I've been a consultant for almost seven years. I won’t claim to be an expert, mind you. I don’t have twenty years' experience as a consultant.
By the way, why is twenty years always the timeframe touted when someone is exalted as having so much experience? Even if they have twenty-two or twenty-five or twenty-eight years in an industry, the usual phrase is “over twenty years.” At the end of this year, I will actually have twenty years in the health insurance industry. But I digress.
Consultants get a bad rap. Look no further than the way the “two Bobs” are portrayed in the movie Office Space. To some degree, a bad reputation is warranted. I recently read a fantastic description of a consultant:
Consultants are usually referred to as experts in their fields. Even Mark Twain weighed in when he referred to an expert as “an ordinary fellow from another town.”
The truth is that just like any role in any field, there are consultants who are very good at what they do and others who are not so great.
At a typical company, most employees have a role that is specialized. Trainers train. Documentation specialists write and format documents. Supervisors supervise.
Consultants sometimes specialize as well. Some like to be project managers or take on managerial roles like the one I have now. But general consulting responsibilities require one to wear multiple hats. You have to analyze and interpret requirements. Perform root cause analysis for issues. Develop and test solutions. You need effective communication skills. You need to be able to present to a group. You need to know how to train people. In other words, you need to be sharp in many areas to be successful as a consultant.
A good consultant can take marching orders, but a consultant also needs the skill of mind reading. Often a client doesn’t know which direction to go. The client may not know how to provide direction for a consultant to help them. In this case, you chart your own path. You do the things that need to be done based on your experience and any direction you can extract.
--Excerpt from 2019
My boss met with the CEO of the client yesterday, and I texted him and asked how it went. He replied that the CEO heard great things about our resources and the work that’s been done. I replied with a gif of the A-Team logo.
While most of the consultants on this project are top-shelf, there are a few who dog it. That’s my way of saying they are not “A players.” There’s Mr. No Show For Dinner, who has other challenges with work performance. There’s also Mr. Doze Off in a Meeting. Yes, I witnessed that with my own eyes yesterday. That consultant was at the team dinner with the rest of us the night before and was drinking copious amounts of alcohol.
If I were a full-time manager at a company and one of my direct reports was falling asleep in a meeting, I would have to address the issue immediately. My situation is different because I’m a consultant like the rest of my colleagues. I’m in a manager role, but it’s not the same as a manager at the company. Still, I have to address unprofessionalism when it leads to poor performance and when it makes us all look bad.
I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he has a medical issue he’s dealing with. When someone is otherwise an exemplary worker, it is easier to give him the benefit of the doubt. When I get reports that he’s playing on his phone all day, taking long lunches, and see that his assigned work is not being completed promptly and accurately, that makes it tougher to let things slide.
Since many people are working remotely, internet connectivity has transformed from a luxury to a necessity. There was a consultant on my project whose internet went out and somehow that meant he was completely unavailable.
If my internet goes out, my backup is a mobile hotspot. When I was traveling, it was convenient to have a hotspot in case the internet was acting up at the hotel or if I needed to access the internet on the go. It’s also more secure than relying on a public WIFI hotspot. If the backup goes out, I would consider going to a coffee shop or another public spot depending on how long the outage is projected to last. All else fails, if I have no access to the internet, I have my regular meeting dial-in numbers and meeting codes to call into meetings.
If I am at wit’s end with no internet and somehow can’t call into meetings, then I don’t bill any hours. It’s one thing to be sitting on the phone with the help desk troubleshooting an issue. You are there because of work. But if you are dead in the water, you should not be billing that time.
I hold consultants to a higher standard than "standard" employees. When you are a consultant, you are customer-facing all the time. Your work is not guaranteed. If you do a good job, you will be retained by the client. A good job at multiple clients will result in a good reputation throughout the industry and you will most likely never sit on the bench, certainly not for very long. If you regularly do a bad job, your name will get around and there will be fewer and fewer opportunities for your placement.
I recently had a consultant roll off my client last week at his request because he was feeling "burnt out." I've experienced burnout myself. Before I became a consultant, my last job was a management role for a Fortune 500 company, and I was completely burnt out. Still, even on my last day, I was fielding questions from people as I handed my laptop over to the director. Regardless of burnout, I delivered right up until my very last day.
By the way, why is twenty years always the timeframe touted when someone is exalted as having so much experience? Even if they have twenty-two or twenty-five or twenty-eight years in an industry, the usual phrase is “over twenty years.” At the end of this year, I will actually have twenty years in the health insurance industry. But I digress.
Consultants get a bad rap. Look no further than the way the “two Bobs” are portrayed in the movie Office Space. To some degree, a bad reputation is warranted. I recently read a fantastic description of a consultant:
Someone who will borrow your watch to tell you the time.
Consultants are usually referred to as experts in their fields. Even Mark Twain weighed in when he referred to an expert as “an ordinary fellow from another town.”
The truth is that just like any role in any field, there are consultants who are very good at what they do and others who are not so great.
At a typical company, most employees have a role that is specialized. Trainers train. Documentation specialists write and format documents. Supervisors supervise.
Consultants sometimes specialize as well. Some like to be project managers or take on managerial roles like the one I have now. But general consulting responsibilities require one to wear multiple hats. You have to analyze and interpret requirements. Perform root cause analysis for issues. Develop and test solutions. You need effective communication skills. You need to be able to present to a group. You need to know how to train people. In other words, you need to be sharp in many areas to be successful as a consultant.
A good consultant can take marching orders, but a consultant also needs the skill of mind reading. Often a client doesn’t know which direction to go. The client may not know how to provide direction for a consultant to help them. In this case, you chart your own path. You do the things that need to be done based on your experience and any direction you can extract.
--Excerpt from 2019
My boss who is an SVP at my consulting company was onsite this week. He took us out to dinner on Monday. He had a stern rebuke for one of the consultants on the project who decided not to join the team without providing him an explanation. Bad move.
My boss met with the CEO of the client yesterday, and I texted him and asked how it went. He replied that the CEO heard great things about our resources and the work that’s been done. I replied with a gif of the A-Team logo.
While most of the consultants on this project are top-shelf, there are a few who dog it. That’s my way of saying they are not “A players.” There’s Mr. No Show For Dinner, who has other challenges with work performance. There’s also Mr. Doze Off in a Meeting. Yes, I witnessed that with my own eyes yesterday. That consultant was at the team dinner with the rest of us the night before and was drinking copious amounts of alcohol.
If I were a full-time manager at a company and one of my direct reports was falling asleep in a meeting, I would have to address the issue immediately. My situation is different because I’m a consultant like the rest of my colleagues. I’m in a manager role, but it’s not the same as a manager at the company. Still, I have to address unprofessionalism when it leads to poor performance and when it makes us all look bad.
I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he has a medical issue he’s dealing with. When someone is otherwise an exemplary worker, it is easier to give him the benefit of the doubt. When I get reports that he’s playing on his phone all day, taking long lunches, and see that his assigned work is not being completed promptly and accurately, that makes it tougher to let things slide.
Since many people are working remotely, internet connectivity has transformed from a luxury to a necessity. There was a consultant on my project whose internet went out and somehow that meant he was completely unavailable.
If my internet goes out, my backup is a mobile hotspot. When I was traveling, it was convenient to have a hotspot in case the internet was acting up at the hotel or if I needed to access the internet on the go. It’s also more secure than relying on a public WIFI hotspot. If the backup goes out, I would consider going to a coffee shop or another public spot depending on how long the outage is projected to last. All else fails, if I have no access to the internet, I have my regular meeting dial-in numbers and meeting codes to call into meetings.
If I am at wit’s end with no internet and somehow can’t call into meetings, then I don’t bill any hours. It’s one thing to be sitting on the phone with the help desk troubleshooting an issue. You are there because of work. But if you are dead in the water, you should not be billing that time.
I hold consultants to a higher standard than "standard" employees. When you are a consultant, you are customer-facing all the time. Your work is not guaranteed. If you do a good job, you will be retained by the client. A good job at multiple clients will result in a good reputation throughout the industry and you will most likely never sit on the bench, certainly not for very long. If you regularly do a bad job, your name will get around and there will be fewer and fewer opportunities for your placement.
I recently had a consultant roll off my client last week at his request because he was feeling "burnt out." I've experienced burnout myself. Before I became a consultant, my last job was a management role for a Fortune 500 company, and I was completely burnt out. Still, even on my last day, I was fielding questions from people as I handed my laptop over to the director. Regardless of burnout, I delivered right up until my very last day.
Not everyone takes this same approach. Some people just don't care or they are lazy or both. Despite the fact that I asked this consultant to coordinate the transition for all his tickets, I'm still cleaning up unfinished business this week. I didn't even get a final list of his open 10 tickets with the status of each one, which I would think would be the minimum one would do.
I debated whether to notify my boss the SVP, who is also this consultant's boss, and I decided I would send him a note. As soon as I sent the email, it was immediately rejected by Outlook as undeliverable because of some corporate rule that blocks emails interpreted as "fairwell mail." I deduced that it was the phrase "final day" that triggered this filtering. To get around this silliness, I took a screenshot of my email and sent that to my boss so that he was aware.
If you're going to dog it, dog it on someone else's team. On my team, only A players and B players need apply.
If you're going to dog it, dog it on someone else's team. On my team, only A players and B players need apply.
This is inspiring me to write The Employee Code one day.