3 mistakes of consultants that CIOs can’t help but make

There comes a time in the professional life of most CIOs when they – you – need to hire a consultant.

He is not a performer. This is someone with a certain set of skills that you introduce to help with daily tasks.

We are talking about someone with extensive experience and experience-based judgment, on which you pay for good advice. Having spent time on both sides of the CIO / consultant relationship, I can say with confidence that many CIOs do not know how to work best with us.

Their mistakes fall into three broad buckets: (1) What they want; (2) how to choose a consulting partner; and (3) what they do with the advice their counselor gives them.

Choosing a consultant: Who to avoid

Some consultants do not wait until they gather information about their client’s situation. They know what they will recommend before the engagement begins (warning sign: they use the term “best practice” a lot). Their process, as it is, is a search for ammunition, not lighting.

Other consultants you should avoid are those who promise to “deliver measurable improvements”. The reckless CIOs are rushing to this offer without thinking about asking who decides which indicator to improve.

Example: a company I worked with brought in a process improvement consultant. The consultant shortens the key process cycle by more than 80%. This was an outstanding result, the ointment of which was overshadowed by only one small fly: the changes that reduced the cycle time also damaged the throughput – by about 75%. And because the reduction in cycle time affected low-cost employees, while the reduction in throughput affected highly compensated professionals, the “improvement” also increased unit costs by a factor of four.

This was a very expensive measurable improvement.

The next in our pantheon of consultants you should avoid are those who promise to “find” low-hanging fruit.

I promise you – if the fruit is low hanging, every employee who is somewhere near the orchard has already identified it, recommended a course of action and their recommendation was rejected long ago.

Here is how the fruit picking consultant works: (1) The consultant asks the staff what needs to be done; (2) employees share their knowledge; and (3) the consultant copies and pastes their ideas into the final report. As you can imagine, this process does not increase the morale of employees.

Choosing a consultant: What not to want

Then there are the mistakes that CIOs make when looking at potential alternatives to consulting.

Some CIOs know the “right” answer. They know what the consultant wants to recommend. They may not even realize that this is what they want, but they still want it. A common example is: “Can you help us build a business rationale for x? ” Consultants who want a subsequent commitment understand, no doubt, that “This idea makes no business sense” is not an acceptable finding.

If you know the right answer and just want someone to confidently and convincingly repeat it to everyone present at the final presentation, consider hiring someone from the drama department at a nearby university. Actors cost less than consultants and you can count on them to stick to the script.

Another worst practice when choosing counselors: Be vague about where the bull’s eye is, but explicitly about how the counselor should choose an arrow, drop it, stand, aim, pull the bowstring, and shoot.

Every consultant who is worth being involved has a methodology that works. If you don’t like it, choose someone else. Otherwise, be aware of what success looks like and give the consultant the freedom to achieve it.

Another popular mistake is to ask how many previous clients the consulting firm has provided the requested service. This is a mistake because it doesn’t matter. What does it matter: how many members of the promised project team have done it before.

And oh, by the way, sometimes you want the answer to be “nobody.” This is the right answer when you want something really innovative. It’s not innovative if many other companies are already doing it, whatever then is

Another qualification: Require at least one member of the project team to have spent part of his / her IT management career. You do not want this perspective to dominate the dynamics of the team, but it will give you confidence that its recommendations take into account the challenges you face every day.

Using the results

Typically, the purpose of a consulting engagement is to provide an action plan to address a problem or pursue an opportunity. Too often, CIOs take this path, although they know without a shadow of a doubt that they will never persuade the executive management team to fund the action plan.

The consultant’s recommendations are DOA before their engagement even begins.

Intelligent CIOs are committed – surrounded by reasonable assumptions – that the program defined by the action plan of the consulting project will be included in the budget.

In the same vein, smart CIOs insist that the results of the consultancy project will include the program, initiative and / or project charters needed to start implementing this action plan.

You have just made your consultant an expert in what you need to do. Make the most of this experience.