High Value Consulting: Managing and Maximizing External and Internal Consultants for Massive Added Value

224 Pages·1999·0.76 MB·English

by  Tom Lambert

High Value
Consulting
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High Value
Consulting
Managing and Maximizing
External and Internal
Consultants
For Massive Added Value
Tom Lambert
NI C H O L A S BR E A L E Y
PU B L I S H I N G
L O N D O N
First published by
Nicholas Brealey Publishing Limited in 1998
36 John Street 671 Clover Drive
London Santa Rosa
WC1A 2AT, UK CA 95401, USA
Tel: [phone] Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone] Fax: [phone]
http://www.nbrealey-books.com
© Tom Lambert 1998
The right of Tom Lambert to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN1-85788-1737
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording and/or otherwise without the prior written permission of
the publishers. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or oth-
erwise disposed of by way of trade in any form, binding or cover
other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent
of the publishers.
Printed in Finland by Werner Söderström Oy.
Also by Tom Lambert:
The Power of Influence:
Intensive Influencing Skills at Work
Published by Nicholas Brealey, 1996
Key Management Solutions
Published by Pitman, 1996
High Income Consulting:
How to Build and Market Your Professional Practice
Published by Nicholas Brealey, 2nd edn 1997
Making Change Pay
Published by Financial Times, 1997
PART I
EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED
TO KNOW ABOUT CONSULTING
CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3
The growth of External and Different
consultancy internal kinds of
consultants consultants
PART I I
WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?
CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6
Why do you What are the Selecting the
need a alternatives? best – avoiding
consultant? the worst
CHAPTER 7
Anatomy of a
consulting
disaster
PART III
MANAGING THE CONSULTING PROCESS
CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10
Finding the Referees, Fees and
right person referrals and contracts
repeat business
CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13
The consulting Maximizing the Making training
process benefit work
Contents
Foreword ix
Part I Everything You Always Wanted to Know
about Consulting 1
1 The growth of consultancy 3
2 External and internal consultants 13
3 Different kinds of consultants 23
Part II What’s Your Problem? 45
4 Why do you need a consultant? 47
5 What are the alternatives? 63
6 Selecting the best – avoiding the worst 69
7 Anatomy of a consulting disaster 79
Part III Managing the Consulting Process 95
8 Finding the right person 97
9 Referees, referrals and repeat business 115
10 Fees and contracts 125
11 The consulting process 147
12 Maximizing the benefit 165
13 Making training work 187
Afterword 199
Bibliography 201
Index 207
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Foreword
THOSE WHO WRITE BOOKS OUGHT TO POSSESS A STEELY CORE OF
unmitigated arrogance. After all, we have no choice but to
assume that we have something worth saying and that large
numbers of people will want to read our pontifications.
I have written what many people have kindly called the
most useful book about the field of consultancy, High Income
Consulting, and as a result have been called ‘the consultant’s
consultant’ by the quality press. Putting this another way, I am
deemed by others to know a little more about consultancy
than most. My Key Management Solutions began life as a
detailed ‘how to do it’ collection on the consultancy process.
I have not always been on my present side of the fence. I have
been a client and have had direct experience with a major con-
glomerate choosing, using and sometimes firing consultants.
And as a working consultant I have helped clients do a
range of important things:
❑
develop practical dominance strategies and make them
work
❑
raise essential capital in one hectic day when a successful
bid for a major contract threatened the cashflow of an
underresourced but technologically supreme client
❑
kickstart failed initiatives from total quality to change
programs
❑
triple sales and profits by helping make sales training work.