Management consulting

by the information explosion than management consultants. Learning must be a life-long job for consultants”, wrote Michael Shays in 1983, when he was President of the Institute of Management Consultants in the United States.1

How does a consultant learn? What is the most effective way of developing a competent consultant? University education can provide the future consultant with a solid fund of knowledge and some analytical tools. However, like managers, consultants learn from experience above all. This includes the consultant’s own direct experience, on assignments in which the task is to deal with problems and situations that provide meaningful learning opportunities. In doing so the consultant also learns from the clients’ experiences. Furthermore, the consultant learns from other consultants – his or her colleagues in a team, the team leader and other superiors, consultants who worked for the same client previously, and other members of the profession.

Learning on the job, by practising consulting, is therefore the main and generally recognized method of learning. This is how most consultants acquired their proficiency in the past, and even now some consultants advocate that on- the-job learning is the only way to become competent in consulting. However, learning on the job alone is not enough and should be supplemented (but not replaced) by other learning opportunities, including formal training in courses and workshops. This is the approach that we adopt in this chapter, and that is increasingly supported by leading firms and professional associations of consultants.

37.1 What should consultants learn?

A remarkable diversity of personalities, clients, subjects handled, intervention methods and consulting firms’ philosophies is a prominent feature of the consulting profession. Because of this diversity, there are probably as many different paths to individual proficiency as there are consultants. As in other professions, some individuals will learn faster than others and achieve higher proficiency, owing to a happy concourse of a number of circumstances: talent, drive, educational background, complexity and novelty of assignments executed, and leadership and support provided by the consulting firm.

The training and development policies of consulting firms, and of the profession at large, tend to respect this diversity, offering a range of choices that permit learning to be harmonized with individual needs and possibilities. At the same time, the profession has aimed to achieve the necessary minimum level of uniformity and standardization, reflecting the common and prevailing needs of consultants at various stages of a typical professional career. Leading consulting firms and professional associations have devoted a lot of energy to these questions. As the profession is a young and rapidly evolving one, and distilling common needs and principles from constantly changing diversity is not easy, the task is far from being completed. Nevertheless, some useful guidance and support materials, outlining the consultants’ professional profiles and common knowledge base, are available.2

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Elements of consultant competence

Generally speaking, a consultant’s competence can be described in terms of personality traits, aptitudes, attitudes, knowledge and skills. These elements of competence are interlinked and influence each other.3

Personality traits and aptitudes were mentioned in the previous chapter in the discussion on recruitment criteria. Traits determine how a person will react “to any general set of events which allow the trait to be expressed”.4 Thus, traits define a typical thought pattern and resultant behaviour characteristic of a person in a variety of situations. Examples of personality traits are propensity to take initiative, ambition, flexibility, patience, self-confidence, shyness, and the like. Examples of aptitudes are manual dexterity or linguistic ability.

Attitudes are a person’s feelings for or against certain issues, and therefore they reflect values that a person holds. They concern matters of human preference and result from choices between competing interests. Examples of attitudes or values are a preference for oral rather than written communication, tolerance of other people’s religious beliefs and cultural values, or preference for having people of certain nationalities or technical backgrounds as direct collaborators.

Knowledge is retained information concerning facts, concepts, relationships and processes.5 It is useful to distinguish between general and specialized knowledge. In consulting, general knowledge concerns economic, social, political and cultural processes, institutions and environments that constitute a general background for consulting interventions in specific organizations or systems. There are then two sorts of specialized knowledge. The first concerns the object of consulting, i.e. the consultant’s special sector or technical area of intervention. Examples of sectors are manufacturing, banking and insurance, while examples of technical areas are marketing, production organization, job evaluation and corporate strategy. The second area of knowledge concerns consulting per se – its principles, processes, organization, methods and techniques.

Skill is the ability to do things: to apply knowledge, aptitudes and attitudes effectively in work situations. Skills too can be broken down into several groups. Some of the consultant’s skills will be generic, e.g. social and cultural skills. Other skills will be common to consultants and their clients (managers and entrepreneurs). The difference will be in the required breadth and depth of mastery of certain skills. Probably the consultant will be more skilful in interviewing and providing advice than a typical manager, but may lag behind managers in the skills of organizing, coordinating, mobilizing people and speedy decision-making. There are, then, the skills that are particular to consultants, advisers and other helpers whose job has been described as “getting things done when you are not in charge”.6 These professionals have to be competent in assessing the problems and opportunities of organizations for which they are not responsible and where they have not worked, developing and presenting proposals, providing feedback and reports to decision-makers and their collaborators, and so on.

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The difference between the content and the level of competence is significant. Thus, various elements of managing consultancy projects are listed among key consultant skills and components of their body of knowledge. However, there will be a difference in the required level of this competence between an entry-level consultant and a partner supervising several major projects. This difference will have to be duly reflected in training programmes for various levels of consultants.

A body of consultant knowledge and skills

In Chapter 6 we referred to a defined “body of knowledge” – an overview of the areas of generic competence of a mature and experienced management consultant. As a rule, such a document will indicate common threshold competencies, not those required for doing a particular job or achieving superior performance.7

It is useful to refer to a complete text of a body of knowledge in designing a training programme for consultants. However, it is important to remember that these documents are not intended to lay down the scientific foundations of consulting as a field of learning. The reader may well conclude that, in his or her particular context, other topics should be covered in training, or the topics listed should be grouped and presented in a different way. Irrespective of differences in terminology and layout, the principal areas covered in a common body of consultant knowledge will normally be close to those outlined in box 37.1. The multidisciplinary nature of consulting is obvious, as the topics listed draw on sociology, psychology, statistics, economics, management and organization theory, and other disciplines. Some topics are confined to the description of good or best experience without aiming at scientific analysis and theoretical justification.

Substantive area of expertise and the business environment

Training and development in the substantive areas of the consultant’s expertise and in the wider business, institutional, legal and social environment are becoming ever more important. There are several reasons for this. New recruits to consulting may have an excellent technical background but a rather narrow perspective and limited knowledge of the environments in which businesses operate. As they progress in their careers and accept more complex assignments, many consultants need to master new areas and widen their knowledge base to cover areas outside their original background and main area of competence.

Another reason is the extremely high speed with which management concepts and techniques emerge, gain importance and popularity, and become obsolete – to be replaced in many cases by other concepts and techniques. This race for originality and novelty forces consultants to be always fully up to date and well informed. While it is not easy to recognize the difference between essential state-of-the-art developments and passing fads, a management

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Box 37.1 Areas of consultant knowledge and skills

Orientation to management consulting

●Nature and objectives of consulting; consultants and clients; consulting and change

●Basic consulting styles and approaches

●Types of consulting services and organizations

Consulting and other professions

●Management consulting as a career

●Organization of the profession

●Professional ethics and conduct

●Historical development, present position and future perspectives of consulting

●Professions close to consulting (audit, legal advice, training, etc.)

Overview of the consulting process

●Framework and stages of a consulting assignment (project)

●Entry

●Diagnosis

●Action planning

●Implementation

●Termination

Analytical and problem-solving skills

●Systematic approach to problem-solving in management and business

●Methods for diagnosing organizations and their performance

●Data collection and recording

●Data and problem analysis

●Techniques for developing action proposals

●Creative thinking

●Evaluating and selecting alternatives

●Measuring and evaluating project results

Behavioural, communication and change management skills

●Human and behavioural aspects of the consulting process and the consultant–client relationship

●The client’s psychology

●Behavioural roles of the consultant and the client

●Consulting and culture

●Techniques for diagnosing attitudes, human relations, behaviour and management styles

●Techniques for generating and assisting change in people and in organizations

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Management consulting

●Managing conflict

●Communication and persuasion techniques

●Teamwork and the conduct of meetings

●Using training in consulting; assessing client training needs; designing training programmes

●Management and staff training concepts and techniques

●Courtesy and etiquette in consultant–client relations

●Effective report writing and presentation

Marketing and managing assignments

●Principles of marketing in professional services

●Marketing approaches and techniques

●Consultant selection criteria and procedures

●Proposals to clients (planning, preparation, presentation)

●Consulting contracts and their negotiation

●Fee setting

●Structuring, planning and staffing an assignment

●Managing and controlling an assignment

●Reporting to the client and to the consulting firm

Managing and developing a consulting practice

●Considerations in establishing and structuring a consulting firm; legal forms

●Economics and strategy of a consulting firm

●Governance, organizational culture and management style in professional firms

●Knowledge management

●Recruiting, developing and remunerating consultants

●Financial management of the firm

●Operational management and control; monitoring performance

●Leading and coaching consultants

●Quality assurance and management

●Professional responsibility and liability

●Information technology in professional firms

●Internal administration and office management

consultant cannot afford to answer a client enquiring about a new technique: “I’ve never heard of it”, “You can ignore it, it’s not important to you”, or “Our firm does not use this technique”.

Furthermore, information and telecommunications technology is omnipresent and rapidly changing in all sectors and functions of management. Training and retraining in IT and its management applications have therefore become a standard part of any consultant development programme.

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