CHAPTER 1

Consultants and
consulting
The consulting industry is thriving and is expected to grow as corporations
continue to restructure, downsize, merge, outsource, and open new offices in
the face of increasing business competition around the globe. According to
Statista, U.S. consulting revenue grew from $107 billion to $133 billion between
2011 and 2016, with a forecast of $158 billion and more in the 2020s. Yes, the
future looks bright for consultants, as projections suggest a steady growth in the
demand for consultants’ services over the next decade.
In the chapters that follow, you will be provided with a step-by-step process to
help both you and your clients achieve successful outcomes by reaching shared
goals. You will read examples of the processes used by effective consultants, along
with case studies drawn from consultants’ experiences. Also included in each
chapter is expert advice by established consultants and users of consulting services.
Before we start with the details of the consulting process, however, let’s define
some of the basic terms and approaches used in the consulting business.
Essentially, what consultants do is help organizations and individuals (clients)
that have a need. The big question is how to help these clients most effectively.
That is what this book is all about. Many consultants are very effective and make
important contributions to the success of the organizations for which they
consult. These consultants assist businesses in a variety of ways, from solving
staffing and management problems to introducing new technology and helping
organizations weather all manner of external and internal changes. Other con-
sultants, unfortunately, are less effective—and less successful. Often, this is because
they never learned the basics of the consulting process. They merely assumed that
because they had expertise in some subject area that clients would be eager to
follow their advice.
The ultimate goal of consulting is to solve a client’s business problems, which
in many cases are related to the need for greater efficiency and effectiveness;
consultants also describe what they do as interventions involving people, pro-
cesses, and practices. This requires considerable skill and understanding of the
organization’s talent, problems, and culture, as well as a strong grasp of the best
strategies to assist organizations to change. This is a very important caveat of the

1
2 Consultants and consulting

consulting business. The consulting process ultimately ends with an organization

and its employees embarking on some kind of change, attesting to the importance
of the consultant being as effective and efficient as possible.
The purpose of this book is to provide you with the basic skills and strategies
you need to be that effective consultant. If you follow the step-by-step process
outlined here, you will vastly increase the probability of achieving successful
outcomes for you and your clients.
In the chapters that follow, you will learn how consultants have assisted a
variety of companies and agencies. For example, there is the case of a local
organic food manufacturer who couldn’t decide whether to begin selling his
products in a broader market; the case of the Department of Child and Family
Services of a large state that turned to consultants to help them design a system
that ensured that all children in their care were accounted for and monitored, so
that they wouldn’t “lose” any children; the case of the manufacturing company
that wanted to assess whether using social media as a marketing tool would
benefit its facilities around the world; and the case of the consultant who was
conducting a management retreat with the executive group of a large medical
center when a hidden agenda emerged that was not part of the official agenda.
To begin, let’s consider the hypothetical case of a small business we’ll call
UneekGraphix, which is starting to feel some pain caused by a decline in
revenues. As you read the case, ask yourself what you would do if you were the
consultant working with UneekGraphix. How would you proceed to help this
company?

UneekGrafix is a small graphics company that was founded about 10 years

ago by three graphic artists who met while they were working for a major
advertising agency. UneekGrafix quickly established a reputation for its
creative, often-offbeat designs for CDs, book covers, display advertising,
exhibits, logos, and promotional items. In 10 years the company acquired
several major clients and increased its staff from the three founding employees
to more than 80 designers and support staff. However, in the last two years,
the company has lost three major clients and has had difficulty finding new
business. As a consequence, revenue has declined. Last month, the company
had the first layoff in its history. Top management at UneekGrafix is both
concerned and perplexed—concerned about the decline in income and
perplexed about what to do about it. As the president said, “There is
something going on in the market that we don’t understand, and we have
to get a grasp of this quickly before we take another big hit in revenues.”

The UneekGrafix scenario is not uncommon for competitive businesses. A

company is started by some talented people, experiences fast growth with a bright
future, and suddenly hits a wall. Company officials can’t figure out what’s wrong.
What they are currently doing was successful in the past but does not seem to be
working now.
 Consultants and consulting 3
UneekGrafix could potentially benefit a great deal by hiring a consultant. The
firm is having considerable difficulty determining what is causing the downturn in
revenues, and a consultant could bring a fresh perspective to the problem. The
consultant might suggest conducting a thorough diagnosis of both UneekGrafix’s
internal operations and its customers and market. Or perhaps the consultant might
help the management team take a good look at what services and products are
demanded by the market and compare these with what UneekGrafix is providing.
Finally, the consultant might help the team decide ways the company could
reverse the revenue decline by shifting its direction.
This case is a good example of what consultants might be called on to do, as
well as why their services can be so valuable to a client. We will get back to
UneekGrafix soon, but let’s first clarify what is meant by the term consulting.

Defining consulting
In this book, a consultant is defined as someone who either advises a client on the
desirability of taking some action, or who assists the client in making a decision
and then helps the client in planning or implementing action as determined by
the client. Several points are stated or implied by this definition:
First, a consultant works for clients. These clients, or beneficiaries of the
consultant’s services, can be individuals, groups, or organizations.
Second, a consultant helps these clients achieve goals that the clients, not the
consultant, identify. The point here is that the client usually decides what
problems need attention or what initiatives need to be implemented, and the
consultant is hired to address these problems or help institute these initiatives.
Identifying the problem may not be easy, and the consultant will often have to
work hard to be sure that the problem the client has identified is in fact the
problem that needs solving. We will discuss this further in later chapters.
Third, a consultant provides a specialized skill or expertise that the client, or
client organization, is unable to provide on its own. For example, a company
might hire a consultant to identify software to increase efficiency in some aspect
of the business and, perhaps, conduct training in how to use it. Alternatively, the
consultant might conduct a study on a topic in which the consultant but no one
in the hiring organization has expertise, such as some specialized aspect of
marketing or social media.
Fourth, although consultants may influence decision making by virtue of their
knowledge or expertise, consultants usually have little power or authority to make
changes. A consultant may recommend changes, and even how to make them,
but the client retains ultimate authority over whether and which changes to
implement.
To apply this definition of consulting to the UneekGrafix scenario, the client,
in this case the company, has identified the loss of revenues as its problem. What
you as a consultant would bring to UneekGrafix is probably some specialized
expertise in strategic planning, market analysis, or some related area that the
4 Consultants and consulting

company does not have, or at least does not have with the level of sophistication
needed. Based on your research and expertise, you will surely be able to influence
what decisions the top management team makes regarding its overall strategy.
However, final decisions on what to do and when to do it rest in the hands of
UneekGrafix’s management. Managers get paid to make and execute decisions;
consultants get paid to advise them.

Two approaches to consulting

Now that we have defined, in general terms, what consultants do, let’s get a bit
more specific. Not all consultants use the same approach to serve a client’s need.
Regardless of the goal of the project, consultants typically will take one of two
basic approaches when they work with clients. They will function as experts or as
facilitators. Although most consultants position their services toward one approach
or the other, effective consultants know how to modify their approach depending
on the nature of the problem or project the client wants them to tackle. In other
words, they function as a combination of expert and facilitator, refining their
approach in response to the needs of their clients. That said, let’s take a brief look
at the differences in these two basic approaches.

Consultants as experts
If you ask someone what a consultant does, most people would say that a
consultant offers expert advice. Medical doctors are frequently used as examples.
You explain your symptoms to a doctor, who in turn asks you a few important
questions and then tells you what you need to do to get better. The process is
typically fairly quick and simple, although not always painless.
The situation is not too different in the business context. Usually, a client
brings a problem to a consultant, who then asks the client many questions. The
consultant may gather diagnostic data related to the problem—by reviewing
company records or market figures, for example. The consultant may also inter-
view a broad sample of people throughout the organization. The consultant then
analyzes the data, arrives at a diagnosis of the problem, and tells the client what
the company needs to do to improve or eliminate the problem. On occasion, a
consultant will also assist in implementing the recommendations, thereby taking
more of a facilitator role.
Let’s go back to the case of UneekGrafix and look at how a consultant using
the expert approach might consider the company’s dilemma of its decreasing
revenues.
Once the top executives at UneekGrafix decided to seek the assistance of a
consultant, they interviewed three consulting firms that specialized in market
strategy or strategic planning. Each firm made a presentation to the executives at
UneekGrafix and, on the basis of the presentations and interviews, the company
chose a firm that had considerable expertise in the graphics industry.
 Consultants and consulting 5
After the consultants had a good understanding of what the company execu-
tives expected from them, the consultants conducted interviews with company
personnel. The purpose of the interviews was to identify the products and services
offered by the company as well as to understand what the company’s executives
saw as their primary customers and markets. The consultants then conducted a
series of customer and market analyses. They interviewed current as well as
former customers of UneekGrafix. They also talked with individuals at companies
that had never used UneekGraphix to better understand how the company was
perceived in the marketplace.
Another focus was on the company’s competitors: what were they doing that
was bringing them business? To answer this question, the consultants conducted a
very thorough market analysis. They were particularly interested in which
products and services in the graphics business were increasing in use and which
were declining. Also of interest was understanding what the market would look
like in five years, particularly the impact of emerging technologies.
Having completed the market analysis, the consulting firm presented its find-
ings to the senior management team of UneekGrafix, both in an oral presentation
and a written report. In addition to the findings, the report included several
recommendations of changes the company could consider making to reverse the
decline in revenues and get back on a growth path.
As the UneekGrafix example demonstrates, the obvious advantage of employ-
ing experts as consultants is that they have knowledge that is not available in the
client organization. As the business world becomes faster paced and more
technologically sophisticated, experts can be an invaluable resource. The con-
sultants hired by UneekGrafix had several special skills. One, they had a good
understanding of what information to collect and how to collect it. Two, they were
experts in the graphics field. They also had a good understanding of strategy—how
to help a company gain a competitive advantage over its competitors.
As experts not only in strategic management but also in the graphics business,
the consultants to UneekGrafix gave its managers new insights about their
business and offered several valuable recommendations on ways to jump-start its
revenues. These are among the ways consultants can be so valuable.
This approach could best be described as a “research” kind of consulting
project, one in which the client lacks the data, tools (a survey, for example),
and/or the resources to do what needs to be done. For example, a client might
ask a consultant to prepare, distribute, and analyze RFPs (requests for proposals)
for employee benefit plans. The consultant collects input from the client, then
does a lot of the research on his or her own with potential vendors, explains the
results, and then helps the client decide which proposal to accept. End of story.
As with any approach to consulting, the expert approach, described here, has
potential problems. One possible concern from the client’s perspective is that the
expert may not fully appreciate the nature of the client’s business, and may
recommend actions that cannot or do not address the problem the consultant
was hired to solve. Alternatively, a client may end up with some wonderful
recommendations but be unable to implement any of them because of the unique
6 Consultants and consulting

political climate or culture of the company. These problems arise in part because,
unlike the facilitator approach, which you will read about next, the expert
approach encourages the consultant to do most of the research and analysis with
little input from managers or other personnel at the firm.
All too frequently, expert consultants present clients with nicely bound reports
that detail the results of an analysis of a problem together with recommendations
the company might take to help it operate more efficiently or compete more
effectively. The report may be right on target, but because the report was put
together outside the organization and key company executives participated very
little in the analysis or decision-making process, they may not take the recom-
mendations seriously. Executives are bombarded with reports of all types, and
unless there is a strong insider championing the value of a consultant’s recom-
mendations, his or her report can become just another document that is filed
away and never seen again.

Consultants as facilitators
Those who follow the consultant-as-facilitator approach view the consultant’s role
as assisting the client in going through the steps necessary to identify/diagnose a
problem and conduct a project to solve the problem. The consultant assists the
client in defining the problem, analyzing the situation, evaluating possible solu-
tions, and deciding on the best solution and the best way to implement the option
chosen. The consultant does not tell the client what solution is best. Nor does the
consultant implement changes or take actions. It is ultimately up to the client to
decide how to solve the problem or to implement the changes.
Let’s go back to the UneekGrafix case to look at how a consultant using the
facilitator approach might have worked with the company.
For the purposes of this example, let’s assume that UneekGrafix decided to hire
a consulting firm that specialized in collaborative strategic planning. After inter-
viewing three firms, UneekGrafix hired one that came highly recommended by
one of UneekGrafix’s suppliers. After discussing what the company expected from
the consulting firm, the consultants designed a process that would involve and
engage many of the key personnel at UneekGrafix throughout the project. Each
week, for 10 weeks, 15 of the key design and support managers met to complete
a step in this process and, between meetings, teams prepared for the next meeting.
For example, in preparation for one meeting, the teams called on current and
potential customers to ask them what they needed and wanted from the
company. In preparation for another meeting, the teams collected information
on their competitors, particularly those that were taking business away.
The role of the consultants was to help UneekGrafix design the process of
data-gathering and analysis, and to act as facilitators at meetings. In cases like this,
the client expects the consultants, as primary facilitators, to make recommenda-
tions, have a point of view, and act as devil’s advocates. Projects like these are
often the highest paying, but they also tend to be complicated and
 Consultants and consulting 7
multidisciplinary and the client expects the most from the consultants. The
consultants for UneekGrafix will need to collect information for the firm and
will be responsible for recommending a business strategy. Whether the recom-
mendations will be followed, however, is ultimately up to UneekGrafix’s
managers.
Our hypothetical example had a successful outcome. Because of the consul-
tants’ strengths in designing the process and their skills in facilitating meetings,
after 10 weeks, the 15 managers who had been meeting had developed a strategic
plan for the firm that they felt confident would put them back on the road to
growth and profitability.
One obvious advantage of the facilitator approach is that the client is very
involved both in analyzing the problem and deciding on a plan of action. As a
result, the client is likely to have a strong sense of commitment to and ownership
of whatever action the organization decides to take, increasing the probability that
decisions will be implemented. Another advantage of the facilitator approach is
that managers become very knowledgeable about their business and about their
customers as well as their competitors. This knowledge can be very helpful in
making future decisions.
Problems can also arise with the facilitator approach, however. One rather
obvious problem can occur if the decision-makers in the client organization do not
have the knowledge or the time to make wise decisions. We rely heavily on experts
in all aspects of our lives, from medical doctors, dentists, and lawyers to computer
gurus, architects, and building contractors, to name only a few. These experts
provide critical services in areas in which our knowledge is inadequate. Similarly,
there are times when expert opinion is desperately needed in specialized areas of
business. In cases like this, the client may be better served by deferring to the advice
of the consultants, rather than actively participating in the entire process.
Another problem that can arise with the facilitator approach is that the client
group may not be capable of making tough decisions. In many collaborative
efforts, the aim is to accommodate all the participants’ viewpoints and keep peace
in the company. As a consequence, although consensus may be achieved, it may
be at the cost of making the best decision. Ideally, a good facilitator/consultant
will make sure this does not happen; however, the danger that the group will
arrive at a less-than-optimal decision is a very real one.

Summary
This book does not favor either the facilitator or the expert model. In fact, you
may end up using parts of both approaches during one assignment, or at different
times or phases. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. The point
here is that there is more than one way—and perhaps several ways—to approach a
client assignment. The key is to understand which approach best fits the situation
and which one will be effective in moving the client forward. By the time you
finish this book, you should be better equipped to make such an assessment.
8 Consultants and consulting

Internal versus external consultants

Most people think of consultants as being self-employed or employed by a firm
that provides consulting services. These external or outside consultants are not
employees of the client’s company; they work with the client on a temporary
assignment.
External consultants typically spend relatively short periods of time at client
companies. They contract for a specific project, and once the job is finished, they
move on to another project, and often to another company. Most consultants fall
into this category of externals.
Among these externals, quite a few are “lone rangers”—people who are self-
employed, work alone, and operate out of home offices. However, by far the vast
majority of external consultants are employed by consulting businesses. Many of
these firms are quite small, with five to 20 consultants. Firm sizes vary consider-
ably beyond that. Among the largest consulting companies, a few employ upward
of 10,000 consultants. Deloitte Consulting, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Ernst
& Young are three of the largest management consulting firms in the world.
Accenture, another major management consulting firm, employs over 400,000
employees worldwide.
External consultants are an immensely varied lot, with an almost infinite variety
in their knowledge and skills. There are consultants who specialize in everything
from store layouts to recycling, product packaging, parks and recreation, risk
management, animal care, inventory control, reading programs, water pollution,
and nuclear energy. There are consultants who will help you design a golf course,
and others who will help you select the proper grass and sand, and still others who
will advise you on how best to plan your daughter’s wedding. Name it, and you
probably can find a consultant who specializes in it.
The best externals have broad networks of contacts and usually have proprie-
tary data that they have collected from various projects and surveys. Having access
to that data is one reason clients may choose to use an external consultant for a
particular project.
Not all consultants are externals, however. A sometimes-ignored group are
those who work in staff positions, often as full-time employees, for a company.
Most of these internal consultants are employed in medium-sized or large
companies. Smaller companies—for instance, those with fewer than 200 employ-
ees—either do not have the need for internal consultants or simply cannot afford
to maintain them on staff.
Although some internal consultants may have the term consultant in their
title, such as organizational development consultants, many do not. Their business
cards may describe them as human resource specialists, safety officers, quality
coordinators, product engineers, project managers, training designers, master
teachers, financial analysts, or similar designations. Their major responsibility is
to provide consulting services to people or units in their organizations. Based
on the services they perform, they are clearly consultants as defined in this
book.
 Consultants and consulting 9
Now that you know a little about the two major types of consultants,
you’re ready to learn some of the advantages of working as an external versus
an internal consultant or of hiring one to work for you (see Table 1.1). One
advantage of hiring external consultants is that they usually have worked with
a lot of other companies and have direct experience solving the problem the
company is trying to solve or conducting the project the client is trying to
tackle. For example, if a client wants to install new computer software that no
one in the organization has any knowledge or expertise in, hiring an external
consultant who has overseen numerous installations would be a critical and
necessary step in the process, especially if the client has little or no experience
with such projects.
Another reason to hire an external consultant is that he or she brings a fresh
pair of eyes to a problem or project. Involving someone who can provide a new
and objective perspective can be a tremendous boon to a project, as we found
with the hypothetical case of UneekGrafix.
Still another advantage of hiring an external consultant is that it may be more
cost effective than maintaining a variety of experts on the payroll with expensive
benefits and compensation. Most companies cannot afford the luxury of having a
wide range of experts on the full-time staff. Hiring experts only when they are
needed is a great way to receive help in specified areas, for specified periods of
time, without adding staff and costs to the company payroll.
Although these advantages may seem like reason enough to hire an external
consultant, bringing consultants on as employees has its benefits. One advan-
tage is that they are always available, assuming that they are not involved in a
project for someone else in the company. In addition, they are generally more
familiar than external consultants with the company’s people and culture.
Often, they better understand how things get done, including who really
makes decisions and what to say and do when approaching these people. In
addition, unlike external consultants, who come and go, internals have to live
with the consequences of a project, which can be a strong incentive to be
concerned with the outcomes.

Table 1.1 Differences between internal and external

consultants

External consultant Internal consultant

Lots of experience with other companies. Always available.
Direct experience with solving similar More familiar with organization’s
problems. culture.
Fresh perspective. Understands politics of getting things
done.
Cost effective. Must live with results.
10 Consultants and consulting

As Betty Hussey, manager of human resource services at Goodyear Tire &

Rubber Company notes in her “From the experts . . .” comments, sometimes a
strong union environment and a rural company setting can highly influence your
choice of using an internal or external consultant.

From the experts . . .

Hiring consultants in a union and rural environment
by Betty Hussey, Manager of HR Services, Goodyear Tire &
Rubber Company, St. Marys, Ohio
There is no doubt that there are internal consultants already under-
times when we have to use con- stood some of the geographic/
sultants, and they can make a great demographic challenges.
contribution to our effectiveness From my observations, important
and efficiency. However, a con- to a consultant’s success, either an
stant problem that may be unique internal or an external consultant, is
to my work experience is that we knowing his or her boundaries. We
work in a rural community with a are a heavy production company in
very strong union. a very competitive industry with a
So first, we have a geographic continuous focus on running pro-
challenge: it is difficult to get exter- duct lines efficiently and cost-effec-
nal consultants to come to our rural, tively. We also have a labor union
small town in Ohio. We often have that represents a significant part of
to offer incentives to make it our workforce and has its own per-
happen, especially with a lengthy spective on employment policies
project—daily meal, gas, and mile- and staffing levels. Any consultant
age allowances, even a four-day we use must have experience with,
workweek so the consultant can and a deep understanding of, what
drive or fly to and from their home can and cannot be done in this
on some weekends. Not surpris- strong union environment. Union
ingly, it has often worked best for employees are always concerned
us to use internal corporate/com- about their jobs being eliminated;
pany consultants since they were thus, implementing change—even
already settled in the community when it would be more effective
and familiar with the area. In addi- and more efficient to do so—is
tion, on those occasions when often much more difficult in a
our remote location played a role strong union environment. Con-
in the problem being addressed, sultants, external or internal, have
 Consultants and consulting 11
to fully understand the union con- open and cooperative as they
tract, and work within those very could be. So it really helps if
strong boundaries. you have someone who knows
We have found that we were something about each job and the
often better off using internal con- work environment—which an
sultants. At one point, we were internal consultant would be more
redesigning our salaried work- likely to know. I found I often
force, changing job descriptions became “consultant-like” along
and titles, and doing lots of with the internal consultant from
restructuring. When someone’s corporate as we did this very deli-
job is at risk, they may not be as cate restructuring.

On the down side, some internal consultants complain that their recommenda-
tions are taken less seriously than those of externals, particularly by top manage-
ment. Internal consultants are usually in the midrange of the company hierarchy,
most often in a staff unit (as opposed to an operations unit). Because of this
positioning, there may be the perception among individuals or units that the
consultants’ services or advice can be ignored. In addition, top management may
feel more comfortable sharing the company’s problems with an external con-
sultant, rather than hanging out the company’s dirty laundry to someone in a
midlevel staff position.
By this time, you may be wondering which is better from the consultant’s
standpoint—being an external consultant or an internal one (see Table 1.2). If you
are an external consultant, you’ll probably get to travel a lot, probably will get to
work on a variety of different projects, and will learn about the inner workings of
a lot of companies. Certainly, you won’t get bored, and you’ll gain valuable

Table 1.2 Advantages and disadvantages of being an internal

versus an external consultant

Advantage/Disadvantage Internal consultant External consultant

Travel a lot X
Regular paycheck X
Variety of projects X
Have to live with results X
Taken into confidence X
Less boring X
Company-paid benefits X
Often taken less seriously X
12 Consultants and consulting

experience. Another plus is that external consultants are generally paid more than
internals, and sometimes they have the option to turn down projects if they don’t
want to work on them.
For some people, the advantages of being an external consultant can also be
disadvantages. Some externals complain about the constant travel and about having
to be away from home for long stretches of time. You are also likely to have many
12-hour days depending on your client’s needs and timeline. Clients usually are more
demanding of external consultants’ weekend and holiday time than they are with
internal consultants, who are their colleagues. However, if you work on your own,
you’ll need to do a lot of marketing to find business. And, finally, like anyone who is
self-employed, the mortgage and health insurance bills keep coming in even if you
aren’t working. Being on the payroll of a large consulting company eliminates some
of these disadvantages in that the large firms usually have a specialized staff to do the
marketing and acquire contracts, and they also provide steady pay and benefits.
Internal consultants usually don’t travel as much as externals, which gives them
much more time to spend with their families and friends and to attend to home
responsibilities. They receive regular paychecks, and their employer pays for
health insurance and other benefits, and usually contributes to a retirement fund.
For some internals, working with the same people again and again, particularly if
they are enjoyable to work with, is rewarding. In the negative column, this
usually means that their clients and projects are less varied than those of externals.
Internals are often assigned a project, or expected to learn a specific set of tasks,
and that becomes their specialty or focus.
As with any such overview, there are many exceptions to the generalizations just
mentioned. Some internal consultants travel a lot, for example, and some externals
don’t; and some internals take home healthy paychecks, while some externals who
are less effective and less good at marketing themselves have a tough time meeting
the bills. The important point is that a major distinction is made within the field of
consulting between internal and external consulting. Whether to hire an external or
an internal consultant, or to become an internal or an external consultant, is a
matter deserving of serious thought and discussion. This book should expand your
understanding of the questions you should consider whether you’re hiring a
consultant or embarking on a career as a consulting professional.

Organization of this book

The goal of this book is to teach you the basics of what consultants and
researchers have learned about how to be effective at what they do. By following
the process outlined in this book, you should improve your chances of success
tremendously. This process consists of seven steps that, when followed sequen-
tially, give order and logic to the consulting process:

1. Establishing expectations and goals (Chapter 2);

2. Formalizing the agreement: contracts and proposals (Chapter 3);
 Consultants and consulting 13
3. Developing a project plan, data collection, interviewing (Chapters 4, 5, and 6);
4. Preparing the feedback/assessment report: moving the client to action
(Chapter 7);
5. Presenting the findings: moving from diagnosis to commitment to action
(Chapter 8);
6. Initiating action (Chapter 9);
7. Ending the project (Chapter 10).

The length of time it takes to complete each of these steps varies widely
depending on the project; a step may take an hour to complete, or it may take
several months. However, completing each step is critical to the success of a project,
and ignoring the sequence (e.g., implementing changes without diagnosing pro-
blems) often guarantees failure. Chapters 2 through 10 of this book discuss each of
these steps in detail and demonstrate the step-by-step process effective consultants
follow. I end this book with five basic principles of effective consulting.
The focus of this book is on how to complete a consulting project to your
satisfaction, and the satisfaction of the client. At the end of each chapter, I provide
a set of key success factors to assist you in making your consulting experiences
more effective. For those of you using this book in the classroom, these success
factors can be used as a guide for classroom discussion or for potential student
projects. For those of you using this book in your consulting business, these
success factors can serve as a measure or checklist for your work. You might also
use these factors to stimulate dialogue with your clients and colleagues.
Each chapter includes a chapter-relevant expert advice box written by a
practicing, expert consultant, or a user of their services. Each advice box addresses
a specific topic related to the material in the chapter in which the box is
embedded. The experts provide practical examples based on their experiences as,
or with, consultants and help bring the chapter material to life.
So, now that you know a little about what consultants do and what you’ll learn
from this book, it’s time to begin to develop the skills for success.