How consultants work
and how to make them work for you
Consultants are expensive and must be managed carefully to get the best value from their services. Yet few organizations do so effectively.
Consultants have different values and agendas to their client, and those agendas can lead to disappointing results. While managers may dislike consultants for the hefty fees they charge and the little value delivered, they are accepted as a ‘necessary evil’. Often, consultants are placed on pedestals and not given clear direction; this can be expensive and dangerous.
Using true stories, this entertaining book spells out how consultants work and what you as clients must know them to get the maximum value from their fees.
The book is written as two interleaved stories:
- In the first story, a Managing Partner of a fictitious global consulting firm answers questions from new green-bean hires about how a consulting firm works.
- In the second story, an ex-global-strategy-firm consultant turned CEO answers questions from other CEOs about how to deal with their problems with consultants.
The stories give you the consulting insider’s view and the client's views of the same topics. They reveal:
- What is “success” for a consultant
- Where consultants are trained
- How you get rid of consultants who always seem to be around
- What “best practice” really is
- Whether consultants having “skin in the game” is a good idea
- How to get consultants to work for you, and not just for their consulting organizations.
- And much more.
Some of this you will know or may suspect. But you are likely to be surprised by some revelations.
This practical guide provides a series of Rules to help you get the best out of every consultancy and consultant you ever hire - if you’ll ever hire one again!
“Fun”, “horrifying”, “scathing” are just a few of the words used to describe this book. On the whole, the big-brand-name consultants hate it — which must be a good thing! As the tabloid press would say, “This is what the consultancies do not want you to know!”
A must-read for every manager accountable for hiring/ managing consultants.
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