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Hiring a consultant is more than an isolated event. It is just one of the steps that are involved in dealing with a consultant.
Understanding and mastering each step in the process is important.
Most people view the hiring or engaging of a consultant as a single event, usually triggered by an internal or external situation or event.
In actuality, the engaging of a consultant is comprised of a series of steps that form a repeatable process. This process is used every day – to varying degrees of success -- in organizations around the world. We have called that process the consultant interaction process (CIP).
Different organizations may use slightly different versions of the process. Some may have defined less steps -- some more. Some are not yet using it; still treating the hiring of a consultant as an ad hoc event. The important thing is that some organizations now view dealing and working with consultants as a proces as opposed to an event.
For purposes of illustration, we'll define a 10 step consultant interaction process (CIP)
- Responding to trigger issue or problem
- Considering the use of consultants
- Identifying appropriate candidates
- Developing a short list
- Selecting and negotiating
- Agreeing and contracting
- Beginning the engagement
- Actively participating in the engagement
- Concluding the engagement
- Monitoring the changes and adjusting
When viewed as a multi-step process, the approach that organizations use to engage and manage consultants, can be managed and measured and -- most importantly -- assessed and improved through fine tuning.
Even if the process is not repeated frequently within a specific organization, that organization can benefit from the approaches, standards, conventions and best practices that have evolved at many other similar organizations.
The intelligent consulting management (ICM) approach
When the consultant interaction process is combined with associated best practice-based knowledge and disciplines, the result is becoming known as intelligent consulting management (ICM) aproach.
Consulting Intelligence has gone well beyond the simple process approach shown above and has developed a robust construct or framework -- based on a continuum of activity -- for guiding the totality of an organization's dealings with their consultants.
Based on decades of experience in managing and participating in consultant-involved projects -- and incorporating the results of our proprietary research into the specific wants and needs of client organizations -- the framework and associated knowledgebase are an important part of the Consulting Intelligence approach.
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