Nine years ago, a couple of journalists published a book about the management consulting industry (Dangerous Company : The Consulting Powerhouses and the Businesses They Save and Ruin, James O'Shea and Charles Madigan, Penguin Books, 1997). I still find their ten-point checklist useful whenever I am considering using consultants.
- Before calling for proposals, clearly define the goal of the project.
- Assess whether you really need outsiders to achieve this goal. You may already have the brilliant people you need inside your organization.
- Demand that the consultant supply its best people, not just brand new hires. Send inadequate folks packing quickly.
- Insist on specificity in contracts. Pay for performance and satisfaction. If there is risk involved, find a way for the consultant to share in it.
- Maintain control. Your managers should make the decisions, not the consultants.
- If the relationship begins to go off the rails, confront the situation immediately.
- Demand proposals that are matched to your organization. Don't accept that a solution that worked somewhere else will necessarily work in your business. Don't adopt something just because it is in the consultant's latest book.
- Remember that your employees will still be here after the consultants leave. Be sure you treat your own folks with as much respect as you give the consultants. Be sure not to play down the ideas and contributions of your own people.
- Find a devil's advocate in your organization; someone you can trust to let you know how the consulting engagement is going out "in the trenches."
- Don't let a consultant convince you to fix something that is not broken. Apply your judgment to consulting recommendations.
Tom Lambert, in his book Key Management Questions: Smart Questions for Every Business Situation (Prentice Hall, 2003) offers a few more useful questions to consider.
- Is this project truly top priority right now?
- Is the cost of using a consultant for this project the best use of our limited resources right now?
- Are we prepared to live with the extra time it will take for outsiders to learn about our business?