Written by There’s a line in the normal consulting world where the customer is on one side, and the consulting firm is on the other side. There are things you cannot do or say if you are on the consultant side of the line, either because you don’t have the credibility or because you are going to be in conflict with your firm, colleagues or potentially your own best interest.
by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/komekue
Most really good consultants spend a significant amount of time in that gray zone between the line on one side which is clearly customer-land, and the other side which is clearly consulting-firm land. However if you spend too much time in that gray zone, you will get hit by a truck-load of issues and complications which can leave you in a problematic state. That truck can come as easily from the customer side as from the consulting-firm side.
I’ve come to learn about myself that I really don’t enjoy the big consulting firm because of the restraints it of the consulting-firm side. On several occasions I’ve been able to work as more than just an independent for a client, but as a pretty-close to full-fledged member of customer-land. This allows me to say things that the customer needs to hear but because of politics others don’t necessarily feel they can say, or simply because you are challenging what has become an invisible assumption.
Whenever I’ve been engaged and earned this type of trusted-advisor role, and a large consulting firm is engaged, I find I end up being in a number of ways the anti-consultant. Not anti as in “in opposition to” but rather anti, meaning the other side of it. The Ying and Yang metaphor works best here.
Part of what anti-consultants do is help both sides drive towards clarity but with a very clear, customer-first perspective. This means thinking like the consulting firm and knowing where the natural desire or higher-up pressure is to inject ambiguity so as to allow negotiating room down the line, and thinking ahead of the customer so as to get certain things that need to be thought through now, done now, so that it isn’t twice as expensive to discuss later.
Most independents aren’t anti-consultants, they are just contractors. They show up for the job, they do what they are asked, maybe they offer some suggestions, and then they go home. They aren’t involved so to speak, they just do what they are asked to do.
Anti-consultants play an important role of helping tear down some of the walls that can start to be built on both sides of the line, and really good anti-consultants are able to make it clear that they are on the side of delivering quality for the customer, a position that sometimes the customer can accidentally abandone.
Some consultants and independents behave as if there is no line, and those in particular tend to go quickly from being trusted to having an air of suspicion. For example I remember years ago when someone was not empowering the full timers, but rather was keeping as much knowledge and power for himself as possible. He tried to leverage that into a position of contractor-like salary with the company, and it backfired. The company couldn’t let him go, but they quickly started reducing their dependency on him. Some would say that he just pushed it a bit too far, but I see it as having had a complete lack of respect for the line.
The line is where you remember that you are there to serve the customer, at the discretion of the customer. The anti-consultant knows that, and takes ownership for what is being brought about as the result of the project. They keep their eye on the prize and try to make sure that everyone, customer and consulting-firm alike, are bringing their best to what needs to be discussed rather than hiding in vagueness and swallowing the best ideas out of concern for repercussions from their own side. The anti-consultant often can be the respected vessel for taking those ideas and getting all parties to listen and potentially accept them.
The line is there, and depending on the level of trust you can live +/- meters from it, but if you lose sight of it, then you lose your frame of reference for understanding what is in the customer’s best interest.
