The first step to ensuring that your engagement with a business consultant is productive, effective and efficient is to document the requirements of the consultant, the expected timeframes and deliverables, and the outcomes that are going to be required from the engagement.
Interviewing a consultant should come after the engagement document or request for proposal, and circulated to potential candidates. Given time to review your requests, expectations and timeframes, a qualified consultant should be able to respond to specific questions and identify potential pitfalls for you during the first interview. This makes the conversation much more specific and productive. It should also allow you and your interview team to determine if you feel a strong fit with the consultant.
The interview team assembled should be able and willing to ask serious and important questions directly, evaluating the consultant’s responses for technical accuracy first and foremost. The interview team should therefore be composed of people who have technical and professional skills and experience, and know a great deal about the processes and procedures your company relies upon to produce a work product. When your business consultant is more of a generalist, and has responsibility for delivering an assessment that is business-wide or cross-functional, it is important to find someone who is well versed in working with a team. The people the consultant brings with her into the organization should be as talented, or more so, than the consultant, and the qualifications presented should exceed your organization’s hiring standards. When you are investigating or attempting to improve an organizational area like human resources, accounting or information technology, the resumes presented should reflect a high level of experience, technical certifications, exposure to multiple businesses or multiple lines within one business, and a self-directed personality. Understanding business management practices and laws can be evidenced in a work portfolio, or through an educational credential like an MBA.
Once your consultant has been selected by the team, follow their lead in establishing timeframes, and expect documentation and reports showing progress throughout the engagement. Ideally, navigating through the process of documenting requirements and interviewing can lead to a strategic plan document that will drive the consulting experience.
This is the best way to ensure that the consulting relationship is not only productive, but also excellent, can be via documentation and design of the relationship. Regular, direct and honest communication throughout the process can also add stability and meaning to the process of growing your business. The business consulting process and relationships can be an ongoing development cycle, and one that can bring extreme value to your company over a long lifetime working together. Starting out the right way makes it far more likely that you will succeed.
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