The bromide is that a consultant borrows your watch and then charges to tell you what time it is. (I’ve always preferred this chestnut: A consultant is someone who arrives to study a problem and stays to become part of it.)
If you’re too stupid or too myopic to look at your own watch to tell the time, then maybe that consultant is providing value for the money. I know: blasphemy. But perhaps we need to reevaluate the current environment and what’s blasphemy and what’s not.
Fear On Parade
I find most businesses today fearful. Their most cherished “beliefs” have abandoned them: unending prosperity; reliable investment advisors; government safety nets; the power of credit; the loyalty of customers; the equalizing power of the global marketplace. (Perhaps that’s why so many churches are reporting heightened levels of attendance these days.)
As a result, executives and business owners cut back, retreat, and cower. Yet we all know that you can’t grow by reducing; and we all know that these times, too, shall end; and we all know that many organizations in tough industries (MacDonald’s) are doing well; and we all know that many entire industries (health care) are doing well.
You get the picture.
The increased perceived ambiguity today is causing the buyers of your services to freeze. They are in a paralysis caused by the departure of their normal mileposts and parameters. They are in the fog and are afraid of hitting a mountain or landing in a sinkhole.
They need light.
Borrow their flashlight and lead them through the gloom.
The Light Isn’t Extinguished
What do I mean by “their flashlight”? I mean that these organizations, large or small, for-profit or non-profit, public or private, haven’t gone blind. They not only don’t know where to look, however, but they’ve misplaced their means for doing so.
You don’t have to come in with some beacon to lead them. How could you? You really don’t understand their business better than they do, and you’re probably not a content expert to any greater degree than their own people.
What you have to do if find their own light and direct them with it. That “light” constitutes the following:
• Current, past, and future customers
• Key talent to retain and attract
• Products, services, and relationships in the market
• Key competitive edge now and in the future
• Public image and perception
You get the idea. All of these issues are within the company’s borders. You simply need to identify them (and add whatever others make sense), help gather the relevant information, create knowledge about the best courses of action, and help in the implementation.
Organizations are so shaken and fearful that they’ve lost their bearings and have taken their hands off the controls. They are purblind. People within the organization are loathe to offer bold or innovative solutions when they see the boss confused.
The light isn’t extinguished, they’ve just lost sight of it.
What’s Wrong With Borrowing?
If someone can’t read their watch, buy you can for them, you’re providing a real service. After all, why is it important that it’s not your watch? Every day we use the client’s information, resources, finances, experience, and myriad other contributions to create our own insights and advice. No one has ever suggested that we, as service providers, do that in a vacuum and not use the client’s “possessions.”
So now it’s time to borrow the light so that we can help the client to shine it in the right directions, follow it confidently, and arrive at desirable destinations. We apply the client knowledge, product and service dispositions, competitive edge, internal talent, and so on to illuminate the path.
That’s what we ought to be offering. We don’t need dramatic new approaches, and the most pathetic new offerings are those “survival” philosophies that tell everyone to hunker down and save themselves until the storm passes. That’s not value added. That’s not improving the client’s condition.
We need to offer the fresh air and objective view of a learned advisor who can use the client’s current information to turn it into valuable competitive knowledge and, eventually, the wisdom required to avoid such predicaments in the future.
Over my career, 90 percent or more of what I tell clients they already know and I’m merely validating their understanding. That’s never changed, and it needn’t today.
And I always return the flashlight.
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PS: Remember my prior column on “Pigeon Sense”? Amtrak officials have placed crude signs around the station urging “Do not feed the pigeons.” So now we have the same successful pigeons, supportive public, and new, ugly signs.
© Alan Weiss 2009 All rights reserved.
Alan Weiss, Ph.D. probably has the strongest independent consulting brand in the country, and maybe beyond. He is the author of 32 books appearing in 9 languages. His newest is The Global Consultant (with Omar Kahn) from Wiley. He runs the unique Million Dollar Consulting® College three times a year. He has won dozens of writing and consulting awards and is a member of the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame.® Contact him at http://www.summitconsulting.com, or his blog, http://www.contrarianconsulting.com.