The three main phases to hiring consultants

A standard joke in business is that consultants work by first asking existing management and employees for the solution and then packaging it nicely, rubber stamping it and presenting it as their own to senior management. The pervasiveness of this joke in business points to the deeply held belief that this characterisation of consultants is true. Although the frustrations that businesses have in working with consultants is clear, the implication that consultants cannot add value beyond providing a stamp of external approval is false and quite unfair.

The UAE, as an economy, has been and continues to be a major user of consultant services as companies seek to augment their management during high growth periods with short term external expertise. Probably the one issue that is completely missed is that the role of a consultant is meant to augment, not to replace, certain roles of management. To ensure that this happens, all phases of the consultant contracts must be viewed as an integral part of the normal management process.

There are three main phases to hiring consultants: acquisition, execution and closing.

The acquisition phase has several important elements. The first is a detailed problem definition which acts as the foundation for the rest of project. Missteps to project failure begin at this point as many managers do not put in the effort to fully understand the issue, understand past attempted solutions that did not work or request input from their colleagues. Instead it is felt that it is the job of the consultant to define the problem and subsequently resolve it. Consultants cannot understand what the problem is, this must be defined by the management who have determined that there is a problem in the first place. If management cannot define the problem, then the company needs to hire new management not consultants.

Furthermore there needs to be wide inclusion in soliciting input across the business in understanding the problem and deciding on the scope of work for consultants. An oft repeated complaint by all stakeholders is that consultants and employees often clash and have difficulty developing a working relationship. The reason employees complain that consultants keep asking them for their input is because their own managers did not do this at the beginning of the process, leading to lack of appropriate information disclosure for consultants and lack of timely engagement of employees thus leading to disenfranchisement and again the probability of project success decreases further.

Finally, the acquisition phase includes a defined scope of work which basically outlines the deliverables, timeline and resources including assigned responsibilities. This is the heart of a consulting contract that allows management to finely control the process. At one end of the spectrum, extreme but does happen, is “Deploy a CRM System.” Setting aside the simplicity of such a scope of work but using it for illustrative purposes, further questions that might be asked include: Who are the users? What are their requirements, what will they input and what will there queries be? What is the current core IT system and how does the CRM [customer relationship management] need to integrate with it? Is there an existing CRM database that needs to be migrated? What audit and security functionality is required? The follow on questions can be endless and it takes skill to decide on what level of detail is necessary to manage the project to success without drowning it in detail.

The execution phase of the project can quite often be viewed as when the consultants do all the work while management waits for the final result. This is the exact opposite of what is needed which is a proactive management overseeing the consultants and providing strong leadership to weld the employees of the company with the consultants into an effective team. The fact that the consulting team is present on a temporary basis does not change the fact that successfully integrating a new group of people into the business is still critical. The leadership exhibited needs to include strong project management skills and quite often change management skills. This leadership needs to come from within and follow basic project management processes including weekly or at most bi-weekly reviews. It is this process that will uncover conflicting implied assumptions and provide a timely manner to resolve these issues in a structured framework, avoiding the email black holes that have derailed many a project.

If the first two phases are managed properly then the third phase, closing, should be straightforward. The important point here is documentation, checklists of agreed deliverables signed off and handover procedures followed.

With the “how” of working with consultants covered, a short note on the “why”. Consultants are subject matter experts brought in to give advice during irregular times: high growth, crisis, etc. There is a special place in hell reserved for boards and management who insist on having consultants write their strategic or business plans. There is always a role for consultants, but these plans are why boards are appointed and management hired. If they don’t know how to lead, they should not be there.

Sabah Al Binali is an active investor and entrepreneurial leader, with a track record of financing, building and growing companies in the Mena region.

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