Are consultants made or born?

We were working through a deliverable the other day, just two of us on the phone, trying to work out what the storyline should be. One of the things we were grappling with was whether and how to present a recommendation to the client which would challenge his previously held beliefs. We were working toward a set of principles that, on the face of it, would conflict with a set of principles that they already had. In this case the existing set of principles painted an ERP nirvana where all HR functionality would be delivered by the single ERP, and all data would be managed by that ERP.

Coincidentally, I had submitted a report and some recommendations to another client just a day or so before. This report described an Information Management (IM) Strategy. The client had made some comments on the report. One comment about data management suggested that data should be stored once and used many times. It occurred to me that this mantra was no different than the nirvana of the ERP.

It would be really cool if all functionality fitted within a single application or set of applications. If you are an application architect then that is your nirvana; life, in this case, becomes paradisiac!! But the user doesn’t care; what he wants is a consistent interface. In an IM context, the user often knows perfectly well that the data she is going to use will come from many different sources. In the world of big data and unstructured information “store once, use often” is just not realistic. What she needs today is a way of assessing the reliability of data rather (necessarily) than its veracity.

As consultants, we can often fall into the trap of supposing that a rigorous approach to solving a problem will lead to an unassailable set of logically justifiable recommendations. We try to recommend principles that are logical, sound and consistent. Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. How many of us have returned to a client a year or so down the track and found our recommendations working as we envisaged? Few indeed, I think.

I like mathematical analogies, probably because I am a mathematician. Euclid’s axioms held sway over geometry for 2,000 years. But then these axioms were questioned; did they always have to be true? Building partly on some work by Persian mathematicians in the 12^th century (driven by doubt about the parallel postulate), the Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai and the Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky separately discovered hyperbolic geometry. Elliptic and finite geometries followed. So there are other geometries than Euclid!! And, with Einstein, we now know that space is curved not flat!! The angles in a triangle do not always add to 180 degrees.

Similarly, in 1900 the famous mathematician David Hilbert published 10 problems whose solution (he thought) would lead to significant further developments in mathematics. The second of these problems concerned the compatibility of the arithmetical axioms; that is to show that there exists a set of basic rules that would enable the consistent construction of arithmetic. Unfortunately for Hilbert (who thought that there did indeed exist a consistent set of arithmetical axioms), Kurt Gödel proved in 1933 that for any given system based on consistent axioms, there are some truths in that system that could not be proved. Once again the world is not the perfect place that we would wish it to be. And unfortunately, for me as a mathematician, we never prove the Goldbach conjecture (that every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes) because it is not capable of proof in our arithmetical system.

So, here are two instances in science where the rules were not, after all, rules. There were other realities available. We know this from our own experience of life.

And that brings me back to the question I asked in the title of this piece: are consultants made or are they born?

The reason for posing the question relates to the ERP gig I referred to above. The fact is that the client’s principles pointed to nirvana but then so did the set that we were developing. Neither was right but then neither could really be said to be wrong. The way around this is to describe a set of recommendations that enables the client to make decisions. The purpose of consulting is not to say exactly how things must be but to paint a picture that is internally consistent that will work. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we tell the client what he wants to hear. Certainly not; we must always provide advice that the client needs to hear, but sometimes we need to massage things in a way that makes our recommendations capable of acceptance rather than just being acceptable.

In the same way that we can ask whether painters or composers are made or born we must ask whether consultants are made or born. Is consulting an art or a science? Do we need left brain (detailed, logical thinking) or right brain (imaginative, conceptual thinking) people in consulting?

Of course, we know that the answer is that we need both. Whenever we write a proposal for a piece of work we start with an approach. An approach is a broad set of steps that, in sequence, should lead to a statement of a problem and its solution. We underpin this with tools and techniques that constitute a method. The concepts behind the approach help us to sell the gig; the precision of the method means that we can deliver profitably. And, of course, while we are delivering we need both conceptual analysis and rigorous assessment. We need all personality types: the conceptual thinker often thinks by speaking and the analytical thinks by listening. Of course, that’s a massive generalisation but I am old enough to make massive generalisations.

Years ago when I was with Coopers in London we did a Myers Briggs test on all our consultants. There are 16 personality type indicators or psychological preferences in the Myers Briggs theory. We all agreed to share the results anonymously. We found that of a practice of about thirty consultants, two were clustered around one (as it happened left brain) type and the rest around another right brain type. We had fallen into the trap of hiring in our own image. We had fallen into the trap of thinking that good ideas, loudly and robustly expressed would mean that we would always be OK. We were trading on intellectual arrogance.

The fact of consulting is that we need all types of personality. We need the left brain and the right brain. We need the scientist and we need the artist. We should not care whether we are born or made.

We just need to be good at what we do and to be honest enough to recognise that, when all is said and done, it is less important that our recommendations are right than it is that our recommendations will work.

All consultants are cowboys

Stating the obvious

A consultant is someone to whom you give your watch and then you wait for her (or, of course, him) to tell you the time. A consultant is someone who tells you what you already know. Here’s one of those tales that you get circulated these days in your e-mail[1]. It’s about consultants.

A farmer, named Bill, was herding his flocks in a remote pasture when suddenly a flashy Porsche Cayenne advances out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man, named Trevor, in a Valentino shirt, Brioni pants, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses, leaned out of the window and asked our shepherd:

"If I can tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherd looks at Trevor, then at his peacefully grazing flock, and calmly answers "Sure!"

Trevor parks the car, whips out his iPad[2], connects it by Bluetooth to his iPhone, surfs to a NASA page on the Internet where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system, scans the area, opens up a database and some 60 Excel spreadsheets with complex formulas. Finally he prints out a 150 page report on his hi-tech miniaturised printer, turns round to our shepherd and says: "You have here exactly 1586 sheep!"

"This is correct. As agreed, you can take one of the sheep," says the shepherd. He watches the young man make a selection and bundle it in his Cayenne.

Then he says: "If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me my sheep back?"

"Okay, why not" answers the young man.

"You are a consultant," says the shepherd.

"This is correct," says Trevor, "How did you guess that?"

"Easy," answers the shepherd, "You turn up here although nobody called you. You want to be paid for the answer to a question I already knew the solution to. And you don't know @$#% about my business because you took my dog Tim!"

Fixing problems

Consultants often get a bad press and (in my experience and having seen some of their work) it’s hardly surprising. The halcyon days of the big consultancies are over. Today more and more clients have MBAs, they know all the theory and (like the well-read consultant) they can often fix their own problems. Of course, there’s no reason to suppose that the MBA-wielding manager can fix his or her own problems any quicker or better (or even at all) than the consultant. The problem with problems is not that the answer is difficult, it’s that the path to the answer is difficult.

In a sense, consultants don’t do anything. Sometimes we’re consultants because we would be hopeless at running our own business. But a good consultant is a facilitator; he or she will take you to a solution. And when a good consultant has been at work on you, you will think: “I could have done that myself”. And maybe you could … but you didn’t, did you? You could have used your watch to tell the time but you still gave it to the consultant.

Why use a consultant?

There are, in my experience, three reasons why people use consultants. The first is that they have a problem and they do not know what the answer is or how to get there. The second is that they could work it out themselves but they do not have enough people. The third is that they know exactly what the answer is but they need to hear it from someone else from outside their organisation.

The third reason is more common than one might suppose – and it’s another reason for the stories about watches. One variant of this reason is the need to settle a dispute between two managers within an organisation. This is dangerous stuff for a consultant – there is no way to win. A consulting engagement designed to settle a feud will certainly drag you into the heart of the politics of the organisation. There is probably no right answer and, when everyone realises they have been going round in circles, they’ll start pointing the finger. And they’ll point it at you, the consultant. You’re easy meat because when the chips are down you’re expendable. You’re a supernumerary.

But the more usual variant of the third reason is that the client knows what he wants to hear but needs an external opinion. This may seem strange but, as my elder son used to say when he was about seven or eight, it’s amazing but true. I have had experiences in my life where this was so. A simple example was when I was an external expert[3] on a government departmental working party to re-organise the Department along commercial, private sector[4] lines. I am not sure that my expertise was any better than my working party colleagues – though it was certainly different than theirs – but they needed that comfort. Perfectly legitimate and they paid a good fee rate. On another occasion it became clear to me as part of a larger engagement that a particular systems investment was almost certainly not going to pay off. In fact most managers in the client organisation (except those one or two directly associated with the project) agreed and were open about this. One Wednesday I had lunch with one of the senior managers and said that the project should be stopped. There was palpable relief (and even more so when I said I would write my recommendation down) because at last they had an external[5] opinion. Two days later on the Friday a note went out cancelling the project. Ah, the scent of power!!

Yet it doesn’t necessarily work like that. In similar circumstances another government department had spent several million pounds on a system which was built to a set of business requirements that had changed. Basically, if it were ever to be finished, the system would be useless. Stop it now, I recommended.

“Ah,” came the reply. “We couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, it’s the Minister. He would be embarrassed by a cancellation, so we really have to spend a few more million even though we know the system will be useless.”

That, I suppose, is an example of Realpolitik in action!

Whatever the dangers of the third type of engagement, as a fully-fledged consultant with young mouths to feed you will take the engagement on the assumption that this one will be different and that you understand the personalities and the politics. It’s still risky. We persuade ourselves that the risk is low because that is what we want the risk to be. Risk management is not a science but simply the art of defeating logic and being deaf to the lessons of history.

The second reason for engaging consultants, where the client engages you because although he could do the work he just doesn’t have enough people, is more pedestrian but in general it’s safer. Although, having said that, a Type 2 Reason can become a Type 1 Reason (where the client has a genuine need to know) very quickly. But let’s suppose that client really could do this work, then effectively he or she is body-shopping; the consultant is simply a hired hand (or hands). But the challenge lies in the very fact that the client could (or thinks he could) do the work … if only he had enough resource. If you’re not careful, as a consultant you may be on a road to nowhere. If they think they could do it then they probably think they know the answer and they probably think they know the method or approach. And if they do then yours may well be wrong. Handing the politics in these situations is key.

Black box consulting

There are two approaches to executing a consulting engagement – and both are common. The first is “black box” consulting. Give me a task and I’ll go away for a while then I’ll come back and tell you the answer. This is the watch scenario. Sure, you know what the time is but you don’t know that I know the watch is slow, what make it is, whether it’s new … all sorts of things that would persuade of the value of the answer. Black box consulting must have a high failure rate because the client would have had such a limited input into the development of the answer. Yet you see an enormous amount of black box consultancies. Generally the reports and recommendations lie on a shelf gathering dust to be thrown out by the client’s replacement. Consulting is useless unless you involve the client intimately in what you’re doing. So the second approach to consulting is the best one … “we’ll do things with you, not to you”.

“Doing things with you” is easier said than done because many buyers of consulting services are relatively naïve. They think that “black box” consulting will be just fine for them.

“What, you need a workshop with the management team?”

“Whoah – I didn’t think you would need to interview all the executives for an hour – I don’t know if I can get that much commitment from them.”

“Why can’t you just tell me what you did for your last client.”

None of these objections to involvement are necessarily obvious at the time you propose for a piece of work. And even if they were it might not mean that you would walk away from the job. But it does say something important. In some cases engaging consultants can make managers feel that their weaknesses and prejudices are being exposed. This is dangerous stuff as well.

It underlines the importance of consultation – of talking widely and of engaging people in what you are doing. You may think as you read this that it’s obvious. But – to a first degree of approximation – all organisations are pretty much the same. They do the same things. They may use different names for “production” or “sales” … but at heart they are topologically (in a mathematical sense[6]) equivalent.

The thing that causes organisations to be different is people. It cannot be otherwise. If it were otherwise then presumably – from a systems view – we could build the perfect strategy and not worry about it again. But of course people introduce complexity and chaos.

The three things you need to be a consultant

Anyone who has been on one of my courses will have heard my three things. Here they are again.

Use the Boston Square

This is my metaphor for saying, "make sure you analyse the problem at hand; structure that analysis and compare your client's situations with other situations". Consulting is not about making stuff up. Your brain is one of the two consulting assets you have (I will tell you what the other one is below).

You need a graph that goes upward

Don't forget the client called you because they need the answer to something; they probably want it to get better, make sure that you or someone else can measure the effect of your recommendations.

Know every feature of PowerPoint

When you're in front of the client you are your own PowerPoint slide, each feature of PowerPoint is a metaphor for your appearance and rhetoric ... make sure your shirt and ties match, don't wear dangly earrings, build the argument, be persuasive ... above all look and act as if you know what you are talking about! The second of the two consulting assets is your ability to present your recommendations (either orally or verbally or both) constructively, fluently and persuasively.

A final thought

Years ago I saw Douglas Adams speak after the publication of the fourth book in his trilogy. Someone asked him when the fifth book was due. “Don’t be silly,” he said, “whoever heard of five books in a trilogy”. You are sometimes allowed to break the rules; you must certainly question them.

So my fourth thing of the three you need as a consultant is the ability to avoid the word “critical”. The thing that you think is critical very rarely is. Go and look it up.

Ah … there’s a fifth thing: in the consultant’s lexicon you cannot find the words “always” or “never”. We do change – the more immutable the better!

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[1] This one did indeed come in an e-mail. I could not trace its origin.

[2] Sensible consultants generally use Macs.

[3] The word “expert” is not a good one – “ex” is someone who used to be and a “spurt” is a drip under pressure. Mmm…

[4] In those days in the UK when Thatcher believed that the private sector must know how to do it properly. How wrong can one be?

[5] Sometimes consultants are thought to give independent advice. This is nonsense; no one is independent. What we provide is objective advice.

[6] In mathematics, two objects are “topologically” equivalent if – given that they were both made in infinitely elastic plasticine – one could be trans-formed into the other without cutting or gluing. So what I mean here for organisations is that – essentially – the functions are the same. It’s the way they are put together that differs.