Hiring consultants - I'm a consultant. This is what I will and won't do for you.

"If he says to you, ‘I want a new culture, go make it happen,’ fight back immediately and say ‘whoa, wrong conception here.’ We can’t make it happen. You have to make it happen, and we may be able to help you." - Edgar Schein

We all know what consultants do, right? I’m sure you’ve heard some jokes about them, in any case. Just to set the stage for what I’m going to write, FYI: I often work as a consultant. I’m not going to complain about consultants, nor am I going to tell you how wonderful we are. My field is the world of “people issues” at the workplace - you know, the stuff many managers would rather outsource to someone instead of dealing with it themselves. Because it can be fluffy, blurry, frustrating, annoying, and difficult. It won’t be solved by fancy presentations or an army of junior consultants working day and night, analyzing markets. My assignments have been everything from building a code of conduct for a workplace, to complex conflict situations where management is at loss as to what they can do to get things back to normal working order, to conducting workshops in order to facilitate the merger of two units in a larger organization. And everything in between.

There are different types of consultants out there. Some are expert consultants, who get paid to analyze the situation, tell companies how things should be done and to give solutions to difficult problems. However, this type of consulting is rarely appropriate in situations where the core issues are those involving people, teamwork, cooperation, and leadership. I have yet to see a case where “people issues” could be solved with some type of cookie cutter solution. However, this does seem to be the wish in many cases. “Can you please come here and fix this? Can't we just do a training session to get them to understand they need to behave? Could you talk to my team, they’re having a difficult time working together? Do you have a survey or a method you could use to sort this out? Personality tests for everyone?”

No, no, and no. I won’t, and I don’t. The thing is, if I come in and (try to) do those things for you or them, you’ll still be stuck with the same situation after I leave. I’d rather work with you so that you can learn how to process your own workplace issues, develop skills that will help you in the future and give you a sense of ownership of the situation. I’d love to help you understand what’s going on, how it (probably) got to the point where it is today, and to figure out what you and the people you work with can do to improve things. To start with, here are a few thoughts I’d like to share with you today.

“Why don’t we apply in organizational consulting the learning we have acquired in other helping professions: about client involvement, about people having to learn at their own pace, about helping clients to have insights and solve their own problems?”  - Edgar Schein

Don’t believe there’s a standard solution to your unique problem. A consultant who comes in with a package deal that “has worked in so many companies just like yours” is just lazy. When it comes to people issues at the workplace, there simply isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, so don’t be fooled into thinking there is one. See to it that the consultant you hire actually takes the time to listen to you and assess the situation for what it is, and not how it might fit into one of his cookie cutter packages. Also, it will be a much slower process than you think, so be patient.

Don’t try to avoid the real issue by doing “something” just so that “something has been done”. Be realistic - do you really think the service you’re buying has the potential to help you achieve your goal or solve the problem at hand? I’ll give you an example: I once received a call from a HR person who said she would like to organize an anonymous survey to find out more about the situation in a work unit. Okay, sure, that’s something a survey can potentially help with. But I’ve learned that there’s usually more to requests like this than meets the eye, so I asked if there was anything in particular they wanted to investigate, and how many people would be answering this survey. The number of employees was about 10 (so the results of a survey would be impossible to report while preserving anonymity) and after a while she finally told me that actually, they already knew what (or rather, who) the problem was, and HR would just like use a survey for pointing at the problem. And, so that they could say they had done something. Obviously, this was not a good approach to the problem simply because it wouldn’t solve anything, so we ended up doing something entirely different. Deal with what’s really going on, and if you don’t know what it is, spend some time finding out.

Don’t try to outsource your responsibility or ownership of the issue. And if you’re a consultant, don’t take that role when, not if, it’s offered. I think many consultants are problem solvers by nature and as such, we find it very rewarding to be able to help. The initial is often something that boils down to “Please fix this for us!” and it’s very easy to get on the path of trying just that. However, being too helpful can be the worst thing we can do - it takes away the responsibility and commitment to a solution that should be something owned by the people in the organization you work with. Why is this? Because if they don’t own their problems and their solutions, the solutions will leave once the consultants leave and what are left are the problems. It is very tempting to jump in there and give advice when the more appropriate thing to do is to help management find their own solutions that they believe in. How could I even pretend to know better than the team or the people who have worked in the company for years? They probably have the solution, it just needs to be found, which is where the consultant can help if he or she is any good.

Make sure someone in the company owns the process and can make decisions concerning everyone involved in the process. This is especially important if the situation is in any way conflicted. Someone who is involved in a conflict investigation or resolution process themselves can NOT be the one responsible for the whole process. Upper management is often very reluctant to get involved in these processes, but it is what makes or breaks the success of the efforts. People involved in the situation are always biased and are often unable to see the big picture. Once you start digging into things that need improvement, often there are surprises. What if one of the fingers points at you? You would like someone outside the process to take a fair look at the situation and have the position to see to it that execution and follow-up happen in due order.

Don’t shut the door from your team once you’ve hired a consultant. Often it seems that having a consultant to help you analyze the situation is so rewarding and empowering that the actual point of having the consultant there gets blurred. You were supposed to solve some issues, right? Make sure you’re not just coming up with grand ideas and plans, and then not sharing and processing them together with others. If changes need to be made, everyone needs to be on board so that they can feel like they’re part of the process and not like things are dropping on them from above every time the consultant is spotted walking into the manager’s office.

Consultants can contribute vital assistance, provide an outsider view that the company desperately needed, act as catalysts for positive changes or provide knowledge that is not available in the company itself. A consultant or coach can be an invaluable sounding board for managers and executives when making difficult decisions. But use them to help you help yourself, not to solve your problems, because they can’t do that.

“...about making undiscussable discussable, about not taking for granted what is taken for granted … so that the unmanageable can become manageable.”   -Chris Argyris