DC Velocity - February 2012

basictraining

Among both professional and “temporary” consultants, there may be questions of whether the experience base is made up of hundreds of different experiences or one experience hundreds of times. Although, again, it’s up to you to make the right connection, it is all too easy for a creative (and hungry) consultant to claim breadth based on depth—and vice versa.

The recently unemployed adviser can present a special case. Often, especially in very specific operational areas, they’ve got the knowledge and background that fit the situation. But, also often, they can be inexperienced in some important elements of success, including:

▪ Not understanding the worth of their contributions, and how to set fees based on a value proposition

▪ Not knowing how to assemble a business case for a solution that hits the right approval hot buttons

▪ Failing to understand the local culture and “how things get done here”

▪ Being unrealistic in building an implementation project plan

▪ Ignoring the organized elements of the change mechanisms that are vital to any program’s outcomes

▪ Forgetting the length and slope of the change/implemen-tation up-ramp to reach future state performance levels.

It will be up to you as to whether these risks and poten-
tials are worth it, whether a less-deep but broader adviser
might be a better fit overall, or whether you can cover the
sometimes-gaping disconnects through the efforts of your
internal staff, or by yourself.

AT THE END OF THE DAY …

We hesitate to throw all the responsibility on you, but somebody has to sift through the advisers and the advice to figure out which among the nearly countless options fits, can work, is genuine, is based on strength, is grounded in reality, and is more likely to make you a hero than get you tagged as the goat. That’s true whether it involves accepting a point of view or engaging a consultant.

So, whether you go for the $80 bottle or the $125 once-in-a-lifetime experience is somewhat up to you and your circumstances. But if it’s Chateaubriand for dinner, stay away from the $4 special from the supermarket. And if you’re cranking up the iPod to entertain the guests, Andrea Bocelli will do as well as anything else you can find. ;

Art van Bodegraven, practice leader at S4 Consulting, may be reached at (614) 336-0346 or avan@columbus.rr.com. You can read his blog at http://blogs.dcvelocity.com/the_art_of_art/. Kenneth B. Ackerman, president of The Ackerman Company, can be reached at (614) 488-3165 or ken@warehousing-forum.com.

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