Business coaches are very popular these days. The purpose they serve is to keep the executive or owner focused on achieving goals. For example, with one of my business-owner clients, we structure our meetings to focus on the following five areas:

1. Recent sales and pipeline
2. Marketing efforts
3. Customers
4. Personnel and Operations
5. Cash flow

This structure allows the owner to prepare for each meeting. She takes notes during the meeting and comes up with a to-do list—many of these action items she reports on the following week as we go through the five topics again. And this goal-setting approach gives us the ability to look back and see the progress over the years. It’s also cathartic for her as she gets to share with someone, who is involved with her business as a coach/consultant, the issues that may not be appropriate to share with her subordinates or of interest to her husband.

Building a business, like running, is easier if you’re not doing it alone. If you’re not hitting on all cylinders for business (or your career), consider getting a proven business coach to improve your results. Remember, in down business cycles, you have to think differently to achieve outstanding results.  Mike Oleksak   2009

Although hardware companies have always relied on thought leadership to support sales (think white papers and presentations), the addition of consulting offerings requires a new level of sophistication. They are no longer just touting the benefits to the customer of a product. Now, the hardware manufacturers are agreeing to make the benefit happen. Selling that idea requires an even greater perception of expertise…that you will get from pursuing a thought leadership strategy.

The most striking thing about this book is the convincing case he makes that the business of the large consulting firms in the U.S. has really been created and perpetuated by government regulation—a few examples:

• The U.S. bias against monopolies (in contrast with the strong industrial groups of Germany and Japan) created the need for a neutral party to provide information across industries on “best” practices—the role of management consultants was knowledge transfer.

• After the Depression, the Glass-Steagall Act took banks out of the business of performing what were referred to as “management audits” and drove accounting firms to focus on providing financial audits. Taking these two traditional players out of the market opened the door for the explosive growth of McKinsey, A.T. Kearney and Booz Allen & Hamilton.

• In the 1950’s, concerns about IBM’s monopolistic power led the U.S. Department of Justice to prohibit the company from offering computer consulting advice—opening the door for the accounting firms to get back into the consulting business, most notably Arthur Andersen.

• In the mid-1980’s, a ruling on liability of the corporate board of Trans Union for failing to exercise “informed business judgment” in the approval of an acquisition led to a rash of similar suits and a crisis in D&O insurance—until boards discovered the power of consultant reports to validate their decisions—leading consultants beyond knowledge transfer to the sale of legitimacy.

• Ironically, the next turn came when the accounting firms lobbied for their own change in regulation. In response to concerns about the liability of professional firms, Congress overrode Clinton’s veto to pass the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995 which, McKenna asserts, allowed firms to continue to audit riskier clients—and led directly to Enron and the collapse of Arthur Andersen.

• The Enron crisis, of course, led to the exit by accounting firms from consulting and the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation—both creating huge new opportunities for the consulting market.

The second big theme in the book is ethics. McKenna is very open in his support for increased professionalism in consulting. He asserts that McKinsey got a free ride and took no blame for their work with Enron. Further, he feels that, with Sarbox “having failed to prevent the corporate governance crisis, management consultants were nevertheless once again touted as the best solution to rising corporate liability.” Although the cynical would say that’s a great business, McKenna tells us that the profession “eventually needs to grow up.”

He’s probably right. But it’s not an easy thing to do in the big picture—there are issues on the creation of professional work standards which is why the survey we describe above is so important. But it is possible (and necessary) for every firm to start with their own work standards. That’s why we participate in the Institute of Management Consultants and abide by their Code of Ethics.

Read more about this book at Cambridge University Press.

This survey is being administered by Sterling Research Group, an independent research firm. All answers are confidential and no individual responses will be revealed. In appreciation for your generous contribution of about ten to fifteen minutes, you will receive a copy of the survey results and, if you choose, two additional free reports on how to best use consultants.

When you have received the results of the survey, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss them with you. Please contact us if you have questions about the survey.

If the consultant has experience; that’s fine. And a good case probably can be made as to the applicability of that experience to the prospect’s needs—the most obvious and biggest advantage being the shorter learning curve regarding standard industry practices, terminology, and industry players.

However, a strong case also can be made for bringing a fresh set of eyes to a problem. A professional who does not have specific industry expertise can argue that lessons learned from working with companies in other industries can be the generator of new and better ways of doing things. In this way, best practices can be created for your client, drawn on best practices from those outside the industry.

We have seen this play out lately in a number of situations in our own business and in those of our clients. Sometimes prior knowledge brings valuable perspective to a challenging situation, and sometimes it puts blinders on the consultant preventing them from seeing beyond the “common wisdom” of the industry.

Next time you look for industry expertise, think very specifically about what kind of expertise you really need.

Advisor #1: “Everything is about the person. Their hopes, their fears, their families, their cars, their divorce. I focus on them, on what they need to do. I have their trust so I end up helping them with everything. I’m not an expert on financing, but I end up advising about financing. I’m not an expert on M&A, but I end up advising on deals…”.

Advisor #2: “In M&A situations, there is a momentum to deals. As it moves forward, people lose their perspective and may not analyze things as much as they should. They get emotionally invested in the deal. It may sound like psychoanalytical babble, but it’s OK to turn a deal down.”

The first advisor was willing to solve any problem with psychology and focus on the human factor. The second advisor was so focused on hard business logic that he felt he had to apologize for reminding people that emotions do get involved in business. These two statements highlight the differences between many business people and advisors we know. Both of these people are successful. They play to their individual strengths. But each has staked out a lop-sided business focus. While their comments make colorful sound bites, they are lacking balance–clearly, neither is the best way to advise a company.

Business success is not all about emotions and people, but neither is it all about cold, hard analytics. You probably have your own bias. You may feel more comfortable with people than with numbers—or visa versa. But neither is a good excuse to focus on one approach exclusively. To be effective with our clients and within our own organizations, we all need to find balance.

Make the effort to recognize your weaknesses; work hard to strengthen them; and make sure you round out your team to include people with different strengths. Here on Earth, balance is a good thing.

- Mary Adams and Michael Oleksak    2005

Sobel sought input from many respected sources in the consulting and corporate world and wove their revelations into such chapters as “How to break through as an expert”, “Gaining the trust of the client”, and “Sustaining relationships.” Sobel disparages the salesperson who only talks about his own company without understanding the client’s business in-depth.

While a terrific read for consultants, it’s also appropriate for the lender who needs to go the extra mile to gain the borrower’s confidence, or the salesperson who needs to add value beyond simply the product or service they are selling.

Read more on Andrew Sobel’s book.  2005

This document is available online as a service of IMC-USA. Please note that you will have to register to get the manual, but you may opt out of their mailing list.

• Have strategic conversations with your key customers. Don’t just talk about what you have to sell today. Understand their goals for the year and how your company can help them reach those goals. Also, ask them about the longer term—where they see the market going beyond the year ahead. For more information about this topic, see our article on Strategic Conversations with Your Customers.
• Take a fresh look at your customer communication materials. Are you demonstrating your understanding of their goals? Are you relating the value of your firm? It is always important to make it clear how your services are addressing the client’s pain and making their lives better. Bring up the level of your materials to reinforce your image and your connection with the customer.

Whether or not you work on the basis of annual agreements, now is a great time to tune up your customer relationship management. 2005

That’s right; you should never outsource your strategy. Your strategy is the core of who you are as a company and where you are going. Strategy should only be developed by insiders, preferably the managers who are going to implement it.

But your strategy, like your post-holiday exercise routine, may be greatly improved by using a good consultant. A strategy consultant can help you to:

• Develop fresh information about your market, your customers and your company to encourage innovative thinking
• Structure a process that encourages continuous learning and performance improvement
• Provide focus and discipline to ensure that the process works the way you would like

In some companies, this is the job of a specific position or a department. However, this function serves as an internal consultant and still should not be developing the strategy. Whether internal or external, a good consultant can help the managers on the line (who should be forming the strategy itself) create a good process and keep it on track.

- Michael Oleksak     2005