CHAPTER 1
A Consultant by Any Other Name .

ANY FORM OF HUMOR has some truth in it. The truth in the prevailing skepticism about consultants is that the traditional consultant, internal or external, has tended to act solely as an agent of management: assuming the manager's role in either performing highly technical activities that a manager cannot do or performing unpopular activities such as reducing costs and people that a manager does not want to do. The most dramatic examples of consultants' taking the place of managers is when they identify people who will be let go or functions that will be eliminated. It goes by the term restructuring. The intent of this book is to give you options in responding with impact beyond your impact on the real pressures that are driving managers to the point of outsourcing what is very difficult. This is the value proposition of both internal and external consulting.

When you are asked directions and you tell someone to get off the bus two stops before you do, you are acting as a consultant. Every time you give advice to someone who is faced with a choice, you are consulting. When you don't have direct control over people and yet want them to listen to you and heed your advice, you are face-to-face with the consultant's dilemma. For some of you, this may be your full-time predicament. Some of you may face it only occasionally, functioning part time as managers (having direct control) and part time as consultants (wanting to influence but lacking authority to control).

Some Distinctions

A consultant is a person in a position to have some influence over an individual, a group, an organization, or community but has no direct power to make changes or implement programs. A manager is someone who has direct responsibility over the action. The moment you take direct responsibility, you are acting as a manager.

Most people in staff or support roles in organizations are really consultants, even if they don't officially call themselves consultants. Support people function in any organization by planning, recommending, assisting, or advising in such matters as these:

• Human resources or people,
• Information technology,
• Financial analysis,
• Auditing,
• Systems analysis,
• Market research,
• Product design,
• Long-range planning,
• Organizational effectiveness,
• Safety,
• Learning and development,
• Diversity equity and inclusion,
• Project management, and
• Many more.

The recipients of all this advice are called clients. Sometimes, the client is a single individual. Other times, the client may be a work group, a department, a whole organization, or a neighborhood. The client is the person or persons whom the consultant wants to influence.*

In organizations, clients for the services provided by support people are called line managers. Line managers have to labor under the advice of support groups, whether they like it or not. But by definition, any support function has no direct authority over anything but its own time, its own internal staff, and the nature of the service it offers. This tension between the line manager (or client) who has direct control and the support person (or consultant) who does not have direct control is one of the central themes of this book.

The key to understanding the consultant role is to see the difference between a consultant and a manager.

Listen to Lynn:

"It was a great four-month project. I headed the team from administrative services that installed the new management information system. We assessed the problems, designed the system, and got Alice, the line manager, to let us install the system from top to bottom."

Lynn is clearly very satisfied-but this is the line manager's satisfaction. The team wasn't really acting as a consultant; it took over a piece of the line manager's job for four months.

This distinction is important. A consultant needs to function differently from a line manager-for the consultant's own sake and for the learning goals of the client. It's okay to have direct control-and most of us want it in various forms. It is essential, though, to be aware of the difference in the roles we are assuming as to when we have it and when we don't.

Much of the disfavor associated with the term consultant comes from the actions of people who call themselves consultants but act as surrogate line managers. When you act on behalf of or in the place of the manager, you are acting as a surrogate manager. When the client says, "Complete this report for me," "Hire this person for me," "Design this system for me," "Counsel this employee," or "Figure out which jobs stay and which jobs go," the manager is asking for a surrogate. The attraction of the surrogate manager role is that at least for that one moment, you assume the manager's power-but, in fact, you are doing the manager's job, not yours.

Your goal or end-product in any consulting activity is some kind of change. Change comes in two varieties. At one level, we consult to create change in the line organization of a structural, policy, or procedural nature-for example, a new compensation package, a new reporting process, or a new safety program. The second kind of change is the end result that one person or many people in the line organization have learned something new. They may have learned what norms dominate their staff meetings, what they do to keep lower-level people in a highly dependent position in decision-making, how to involve people more directly in setting goals, or how to conduct better performance evaluations.

In its most general use, consultation describes any action you take with a system of which you are not a part. An interview with someone asking for help is a consulting act. A survey of problems, a training program, an evaluation, a study-all are consultations for the sake of change. The consultant's objective is to engage in successful actions that result in people or organizations managing themselves differently and better living out their own intentions.

The terms staff or support work and consulting work are interchangeable, reflecting the belief that people in a support role need consulting skills to be effective-regardless of their field of technical expertise (finance, planning, engineering, personnel, systems, law). Every time you give advice to someone who is in the position to make the choice, you are consulting. For each of these moments of consultation, there are three kinds of skills you need to do a good job: technical, interpersonal, and consulting skills.

Here are the distinctions.

Technical Skills

Above all, we need to know what the person is talking about. We need expertise about the question. Either in college or in our first job, we were trained in a specific field or function. This might be engineering, sales, accounting, counseling, IT, or any of the thousands of other ways people make a living. This is our basic training. It is only later, after acquiring some technical expertise, that we start consulting. If we didn't have some expertise, then people wouldn't ask for our advice. The foundation for consulting skills is some expertise-whether it is scientific, such as coke particle sizing, or nonscientific, such as management or organizational development. This book assumes you have some area of expertise.

Interpersonal Skills

To function with people, we need to have some interpersonal skills, that is, some ability to put ideas into words, to listen, to give support, to disagree reasonably, to basically maintain a relationship. There are many books, therapists, and seminars available to help people with these human skills. In fact, there is a whole industry about achieving better relationships that is devoted to improving these skills. Just like technical skills, interpersonal skills are necessary to effective work, life, and even consultation.

Consulting Skills

Each consulting project, whether it lasts 10 minutes or 10 months, goes through 5 phases. The steps in each phase are sequential; if you skip one or assume it has been taken care of, you are headed for trouble. Skillful consulting is being competent in the execution of each of these steps. Successfully completing the business of each phase is the primary focus of this book.

Consulting Skills Preview

Here is an overview of what is involved in the five phases of consulting.

Phase 1: Entry and Contracting

This phase has to do with the initial contact with a client, perhaps a manager or executive, about the project. It includes setting up the first meeting as well as exploring the problem, whether the consultant is the right person to work on this issue, what the client's expectations are, what the consultant's expectations are, and how to get started. Contracting also occurs on a regular basis with ongoing relationships. Each time something shifts or is completed, a contracting discussion is needed. When consultants talk about their disasters, their conclusion is usually that the project was faulty in the initial contracting or re-contracting stage.

Phase 2:...