Hiring A Consultant? Set The Stage For Good Results

We always have high expectations when we hire a consultant to help us get something done.  Usually, they’re offering some expertise or knowledge you need but don’t have in-house, and you don’t have time to develop it or don’t want to acquire it permanently.

There’s a lot riding on this engagement, and you want it to be the best it can be.  Here’s how:

Set and manage expectations with the consultant.  Spend time up-front specifying — verbally and in writing — precisely what you expect from the engagement and making sure everyone — consultant, boss, staff — knows about it.

Have open and clear communications with staff.   Try to avoid the unintentional creation of “we/they” camps.  Sure, you may have to give the consultant that “single-point-of-contact” on your team, but get other team members involved with the consultant as reasonably appropriate from time to time.  Having one person on your staff becoming too closely identified as the consultant’s “handler” can inadvertently make that person an apologist for the consultant’s work and a target for some rough treatment from other associates, and negatively affect morale at your workplace.  It can can also compromise the effectiveness of the engagement.

Make sure associates understand clearly why you’re bringing in a stranger, and why it’s in everyone’s interest to actively help the engagement succeed.

Specify the transfer of knowledge you expect to take place.  In most cases, you want the consultant to do more than just “get some work done and leave.” You want your team to get some longer-lasting benefit.  Describe clearly the expected knowledge or skill transfer to your team by the end of the engagement, and say how that will be measured.

Set up regular checkpoints.   There’s no substitute for frequent get-togethers — in person, by phone or even by text — even if it’s for a few minutes. (See our earlier post Carwash Part 2:  Samples of Client Status Worksheet And E-mail for a very simple form.)  If the consultant knows you’re going to be looking for an update by a time certain, that puts a new kind of urgency on the work that has to get done between check-ups.  Nobody wants to say “Things are pretty much the same as last time.”

Provide upfront for the handling of new developments along the way.  Tell the consultant you know things can change once they’re into the situation, and that you want to make a discussion of course corrections a part of every checkpoint meeting.

Be specific about an end date and set “see-and-hear” milestones.  You can always change it, but from Day 1 you should always have an end date in the project plan.  One mistake made in a lot of project plans is that they describe milestones in terms of “activities” or “tasks” to be completed.   Practice wording your milestones in terms of what a stranger would see and hear that would let him or her know the target results have been achieved.

Today’s workplace requires flexibility and adaptability in the use of resources, and it’s often necessary to bring in some consulting help.  Getting the most from those engagements, while preserving good workplace morale, requires planning and good communication with everyone involved.