Here’s how to hire consultants in a way that gets you the best results…
I didn’t realise it back then, but it turns out six months ago I passed a bit of a milestone – fifteen years of working as a consultant. It looks like I’ve done Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours three times over!
Clearly, time flies when you’re having fun. Here’s the interesting thing though.
During that time, I’ve worked with some fantastic clients, but occasionally I’ve also worked with a few not-so-good ones. And likewise, I can look back on scores of great outcomes, but similarly, there have been a few sub-par ones as well.
I know that a couple of those missteps were entirely my fault – every day is a school day, even now, but it’s also striking how the best outcomes and the best clients match up almost perfectly.
My results might suggest I’m getting better at consulting every year, but perhaps it’s just that I’ve got a lot better at picking good clients, and more importantly, teaching them, right from the start, how they can get the very best from their investment in a consultant; in their case, me.
So, if you’re thinking of bringing in some external expertise, read on, because this is essential reading for you. Here are my five strong recommendations on how to hire consultants from one with 3,000 days of lived experience.
Number one: focus your internal conversations on the outcomes you want, not on the means to get them. With all due respect, working out the process and tasks and timings is the consultant’s expertise, not yours. You wouldn’t start your search for a top dinner party chef by sending them your own recipe and asking them to pitch you a price.
Number two: split the hands from the head. Expert hands are expensive so think about how to use the genuine expert just for the bits that require genuine expertise. It’s far more efficient to get some short-term cover for your own people or a cheap temporary contractor if there’s lots of legwork to do. You wouldn’t pay fees for an architect just to have them laying bricks.
Number three: skills and knowledge transfer are key. The huge spin-off benefits of using your own people alongside a consultant should be that they learn how to do this stuff themselves, and they get a genuine feeling of ownership of what comes out at the end. Pick the right people and you’ll treble the value you’d otherwise get. After all, you wouldn’t pay a ski instructor to interview you and write a report on how to ski better, you’d want them out there with you on the slopes.
Number four: get recommendations for consultants and actually talk to them. Choose who you want to work with based on an open conversation, not a pitch against a brief. Find who you think best fits your needs and your organisation, then work out the brief with them. You wouldn’t choose your life-partner through a tender process, or at least I hope you wouldn’t.
Number five: contract for the outcomes. A good consultant will come with a plan, of course, but will adapt their approach to the situation to get the outcomes you’ve agreed in the most efficient and effective way possible. So, contract for the outcomes, not the activities or deliverables, and never for the time they’re going to spend on the work. Paying for their time only rewards inefficiency and misses the whole point of the engagement. You wouldn’t base the value of a theatre ticket on how many hours the actors will spend on stage – it’s your experience of the show and how you feel when the final curtain comes down, that you’re paying for.
That’s the download but here’s the question: why don’t we naturally take this approach?
Why, instead, do we tie ourselves in knots of tortuous process: coming up with detailed schedules of deliverables and activities ourselves, emailing it to a long list of providers that we barely know from Adam, asking them all to pitch their credentials and plans and hours and prices?
Where do these terrible habits come from?
Well, here’s an observation…
I’ve worked with some great charities who deliver commissioned services and, as almost every single one of them will tell you, the biggest single barrier to them innovating, creating better outcomes, and generally being able to make a far greater difference, is the way their services are procured by commissioners.
It’s not the best way to commission your expertise, and it’s certainly not how to hire consultants if you want to get the best outcome.