Proyecciones basadas en variables y respuestas biológicas

CHAPTER

3

The learning outcomes from this chapter are to:

n appreciate the skills effective management consultants bring to the job; and in particular:

– recognise the importance of the project management skills necessary to keep the consulting project on schedule and on budget;

– recognise the importance of the analysis skills needed to understand the client business, identify the opportunities it faces and develop strategies to exploit them;

– recognise the importance of the relationship-building skills needed to relate ideas, to positively influence decision-makers and to make the project happen in real organisations;

n understand the selling process of a consulting project;

n recognise the key elements of the project proposal and how they may be articulated in order to have an impact and to influence the recipient.

Learning outcomes

3.1

The effective consultant’s skill profile

Consulting represents a particularly challenging management task for a number of reasons. First, the consultant is not working within his or her ‘own’ organisation. He or she is, in the first stages of the consulting exercise at least, an ‘outsider’. In some ways this offers advantages. It may allow the consultant to ask questions and make recommendations that an ‘insider’ feels they cannot. Managers within a business tend to adopt the organisation’s way of seeing things – a kind of ‘groupthink’, which limits the way both problems and opportunities are seen. A consultant may view things in a different way. He or she might well see opportunities in a fresher, more responsive way. As the consultant ultimately leaves the organisation, he or she can afford a more dispassionate approach. Painful ‘home truths’ may be recognised more readily (or at least not denied!) by the con- sultant. For this reason, the consultant will be in a stronger position to advocate difficult courses than someone who does not wish to compromise an open-ended and long-term position within the business.

Chapter 3 / The skills of the consultant and the project proposal 55

However, being an outsider presents some challenges. It means that the con- sultant must actively build relationships and create a sense of trust. Established managers can often take these for granted. Consultants may formally be employed by an organisation, but often they must operate some distance from it. The employ- ing organisation offers support in a variety of ways but the consultant is ‘out on his or her own’ in a way the conventional manager is not. The consultant must be both self-supporting and self-starting. The consultant is often involved in projects that are ‘strategic’. Strategic projects have significant consequences and affect the future of the whole business. They can cut across the interests of the managers of established parts or functions within the business. Managers may resist what they see as interference in ‘their’ areas and challenges to ‘their’ interests. (These issues are explored at length in the studies by Guth and MacMillan (1986) and Wooldridge and Floyd (1990).) Managing such projects demands an ability to deal with such organisational politics in a firm, sensitive and responsible way. All managers must offer a value-adding service to their organisations. However, a consultant is able to offer a service in a way that is explicit. What a consultant offers is subject to scrutiny which is much more intense and continuous than the scrutiny to which an established manager is exposed. An effective (and politically astute) consultant must be willing to let the client management take credit for successes while often being prepared to take the blame for mistakes.

In order to meet the challenge of managing the consulting project the con- sultant must develop a skill profile that allows him or her to call upon abilities in three key areas:

n an ability to manage the consulting exercise as a formal project;

n an ability to manage the analytical skills necessary to gain an understanding of

the client business and the possibilities it faces;

n an ability to communicate ideas and positively influence others.

These three areas represent distinct types of management skill. Learning and using them can be supported by a variety of concepts and techniques. These concepts and techniques are drawn from a wide range of management disciplines and traditions. However, it should not be forgotten that the effective consultant could not only call upon skills in each of these areas but also integrate them into a seamless whole of management practice. We can picture these three skill areas working together as illustrated in Figure 3.1.

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.. 56 Part 1 / Management consulting in context and how it adds value

The next three sections provide an overview of these consulting skill areas. These reviews are an introduction. They will leave unanswered many questions about the type of challenges these skills can be used to address, how the skills may be developed and how they can be used. It will be the task of the following sections in this book to explore these questions in depth.

3.2

Project management skills

A consulting exercise is a self-contained project within a business environment. The best results are achieved if the consulting exercise is managed as such. Important project management skills include the following.