- to Robin B. - I hope I am wrong about a lot of things. Especially if it means I get to ask you some more questions.
From the time you are helping your mom in the kitchen to the time you are trying to stay out of your father's light in the garage when he is working on the car or some other project, there is always a lust to be helpful. The joy that you feel from providing basic utility to those we care about is pretty wondrous. If you stop and think about a time I bet you can recall that rush of dopamine from praise. That singsong voice from a person when you were little is the gateway drug. The same voice you use with your pets when they did something good. It seems silly and totally devaluing if you think about the condescension but please tell me how wrong I am. I loved it and I think that is a driver that we want to have.
And here I am going to F that all up by talking about roles. I am feeling quite happy with how I am feeling right now but nevertheless I am going to assault my memories about roles and agency to drive the differences in how we should be actors in the workplace.
Full disclosure I was a consultant for almost 8 years. I was a Senior Director and had multiple consultants and projects under me at any one time, I was in charge of a vertical for biologics and in charge of running the CMO for production of medical devices over my tenure. I was also in charge of training people. More to the point I was told to 'geek' the incoming engineers to see where there utility was. Were they going to be ready for client facing work in months, weeks or never. Geek was the term my boss used. He had me create a test to weed out the non-critical thinkers (read client ready). My test was deemed impossible to pass for outgoing engineering students from some of the best engineering schools. Trick was thatI didn't want them to solve the problems, I wanted them to show me how they think in a limited time with stress. I thought it was pretty slick. In fact, if you passed the test you were likely to be doomed to be my right hand just because you had tons of potential and likely needed some close monitoring to give you people skills. Only one person passed the test and they did not stay. They were bored with working with people. The ones that were close to passing felt that they did receive the compensation they thought they deserved.
The ones that were slightly right of the median on the curve...that is who I thrived on. Good relationships and most of them I still know.
To this day my interviews for roles are around how a person thinks and how they treat people. I want people to be authentic. No game show hosts on my watch. I want to be able to know if I can trust the person I am in the trenches with. Are they going to preserve themselves or are they going to tell me that they messed up?
I want people who are free thinkers with empathy and compassion. I want them to know that based on trust, they can tell me when they mess up. Do they have integrity?
You can't test that. But you can see how people explain their work. The test I gave these kids was not about the test. It was about the discussion I had after the test and more importantly the assessment I made of them after I told them what I was or may need to get out of them. There were 60+ items that I told them they were going to need to understand over the next year in order to have a productive conversation with me and to be useful.
I remember one instance where after showing this one incredibly bright person the slide, the arrogance on him was still intact. It was thick on him.
Mind you this was 20 years ago. I was an engineer in my 30's. They saw me as a peer who had been in practice a bit longer but they could see themselves as me in months.
I sent him on projects on hours notice across the country. He called a lot. He needed lots of guidance. And eventually a year later when we had our review of the past 12 months, he stated he realize he was so very wrong. That he realized he had to learn so much to be useful. He looked back on school as "what the hell did I learn?".
The reality was that he learned how to learn in some cases. He learned how to solve problems. He also learned some stressors and the indifference of judgement in an academic setting. In short, he learned to be an individual contributor. To fear group projects. To hone his skills as a technical samurai. Then he entered the real world and got dispatched quickly.
I can hire consultants by the dozen. But are you truly consultative? Do you want to truly help? Or are you stuck on the role that you are the consultant and are there to be respected and listened to.
Let me be clear. Consultants have their place and their utility. The ones that are ready to get in the trenches and deliver on work product. Those that are truly consultative are the ones that shape the market place.
Being Consultative:
- Having a deep set of tool sets and basis of knowledge (those 60 items I mentioned)
- Actively listening to the problem statement. Being bold enough to question the statement and the assumptions
- Know how to view a process and characterize it (sitting and watching the line and making themselves invisible)
- Taking their observations and the procedure and making a process flow diagram
- Checking their biases and searching the literature. Find case studies and see patterns.
- Not being afraid to fire your client.
- Speaking truth to power, telling them the things they need to hear.
- Protecting the people that you are advocating for at the site by taking their voice and amplifying while giving the team the credit
- Being a positive experience for everyone you work with.
- Being authentic at all times knowing that every interaction could be the key to solving the problem
- Checking biases, recognizing the ones you still carry and working the problem by doing all the steps of the process.
- Asking for help and saying you don't know when you don't know.
- Identifying team members that are and are not helping the process.
- Being fair to all involved including finding those who have not been recognized.
- Asking for a second set of eyes and doing a check with the right people.
- Re-level the problem statement with the client. Check assumptions again.
- Execute work product and make a useable deliverable.
- Do not meet just to meet. Provide value every minute you are on site.
- Do not distract from their mission.
- Do not measure your productivity against the client team as they have day jobs.
- Be mindful of the fears that consultants are being used.
- Own the potential gaps in your work product. Train people to use it so that the deliverable/tool is useable after you leave.
- Let your work do the selling of more hours. Mind your wake when looking at what service offerings that you mention the firm can do. People may take offense.
- If you are done for the day, get offsite. Don't look like you are charging when sitting there.
- Stay in your lane by keeping to the scope of work.
- Teach as you deliver. Know when people do not want to be taught and they just want the work done.
Hiring consultant should solve a problem. It should not be nebulous. The deliverables should not be proprietary. Their name should not be on everything. If you are buying hours then they should deliver hours by the end of the prescribed time frame. They don't need to be managed, they are self sufficient. They check in and advise.
And if they keep saying "in my experience" I would ask what does the resulting deliverable look like and measure it against it being a functional and useable deliverable as soon as it is handed over. If it needs to be re-worked....run or make sure you watch your budget.
Be well.