Dimitry’s Rules for Consulting

Why do they need you?

• Organizations sometimes do need real advice to get where they want to be.

• Sometimes organizations know where they want to be, but don’t know how to get there.

• Most often, organizations know exactly what has to happen, but have too much organizaional inertia to even budge without an outside voice.

Why do you do this job?

• Perhaps you are truly an expert in your field.

• Perhaps you can sell heat lamps at noon in the Gobi Desert.

• Most importantly, you actually have something to contribute in your practice area.

  • Contrary to popular belief, BS sells poorly.

Note

The shortest path out of consulting is to be wrong.

• Every time you open your mouth, you bet your entire future.

• Every time you fail to open your mouth, you foreclose on that future.

Note

The second-shortest path out consulting is to not risk being wrong.

• This job requires audacity and sagacity.

Presentation

• It’s the content, stupid.

  • No amount of slide beautification will cover empty conent.

• It’s also the beautification. Most of your clients expect leadership, which does require image.

Note

You can’t go wrong by being right.

• Dress the part of the expert in your field. Clothing is communication.

  • Even if your clients wear their formal dress hoodies, you will dress in accordance with professional expectations in your society.

    • In Anglosaxon culture, this is flexible for women, but very rigid for men.

  • Clients will judge everyone in accordance with their biases. Fair or not, we cannot wish other people’s biases away.

The Engagement

• Traditionally, beyond the phases of project management, the “performance” portion of a consulting project contains three phases.

  • As-Is: Gather the current state.

    • The organization never runs as management thinks it does.

    • Learn what the tribe values, even if you need to destroy it.

  • To-Be: Gather and influence management’s goals for the end state.

    • Redirect discussions of how and force discussions of what.

    • To-Be is an organizational configuration management exercise.

    • Once they decide on the future you planned for them, make them proud of getting to that conclusion.

      • Even the hiring party needs to stay motivated through a hard transformation.

  • Gap Analysis: Design a path to the end state.

    • This is your how. Very often, this will break into mini-engagements with subordinate entity or third party entity transformations.

    • Amateurs and strategy.

      • Gap analysis is always a logistics exercise, even in non-log organizations.

      • Technical transformations are always process transformations.

      • Process transformations are always re-orgs.

      • Re-orgs are always traumatic.

    • The output of gap analysis is one or more project plans, each with their own kickoff for the transformation.

    • Don’t lie about timelines.

      • If something takes a week of calendar time, it takes a week of calendar time.

      • You cannot “work harder” and make the facts change.

• The first two can happen in any order or simultaneously.

• Run workshops for everything, even if management tells you whom you shouldn’t ask.

  • In fact, find those people and ask them discretely. Everyone holds a piece of tribal knowledge.

Pre-engagement

• Kick-off meetings

  • This is your first intelligence gathering opportunity to learn the depth of buy-in to your consulting engagement.

  • Set expectations. False humility goes a long way here to help you win trust.

• Casual social contact

  • Establish rapport with at least one decision making stake-holder.

  • Establish distinct rapport with at least one knowledgeable observer.

    • Every organization has one. Find him or her. It is usually a person with high intelligence and good verbal skills, but mismatching demographics to their organization.

  • Elicitation skills are key.

Post-engagement

• Sell. Sell. Also, sell.

  • Your services do not end with project closure.

  • If you are actually providing skilled support, ensure they are aware of how else they can reach you.

Note

Every formal contact closes with re-contact permission and agreement.

• Every sale closure is a project opener. Every project closure is a likely new sale opener… …if you are actually a consultant, as opposed to a space-filler.

• Follow-up on organizational changes.

  • Take responsibility for wins and losses with the ability to fix problems.

• Maintain social contact with decision makers. Do not abruptly drop relationships at project closure.

  • Pretexts for contact: lifecycle events, holidays, and, most importantly, cutting edge news in your industry.

    • “Did you hear…?”

    • “What does it mean for your firm now that…?”

• Staffing

  • Often, you will be with the customer for their change, executing your plan. It better be a good one.

Money

• Always be charging.

  • All work is billable hours.

    • Undercharging and overcharging are both fraudulent activities.

  • Most consulting organizations require 110% standard utilization.

    • That means 44 hours of billables per week, not including administrative or non-billable tasks.

  • Time sheets are critical.

    • CAS-compliant organizations will require daily updates.

    • Keep your own ledger of hours worked per project or charge code.

      • These are table stakes for doing this job.

      • None of this is optional. “I’m not good at paperwork.” doesn’t cut it.

  • Fear the beach (or bench).

    • Non-billable time is training time, officially.

    • Unofficially, it’s sales time. Every waking moment should be on guaranteeing your peak utilization for the month. Do not remain on the bench.

    • No one respects the utility player. Helping others without billing makes you a nice person: the nice person with whom they used to work.

Government consulting

coming soon

Managing consultants

coming soon