Our mission at Warbird is to become known for legendary client relationships, but what does this mean for project consultants and how do we build these relationships? We’ve set up a framework of what legendary client relationships look like and how we can achieve them.

 

Achieving the status of “legendary” from a client starts with providing authentic expertise and insightful understanding of the client’s unique environment combined with effective execution on the engagement.

When grounded in our technical expertise and strengthened by consistently credible guidance, we are able to maintain exemplary results which produce opportunities to “do it again.”

That’s legendary.

What does it mean to be legendary? For Warbird, it means our clients value our work and approach to the point that we receive both repeat and referral business as a result. When Warbird was formed we talked about how we were going to differentiate our firm over time – this came down to performing in a legendary manner on each engagement and forming legendary client relationships. Becoming legendary is just one way to assess and describe a best-in-class engagement.

When I was an HR consultant, one of the hallmark characteristics of a successful engagement for me was being invited by my client to their annual holiday gathering. If they were pleased with my work I was usually invited.

In our effort to become legendary, help us catalog and benchmark all of the characteristics to gauge whether or not we are achieving our efforts. -Richard Woods, CAO

Serving Our Community

Warbird recently participated in its 5th annual SafeHouse Outreach Backpack-A-Palooza, a backpack giveaway event for children in need. This year Warbird contributed 40 backpacks filled with school supplies to help some deserving high school students headed back to school ready to learn.

Being active in various forms of community service is vital to our organization for many good reasons. One reason is that serving others reminds us, as a professional SERVICES firm, that SERVING the needs of our clients is the mindset and attitude which we must keep firmly in place as we endeavor to help them overcome their challenges and implement the solutions they urgently need. Another reason community service is vital to our organization is to raise awareness within the company about the importance of corporate social responsibility. While we serve our clients throughout the year, it is also important to give back to our community that surrounds us every day.

Sometimes you’re in the right place at the right time meeting the right people.

At Warbird, our consultants are our most valuable assets. Without consultants, we would not exist. This is why developing a professional relationship with a project consultant is vital for everyone in the company, but particularly key for recruiters.

The recruiter/consultant relationship is the glue that holds a consulting company together. There is ample time and effort that is put in to building a base of credibility and trust between the recruiter and project consultant.

Gretchen, a Warbird recruiter for Accounting Advisory, and David, Project Consultant, have known each other for almost 20 years. Gretchen and David met while they were working together as project contractors in 1997. In 2002, Gretchen joined Callaway Partners as a recruiter and began recruiting for the HealthSouth project in 2003 that grew to over 300 consultants. She remembered David and thought he would be a great fit for the job. He joined Callaway Partners as a project consultant in the third wave to go to HealthSouth. [Sidebar: Gretchen was also Mike Draa’s recruiter!] After David rolled off the HealthSouth project three years later, he continued to work for Callaway and Huron on several projects. Over the years, Gretchen and David went their separate ways from Huron. David’s resume was kept in the database through the transition to Warbird; he was recently found to be a great fit for a current project, and almost 20 years later he continues his consulting career with Warbird. Through multiple job changes and taking time off from work, Gretchen and David now are working at the same company once again.

Key Takeaways from Gretchen

  • Always be growing your professional network
  • Find a common ground with people and build up to credibility and trust
  • When you leave an organization, leave it well – no matter how short or long you’re there
  • Wherever you go, treat people well because you never know how they will connect to your future

This story is just one example of how relationships become legendary over time. Our mission at Warbird is to serve and become known for legendary client relationships. We should try to exceed this and make all of our professional relationships legendary.

Last month we discussed three of the most common organizational challenges we encounter as consultants. The three organizational challenges we discussed included ego imbalance, weak collaboration and limited transparency.  As consultants, the real challenge is not in assessing these organizational handicaps as they are easy to spot. The real challenge is successfully navigating the land mines they may lay in our path, and having the insightful influence strategy needed to help our clients overcome them. Sometimes it is the consequences of these organizational challenges that result in the need for our services. Consequently producing high quality technical delivererables may correct the immediate need but have little to no impact on the root cause. 

When we have the opportunity to skillfully address both symptom and cause, we find our greatest value as consultants.

  • Do you have any examples where you have assessed these organizational challenges and been able to make a difference in helping your client overcome them in some manner?

When entering a new engagement we must assess the organizational landscape beyond our technical abilities. Part of our effectiveness as consultants is our ability to interpret the environment in which we operate in our assignment.

What are the top three organizational dysfunctions that we are most likely to encounter when we go into a new engagement.

Three things to consider:

  • Ego Imbalance:  When arrogance and power or fear and insecurity are excessively driving behaviors.  Seeing through this lens and understanding this landscape can help us determine the most impactful influence strategies and avoid many landmines in how we are relating to our clients.
  • Ineffective Collaboration: It’s really important to understand how our client collaborates (makes and communicates decisions) in their environment. Assumptions in this regard can be very costly.
  • Lack of Transparency: Inclusive communication is key, especially the pipeline from shareholders to stakeholders. Transparency increases buy-in and teamwork. Transparency produces stakeholders.

Are there common issues that you’ve experience or observed when entering the new environment? What other advice would you offer to your fellow consultants?

The right mindset and a strong focus on the work at hand will make for a smoother transition from the corporate world to the consulting world. There are also a few key factors that can make this transition better for both the consultant and client.

  • Discovery:  Conduct an environmental assessment (observe carefully, then quickly map the decision making, problem solving, collaboration and communication culture of your client)
  • Alignment: Listen 50% more than speaking; recognize how you need to adapt your approach to be influential; define boundaries associated with the best approach to client relationship building
  • Execution: Not just fitting via silence but intentionally combining what you’ve learned from your assessment with influence strategies that lead the client in the right direction and at the same time build confidence in your ability to advise them well.

Defining Roles and Responsibilities
With each client, there will be different practices and parameters of the job. When you clarify what you’ll be delivering and what the client’s expectations are, then it will be easier to communicate and work together.                                                                                                                                                                         Learn more from this Forbes article

Knowing How to Think Before You Do

As a consultant, thinking before doing can help you create better solutions and understanding of the client’s issues. Next time, before you jump in, try a little extra thinking before accomplishing the task at hand.

Earlier on the blog we talked about “house” rules (You’re in MY House Now) when entering an engagement and how important it is to proceed with caution until the client feels comfortable with you in their environment. But what about before you enter an on-site engagement?

Prior to entering the engagement, you may or may not know the project manager on the engagement and that could cause some disruption if a unified stance is not taken. The unified front will form the consultant team together, whether they are working in the same work stream or not. For example, working together on the front-end of the engagement by exchanging information the night before or after hours can help support creating a common goal and smooth out issues while working with the client. This could help build the communication even if you are working on different work streams. If your team is better prepared, then you will appear as a well-oiled machine to the client.

  • Do you have any tips for entering an on-site engagement?

am.bi.gu.i.ty (n.)

  1. Doubtfulness or uncertainty as regards to interpretation
  2. Something of doubtful meaning

An essential characteristic of world-class consultants is the ability to tolerate ambiguity. This is a critical attribute for achieving success on any client engagement. This ability to constructively tolerate an ambiguous, chaotic or rapidly changing environment and become a source of positive influence can make or break a project’s success. Understanding and translating environmental client conditions and needs into the right advisory dialogue without being irritated or annoyed allows you to think creatively when helping clients solve problems, making recommendations and providing consultative guidance.

Situation with Ambiguity

In 2011, Jeanne Bateman (Warbird PC) was on a client engagement project with a billing problem. The Billing Department was several months behind due to staff turnover and essentially no one was able to tell what the client had or hadn’t paid for. There was no structure in place that easily enabled Jeanne to follow the cash. She had to think creatively on how to piece the puzzle together by cross-referencing and only counting things once in the process. To reach the end-goal, Jeanne had to work with four different groups of people within the company. She gathered lots of data and made it into a structured product that their field personnel found extremely helpful. Beyond this end-product, another report was created from IT for A/R to use for collections and Jeanne also outlined a financial audit work plan that other Warbird PCs were able to use on this same client engagement project. Ambiguity played a huge factor in Jeanne’s work but she was able to find creative ways to get around it, and ultimately she impressed the client.

“Change cannot be installed and engineered, and so it always takes longer and is more difficult than we ever imagined.” – Peter Block

When implementing a new program or process on a client engagement it’s easy to just follow the blueprint and install it manually. Instead of just installing the work at a client space, there needs to be an enhancement to the strategies and that’s where engagement comes in during implementation.  Becoming more engaged, on both sides, leads to better results in the long-run.

Two Aspects of Implementation for Consultants

  1. The technical work using the expertise you have spent developing over years of real-life experience
  2. How to build support for the business or technical change you are planning
  3. Real changes require real commitment, and part of your role is to help fire that spark.

Key Takeaways

  • Too many consulting projects result in cosmetic change: the thinking and rhetoric about the change are perfect, but the experience of people does not match the promise.
  • No single person runs a business, no one person makes or delivers a product, and no one general ever fought a war.

“Resistance is a predictable, natural reaction against the process of being helped and against the process of having to face up to difficult organizational problems.” – Peter Block

During client engagement or interacting in the business world, you will one day be faced with resistance from the opposite end. Understanding this resistance will be key to your success when helping to solve a problem.  Resistance comes in multiple forms that may sometimes be easy to detect while other times it may be very difficult to identify.

For example, if the client keeps reminding you that this is the “real world and we have real world problems”, then you may be up against an emotional issue that may lead you to go forward with a more practical approach.

Skills for dealing with resistance:

  • Be able to identify when resistance is taking place
  • View resistance as a natural process and a sign that you are on target
  • Support the client in expressing the resistance directly
  • Not take the expression of the resistance personally or as an attack on your or your competence

What types of resistance have you dealt with and what skills did you use to deal with it?