Consultants are commonly called in for business improvement, change of management, information technology and long-term planning projects. Consultancy can offer the choice of varied assignments, the ability to choose interesting work and the flexibility within limits of deciding when and where to work. The provision to management of objective advice and assistance relating to the strategy, structure, management and operations of an organisation in pursuit of its long-term purposes and objectives.
Early on in your career you will gain a range of experiences — a key attraction to many graduates considering a career in consultancy.
As your experience grows you will become more specialised, enabling you to work in areas you find most interesting and rewarding. Part of Consultancy. Industries Consulting firms Service areas Theme. Campus events Seminars Business Courses Workshops. Consulting Industry. Market segments. Consulting market. North America. It follows that managers should be willing to experiment with new procedures during the course of an engagement—and not wait until the end of the project before beginning to implement change.
When innovations prove successful, they are institutionalized more effectively than when simply recommended without some demonstration of their value. For implementation to be truly effective, readiness and commitment to change must be developed, and client members must learn new ways of solving problems to improve organizational performance.
How well these goals are achieved depends on how well both parties understand and manage the process of the entire engagement. People are much more likely to use and institutionalize innovations proved successful than recommendations merely set forth on paper.
All in all, effective implementation requires consensus, commitment, and new problem-solving techniques and management methods. To provide sound and convincing recommendations, a consultant must be persuasive and have finely tuned analytic skills. But more important is the ability to design and conduct a process for 1 building an agreement about what steps are necessary and 2 establishing the momentum to see these steps through.
An observation by one consultant summarizes this well. But that is the tip of the iceberg. What supports that is establishing enough agreement within the organization that the action makes sense—in other words, not only getting the client to move, but getting enough support so that the movement will be successful. To do that, a consultant needs superb problem-solving techniques and the ability to persuade the client through the logic of his analysis.
In addition, enough key players must be on board, each with a stake in the solution, so that it will succeed. So the consultant needs to develop a process through which he can identify whom it is important to involve and how to interest them. Managers should not necessarily expect their advisers to ask these questions. But they should expect that consultants will be concerned with issues of this kind during each phase of the engagement. In addition to increasing commitment through client involvement during each phase, the consultant may kindle enthusiasm with the help of an ally from the organization not necessarily the person most responsible for the engagement.
The role is similar to that of informant-collaborator in field research in cultural anthropology, and it is often most successful when not explicitly sought. If conducted skillfully, interviews to gather information can at the same time build trust and readiness to accept the need for change throughout the organization.
Then members at all levels of the organization come to see the project as helpful, not as unwanted inquisition.
By locating potential resistance or acceptance, the interviews help the consultant learn which corrective actions will work and almost always reveal more sound solutions and more willingness to confront difficulty than upper management had expected. And they may also reveal that potential resisters have valid data and viewpoints. The relationship with the principal client is especially important in developing consensus and commitment.
Ideally, each meeting involves two-way reporting on what has been done since the last contact and discussion of what both parties should do next. In this way a process of mutual influence develops, with natural shifts in agenda and focus as the project continues. Although I have somewhat exaggerated the level of collaboration usually possible, I am convinced that effective management consulting is difficult unless the relationship moves farther in a collaborative direction than most clients expect.
Management consultants like to leave behind something of lasting value. This does not imply that effective professionals work themselves out of a job. Satisfied clients will recommend them to others and will invite them back the next time there is a need. For example, demonstrating an appropriate technique or recommending a relevant book often accomplishes more than quietly performing a needed analysis.
However, some members of management may need to acquire complex skills that they can learn only through guided experience over time. With strong client involvement in the entire process, there will be many opportunities to help members identify learning needs. Often a consultant can suggest or help design opportunities for learning about work-planning methods, task force assignments, goal-setting processes, and so on.
Though the effective professional is concerned with executive learning throughout the engagement, it may be wise not to cite this as an explicit goal. Learning during projects is a two-way street. In every engagement, consultants should learn how to be more effective in designing and conducting projects. In the best relationships, each party explores the experience with the other in order to learn more from it.
Sometimes successful implementation requires not only new management concepts and techniques but also different attitudes regarding management functions and prerogatives or even changes in how the basic purpose of the organization is defined and carried out.
This may seem too vast a goal for many engagements. But just as a physician who tries to improve the functioning of one organ may contribute to the health of the whole organism, the professional is concerned with the company as a whole even when the immediate assignment is limited.
If lower-level employees in one department assume new responsibilities, friction may result in another department. Or a new marketing strategy that makes great sense because of changes in the environment might flounder because of its unforeseen impact on production and scheduling.
Why do businesses use them? How does a management consulting project work? A project will usually go as follows: Problem definition — What problem are we trying to solve? Approach — How are we going to investigate this problem? Data gathering — Find out everything we can about the issue Data Analysis — What does our data show? Advice — What is the best solution according to our data and expertise?
Implementation — Enact positive change based on the recommendations Who are the main management consulting firms?
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