Choosing the right advisor or consultant, and why they often don't deliver (and why its probably your fault).

In my experience, the majority of consultant programs where change or new practises are required, fail to deliver on the intended outcomes. In larger organisations, I also see poor projects given the tick of success, only because the person who appointed them doesn’t want to admit it was a failure.

Yet despite this rather negative belief, I still think that 100% of businesses need external consultancy services from time to time. It’s a bit of a contradiction I admit.

The purpose of this article is to give some ideas on how to ensure consultancy programs don’t fail and how you can set them up to succeed.

Why do you need advisors or consultants from time to time?

I believe there are two broad reasons you need external consultants.

Firstly, when you’re in the painting, you can’t see the whole picture. You need someone that’s looking at your painting from a different perspective to help you manage the blind spots you will never see. 

However, not only do you need someone, you need the right someone. You need a person with the right skills and experiences to interpret the painting properly. Otherwise you will end up with bad advice and bad outcomes. I’ve been there and I see this regularly with the people and companies that I’m close to.  

Secondly, in this world of rapid change, you can’t possibly know or keep up with everything that is happening. Consultants who spend their lives living and breathing particular specialities can bring skills and knowledge that you just could never develop on your own.

So, how do you turn the contraction of needing something that so often fails into a success?  Here are a few ideas.

Evaluate your capability and capacity first.

As stated above, I’ve spent millions of dollars, and most of it was a failure. Not because they were bad people or bad ideas, but we missed one critical thing.

This critical issue was my organisations capability and capacity to actually execute on the ideas. Were we ready and able to actually do the things the advisor or consultant was brought in to do?

Someone from outside the organisation simply cannot make change inside an organisation. Only the organisation itself can take the ideas and execute them. If you’re thinking you can engage/hire an external person to make any change, they can’t.

It’s like appointing someone to sit on the bow of the boat screaming “left, go left, go left!” even though the only people that can make it go left are those in charge of the engines and the steering. If they choose not to, then there will be no change in direction. The consultant can only work through those in charge of the steering and engines.  

This is where my own focus and passion lies, as well as the Adizes Institute. I use my previous experiences, coupled with world-class tools and programs from the Institute, to help organisations build capability and capacity. It’s part science, part art, and it needs specialisation.  

This capability and capacity is mostly so organisations can react to problems and opportunities faster than their competitors, but a by-product is ensuring consultant projects actually end in success.

I would rather hold open an engagement, or pause it completely at my own expense than try and complete a project knowing they are likely to fail.

TIP 1: A good advisor will actively work with you to understand your current capability and capacity to do the work they are engaged to do. If they see there are potential issues, they will pause and discuss these with you and not start until there is a resolution. This sometimes means they will forego or delay their own revenue in your best interest.   

Specialist not generalist.

Advising and consulting is a tough job. It’s hard to find clients that trust you, let alone pay you. Once you have found a client, it’s all too easy for advisors and consultants to try and stretch the engagement into areas that really are not their specialty.

You need to protect them from themselves. Again they are not bad people, it’s just a tough world out there so once a consultant has a client locked in it’s all too easy to play the “I can do that for you as well” card.

I doubt you would be happy getting advice on a hip problem from an ear, nose and throat (E.N.T) specialist? The E.N.T. specialist probably has the ability to go and do some research on hips and give you advice, given they are a Dr, but it wouldn’t be the same as someone that works on hips, day in, day out.

I admit that some advisors and consultants have a wider range of competencies than others, and that’s totally fine. Just make sure your playing within their true area of specialty. 

TIP 2- Don’t get sucked into the easy world of the “all in one” consultant. Get speciality advice.

Understand where control and implementation success actually comes from.

I was the Managing Director of my companies. We were in 4 countries, we had hundreds of staff and we were growing strongly. But as time went on, my frustration increased because I felt like I had no control.

This is a common feeling when I talk with other business owners and executives. I didn’t understand it, but I do now.

People confuse control and authority. Authority and control are not the same thing. Control comes when you have 3 specific ingredients aligned. These ingredients are Authority, Power and Influence. If you align these 3 together properly, then control is achieved.

Authority is the easy bit. Lots of people have authority. I was the MD; I had ultimate authority across my organisation. I appointed the consultants who essentially carried my authority with them. But we failed. Why? Because we didn’t have the power.

Adizes defines power as ‘the ability to grant or withhold expected co-operation’. This is the true power of any system or organisation and it has nothing to do with titles.

As an example, Mr Trump has tried to effectively ‘ban’ Muslim immigration from specific countries into the US. He signed an executive order using his ‘authority’. However, now a Judge, whom a President needs expected co-operation from, is saying it’s unconstitutional and it will be difficult to go through.

Even supposedly the most ‘powerful’ person in the world needs to understand the difference between authority and power. He has authority, but as Obama showed, the presidency has very little power.

I had the authority to expect my organisation to co-operate. However, just by expecting things to happen is exactly the way to ensure they won’t. If you don’t expect something from someone, they have no power over you. As soon as you expect co-operation from someone, they hold the power. It is important to understand that.  

You need to bring the ‘power’ on the journey. It has to be their journey and they need to be part of the decision. The ‘power’ will get on board and grant co-operation if they believe in it, understand it, and are motivated to do it without the need for blunt and punitive measures. If they aren’t on board, expect a challenging time.  

This is where implementation failure occurs. Senior people make decisions because they have the authority, and then wonder why programs fall behind, or ultimately fail.  

One important point here: please understand that I am not advocating that all people should be involved all the time. Management by committee is an absolute disaster. You need to separate decision making from implementation management.

You need a broad complimentary team, including from the power base, engaged in the decision making process. However, once that decision is made then absolute dictatorship in implementation is required. I have other articles you can read about this little nuance.

There is a 3rd ingredient: Influence.

Even with authority and power, things can go bad. ‘Influencers’ need to be understood and engaged as part of the process as well. There are always people in an organisation that technically don’t have any authority or power, but manage to influence people to do things, or most usually, not to do things.

These are people with lots of product or client knowledge, may have been with the company for long periods, or with people personalities that just seem to create influence over others.

These people will kill new ideas and consultant projects with impressive speed if you don’t engage and neutralise them.  

You need to get them into the canoe with the authority and power. A person that is rowing a boat finds it very hard to rock the boat at the same time.

TIP 3- A good consultant will help you bring together your organisational authority, power and influence to ensure programs are successful. They will not just rely on your authority, as this will set them up to fail. They will accept they have no authority and power themselves, and will support you to get this power and influence in place.

Summary

In summary my suggestions are:

• Understand your capacity and capability first. If there is an issue, fix it first before proceeding. This is where we can help.
• Get specialist advice in each area you need assistance in.
• Get the Authority, Power and Influence engaged and working as part of the decision making process flowing from a consultancy project.