Love them or loathe them, management consultants play a vital role. Looking for future growth trends? Wanting to transform? Needing more cost efficiency? Overdue in digitisation? These are just a few examples of where consultants can make things happen. However, not everyone is on the bus and that’s understandable. Not everyone has values that align to your own. Not every partner has your best interests at heart. But here’s the thing. Whatever you think, these people are usually brought in to make things better. Sometimes, that benefits the organisation financially without benefitting you directly. However, sometimes that means more opportunities in future for the right people. So, let’s look a little deeper at why you should embrace management consultants.
Embrace management consultants
Yes, this sounds one-sided. Why would you want to embrace the people who may cause you more work? Fair point. However, this ignores the fact that when you embrace management consultants, things may get done. Usually, management consultants offer services to find growth, streamline processes, reduce waste, bring new ways of working or assist in strategic direction. However, they may also support with analytics, project management, coaching, training and more. There is also knowledge, partners, connections and broad experience of industries and solutions.
As previously written, the arrival of consultants can provoke differing reactions. These can range from anxiety to concern or caution. This is understandable, especially if the scope, reasons and impact are not clearly articulated to the affected teams. This is a shame, especially when management consultancies should essentially be people businesses. Run by people to support and benefit other people. Organisation structures and capability to shape, enhance and support other organisation structures and capability. So, let’s now look at some other areas that can benefit you.
Why you should embrace
Management consultants are enablers. For employees and teams that shoulder frustrations and fuzzy or complex organisation structures, they may offer a route to enable change. For example, if it is difficult to make IT changes that would make your life easier, perhaps this is the escalation route. Additionally, if you are not getting traction with another team, department or division, perhaps this is the way to raise and overcome it. Whether it is performance bottlenecks, manual processes, challenges with other departments or system problems, there may be an answer.
As subject matter experts, those working with consultants can tell things like it is. Is a system preventing you from doing something that has a manual workaround? Recipe for automation. Is a process entirely manual because of other dependencies? Point of escalation. Are customers repeatedly raising the same issues? Neutral party perspective. There are many organisational challenges that will align to the reasons that the consultants have been assigned. Ultimately, this means that you can benefit as well as the business.
Other management consultant traits
As previously mentioned, management consultants have other capabilities, such as:
- Analytics;
- Artificial Intelligence;
- Boardroom influence (evaluation/governance/risk/transitions);
- Compliance;
- Corporate finance/due diligence;
- Digital strategy/platforms;
- Executive coaching;
- Investor relations;
- Network benefits;
- Organisational design;
- Project management;
- Talent strategy;
- Training programmes;
- Virtual team.
Embrace change for progression
Though it may be uncomfortable territory for some, it creates an opportunity for exposure for others. As management consultants move around an organisation, exposure to individuals through collaboration and information gathering is commonplace. Similarly, subject matter experts can show their true expertise to a third-party. Others can get involved in cross-functional or pan-organisational projects to meet managers in other departments. Finally, organisational design and restructuring projects depend to some extent on the capabilities required, skills, talent available and hiring budget. Interaction with consultants may influence where people land in any such reorganisation and what positions they have.
Embrace change for remuneration
In most cases, leadership and management has financial targets and outcomes that they need to achieve. Successfully delivering these can boost their overall remuneration, particularly when significantly linked to share prices, company valuations or profit and cash. Since many consulting engagements focus on growth, performance or cost efficiency, the consultants are an enabler to unlocking your full remuneration. Furthermore, combining with corporate finance, network benefits or boardroom influence can compound the payout. Talent strategy, sourcing decisions, transformation and restructuring can also have a disproportionate impact on competitive strength, accelerating remuneration. Finally, a compelling vision and strategy can drive share price growth and executive share schemes.
Working with and embracing management consultants
Working with management consultants is easy. After all, there are clear reasons to use them. They are also people businesses focused on people. We think of ourselves as extensions of our clients – helping to achieve more, together. Furthermore, we focus on identifying growth opportunities, accelerating performance and solving business challenges. The first leads to internal opportunities, higher revenue, margins and profits. The second leads to efficiency, better employee and customer experiences and outcomes. Thirdly, removing blockers, bottlenecks and bloat can unlock the funds for the first two. Additionally, it can improve ways of working, focus efforts and resources and help you move forward.
If you would like to engage us to meet your objectives, why not reach out to our team. Alternatively, you can follow and message us on our LinkedIn account.
Finally, why not read about the access they will need or our view on best practices.