Consulting Firm Employee Worst Practices

I am normally savagely focused in helping enterprises develop better people, processes and tools - in that order. Today, I will be focusing on guidance for large enterprise consultancies in how they can improve their delivery capabilities...



The key to giving enterprises great experiences is making your people want to give that to them! Let's acknowledge upfront that you can't delight clients if you have unhappy people. Too many consulting firms not only overwork their people by intentionally underestimating the time it takes to get work done but by also inflicting upon them tasks that aren't visible to the client when heroics catches up with the team.

Does it take a rocket scientist to figure out that unhappiness in employees of consulting firms may start with the frequency and duration of travel? There are times where you need to be onsite in order to have positive interactions, but this is taken to extremes in many firms. How many consultants would love to see their children's soccer game after work only if they weren't compelled into having to be onsite even when there is zero client interaction going on?

A mantra of one consulting firm is in advertising successful business outcomes yet they have compromised this goal from the very start! A strategy is comprised of creating win/wins for all parties, not in being blissfully ignorant and hoping that a person will always put the firm ahead of the needs of themselves, their family or other aspirations.

Below are a few principles that I personally espouse in my day job and hope that they become the mantra of others that provide enterprise consulting services as well:

• Hire people who share your philosophy, values, point of view and approach. At interview time, stop asking academic trick technical questions or overly focusing on soft skills, but instead attempt to first share what your philosophy is and then whether they align with it. Too many consultancies aren't transparent about their philosophies upfront only to watch people quit in the middle of an engagement when it finally gets discovered.
• Never compromise hiring standards just to meet a volume need. Set high minimums in entry qualifications. I understand the timeliness of filling a job requisition before it disappears is an enterprise mindset, but you will sleep better at night if you focus on quality over quantity.
• Even if people are going to leave, take the high road in dealing with them. All your other people are watching.
• You must help your people learn that there is more to serving a client than being technically skilled at what you do. Likewise, there is more than serving a client than being a master of soft skills. Clients do not achieve successful business outcomes based on slick PowerPoint presentations delivered by buzzword puppets.
• Give people the freedom to meet the standards without being micromanaged.
• Work at helping people actually experience what it is like to be a client - they will do a better job as a result of it.
• Work at team bonding by finding ways for people to work together and by getting together to discuss common issues.
• Commit to helping your people grow professionally: don't let them cruise.
• Even if you are a manager, keep practicing your profession to some degree. It will help you understand and relate to both your people and your clients.

Enterprise Training Worst Practices

If it's worth doing training, it's worth doing it in a way that is going to make a difference. Sadly, most training efforts within enterprises fail to meet this goal...



We live in a world of outsourcing where employees do little more than just manage processes and documentation. Training in most shops is no different. When you outsource training, you sometimes ignore the fact that the firm's own practitioners usually are the most effective (distinct from efficient) trainers since they provide context that is otherwise lacking.

Too often, many view training as an expensive use of executives and top talent's time when in reality, this is usually the most important duty of these respective roles. This escape from authentic leadership immediately sends a negative message to many of the attendees who will wonder why the insiders aren't participating.

Another mistake frequently spoken within enterprise roles is the notion of someone just listening in. If training is about knowledge transfer, then they need to attend training as a participant. In fact, this should be mandatory. It brings an action-orientation to the discussion and builds in credible commitment to the program. Exercising your right to remain silent is useful in other contexts but no so much when it comes to training.

I hold the belief that in order to ensure discipline, training programs should have mandatory pre-reading and pre-testing whereby attendees cannot participate if they don't pass. Yes, this stance will be viewed as harsh by many, especially when it comes to senior people, but don't you think this is an opportunity for leadership to set the example for others?

Haven't we all observed enterprises that invested in highly customized training programs, where one-half of the attendees were prepared and the other half not? Didn't it devolve into an annoying waste of everyone's time?

Values should you expect but will never hear from leadership!

Many leadersmanagers over the next month or so are preparing to deliver speeches that champion ideals. It is a common tendency to draw up a set of values and present them simultaneously to all of the key players at some annual meeting or specially convened strategic planning meeting or retreat without regard to how this ceremonial practice may run counter to their goals...



An enterprise may be made worse, not better, by pretending to advocate a set of standards its not prepared to live by. I suspect many in the audience will look upwards to see if those guys are truly serious before they commit themselves to a cause.

Having been an IT employee for the last twenty five years across many organizations, I have yet to find a set of values that remains uncompromisable. We live in a world where waivers are the norm. Many people continue to avoid improvement simply because it isn't required by their leadership. Have you noticed the message is finely tuned but otherwise lacks the substance of bi-directional commitment?

Below are some values I have outlined that are notoriously absent from the majority of the speeches I have heard:

We will require, not just encourage, everyone to learn and develop new skills. The enterprise accepts its obligation to help each individual achieve this.
We will minimize the amount of energy expended on tactical/project-oriented work and will invest a significant amount of time each year going forward in things that will pay off in the future.
We will select, evaluate and remunerate those in managerial roles based primarily on the success of their group, rather than on their individual performance.
We will, individually and collectively, operate with a stewardship mentality toward our junior people, accepting the obligation to coach, mentor and develop those who report to us

If your CIO were to incorporate these phrases and truly meant it, would that be a dream job...

Why many consulting firms never deliver the value sought by CIOs

There are many successful consulting firms including the likes of Accenture, Cognizant, Virtusa and Wipro. Sadly, they still leave a lot to be desired in the hearts and minds of their clients. I think I know what the missing ingredient is...



It is important to acknowledge that these firms provide their clients with exactly what they ask for and therefore the onus shifts to a CIO needing to ask for the right things. The fatal flaw made by many CIOs is in asking for consulting services and not expertise.

An expert's job is to be right: To solve the client's problems through the application of technical and professional skill. In order to accomplish this, the expert takes responsibility for the work away from the client and acts as if he/she is "in charge" until the project is completed.

The consultant behaves differently, rather than being in the right, the consultant's job is to be helpful and to provide guidance, input and counseling to the client's own thought and decision-making processes. The client retains control and responsibility at all times: the consultant's role is subordinate to this, not that of a prime mover.

The best and brightest within our profession are forced to pretend to the virtues of being a consultant but in reality do not want to be one. They don't want to consult but instead have a preference to take charge. The asset manager does not want to merely recommend suitable investments anymore than a trial litigator want to be constrained to only providing input on trial strategy.

What if we could figure out a way to eliminate pretend behaviors? An expert wants to be an expert is going to be miserably poor at pretending to be a consultant and with high predictability will resent the client throughout the entire project.

Anyone want to take a guess at how frequently this happens?

Why IT fails at increased productivity and business value

I have been studying some of the traits within the insurance vertical and have observed:

• Leading carriers value work-life balance. Their people work eight hour days. Followers espouse work-life balance but their employees tend to work hard vs work start
• Leading carriers have focused more on promoting from within. Followers seem to always hire former partners and put them in IT leadership positions
• Leading carriers respect the total individual and their unique value proposition. Followers tend to focus less on strengths and more on competencies

Success enterprises live up to their ideology and high standards, even if it costs them something in the short term. The most successful of enterprises have the highest of values that are articulated, adopted and internalized. Think about what comes to mind when you hear the names of McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. Do you think think these firms attempt to be everything to everyone and focus on crowd-pleasing perception management?

In these firms, do you think that the so-called leadership is only focused on leadership and ignores the basics of management? I wonder if someone in McKinsey is thinking that they can make a lot of money just by getting people to work harder and couching this under the guise of leadership? Do they simply set higher financial targets and enforce them while ignoring things like inspiration and motivation?

What would happen if your CIO truly thought about creating an environment where passion is rewarded instead of penalized. What would he/she say if they reflected on the following implicit statements contained within their message:

We do not want you (employees) to expect us (leadershipmanagement to make any promises about your career progress. If you want to act as if you have a job, not a career, that's OK with us. We know we've hired some people who are incapable of learning and growing. We'll just respond with pay decisions. We want you to keep your heads down and hit higher work volumes. Oh, by the way, we're too busy with other activities to spend any time managing you.