the root cause. Companies that throw training at lost revenue or profit problems  often fail to solve the problem, then quickly cut the training.

Those companies aren’t a good referral source for a consulting business. All of my business development came from referrals. Too much training equaled lots of LinkedIn connections and people who called to “pick my brain” about becoming a consultant and too few referred new clients.

So why do consultants have such a bad reputation?

One thing I learned from training is to ask questions. As a trainer you ask questions to promote discussion, which is how many people learn. As a consultant you ask questions to understand the problem, to uncover areas to analyze, to build understanding of findings, to build commitment to a solution, and to facilitate change.

Asking questions requires a certain amount of humility. You don’t know and can’t always anticipate the answer. If you can, then you aren’t really asking questions; you’re just manipulating people with a question mark or rising inflection in your voice.

Consultants, in my view, spend far too much time presenting. Humility can be seen as a detriment in presenting. Confidence, or at least sounding confident, is seen as critical. Some consultants get very good at sounding confident. Then they think that is the “name of the game.” Then, over time, some consultants become “humility challenged,” at least, some of the time. I have learned, often the hard way, that people don’t much like “humility challenged” people, especially if “the boss hired them, I have to educate them and they make three times what I make.”

Consultants do know some things. I believe that hiring a consultant can identify how to solve a tough problem, maybe even get people started on the change necessary. However, there comes a point when the consultant must turn the client’s business back over to the client to run.

In my work as a process consultant, I learned to telegraph early on that this was their business, with the following admission:

“I’m a consultant. In my work I talk to people like you about their jobs and the challenges of their business. The net effect is that I have become quite good at talking about work; please don’t mistake that for proficiency at doing work. On the contrary, I have developed an abiding respect for people who do real work. So questions I ask or a conclusion I draw are based upon something I’ve heard or seen; if doesn’t jibe with your experience, please consider that an opportunity for discussion.”

By this admission, I hoped to communicate that everything I know as a consultant I learned from people like you. I may know some things, but certainly not everything, regardless how confident I might sound.

My book is now available in print or eBook on Amazon

or on several other eBook publishers