What strategy consultants can learn from coaches
A still from the AppleTV series Ted Lasso
I am currently doing my Organisational Coaching certification, and the face-to-face cohort training last week offered great lessons for strategy consultancy and strategy generally. This biweek I'm sharing negativity about 'consultants', re-framing how consultants should work, and suggesting ways for clients to demand better and more of their consultants.
Why the Ted Lasso picture? There's lots written about the show as team culture and leadership, but it's relevant to strategy too.
The prevailing negativity about 'consultants'
Last week, across a cohort broad in sector and executive expertise, we worked through defining Coaching by looking at what it is close to but isn’t: mentoring, consulting, training, managing etc. It’s worth sharing the perceptions that arose spontaneously from this group of experienced, senior people:
‘Consultant’ is synonymous with the ‘Big Four’, BCG and McKinsey.
Low real value (expensive, don’t lead to lasting change, charge extras all the time)
Keep clients dependent (“ah, but that’s implementation, beyond this scope”)
Think they know the answer when they start – and they’re often wrong
Just follow a method, the only insight they really bring is what they’ve harvested from previous clients
Act in their own interests, not the clients
To me, this is a definition of bad consulting, not of consulting generally. There are good and bad accountants, lawyers, architects, taxi drivers. And there are good consultants doing good work within these big firms. But I do think there are social signals here that these large consultancies might want to consider, else they lose (more of?) their social license.
What did the Coaching training suggest?
The coaching trainers sketched out thoughtful distinctions between Consulting and Coaching:
Consultants help you by being experts in content, Coaches by being experts in process.
Consultants serve their and your goals, Coaches serve only your goals.
The consultant mindset is ‘we are experts’. The coaching mindset is ‘you are the expert’.
Consultants expect the goal will not fundamentally change. Coaches expect that it will – indeed actively create conditions for client to change the goal.
Consultants begin with a brief the client has articulated. Coaches begins knowing the sensemaking is the journey.
This was like lightbulbs going off for me: I think a consultant gives better service when they are aligned with the ‘coachy’ approach.
What does that mean in practice?
Process, not content
Assisting a client begins with knowing they already have all the answers. Board, Executive and staff all have data, insights, worries, dreams, experiences and stories that can inform and direct the organisation. They don’t need an expert, they need someone with methods, tools and a specific orientation.
Methods: how do we hear what Board, Exec and Staff know? How do we enable them to turn that knowledge into insight? Conversations, synthesis, facilitation…
Tools: what are the containers for the knowings? The structure, the diagram, the contents page
Orientation: We’re going to make it great. I believe in us
Goals
This one is easy. The work of the consultant is to improve the client’s condition. That must be the consultant’s focus, for whatever improvement in whatever condition is desired. And if we can’t improve it, we shouldn’t be there.
Mindset – the client is the expert in the content, not the consultant
This is the biggest one for me. The “bad” approach is simple:
extract a brief, data and viewpoints from the client
filter it by what the consultant decides is relevant (sometimes in consultation with the client sponsor)
reflect it back in template suffused with authority cues: blue, diagrams of puzzle pieces slotting together, pictures of happy customers
These steps have two weaknesses. Firstly, the complexity of the client’s condition is flattened out into what fits the consultant’s system. And secondly, the client is not sense-making – they are reduced to the commentor / approver of the sensemaking work the consultant has done (or in particularly bad cases, the sense-making has been done by the pasting into the template, where it says “Insert major objectives here”.)
This reduces the effectiveness of the outcomes; it also lowers the buy-in and ultimately the delivery of initiatives.
Another way to look at this – if it’s hard to launch the strategy to managers, that’s a sign they weren’t involved enough in its generation.
Mindset part two. The consultant is the expert in *process*
Just as the coach guides their client through a process of self-discovery, so the consultant's process should guide a revelatory process for the client. Creating a holding environment for safe discussion, spotting the twinkling star of an insight and elevating it, and asking question that gently challenge are all ways in which the process of sensemaking is framed and enabled by a great consultant.
When it's done well, the client is able to relax into the method and simply think, create and decide. Insights flow towards clarity and direction.
Shifting goals
Great consultants expect the goals to change through the assignment, and are encouraging of discussion about it. If engagement with the teams has left the goal identical to the original brief, then you’re consulting for a unicorn and need to pinch yourself to wake up. Bad consultants act surprised and prepare a scope variation letter…
Sensemaking, not brief-following
It doesn’t matter what the brief says. If the first engagement with stakeholders brings up new needs, or insights that challenge the brief’s assumption, then as a great consultant you must roll with the changes and work for a collective shared set of truths.
What might this look like in practice?
Three recent client vignettes that applied these ideas before I had this contextual language for them.
I worked on strategy with a large multi-nation organisation. An emergent thread in the kick-off was that while some regions felt unheard, others thought that they listened well to all perspectives. The bad approach would have been to explore which statement is true, or cop-out wit ‘there are many perspectives on this issue…’ The sensemaking approach appreciates that perception is reality and we have multiple realities in play. I adapted the development process to include deeper consultation with the groups that felt less heard. Accepting shifting goals worked some travel and face-to-face consultation into the processes; the making of the strategy was the strategy.
With a community service organisation, building a tool for strategy implementation began from the idea that the team needed to know what initiatives they were working on and report on it. But the goals usefully shifted. First, the need to capture and track BAU, so that focus could be balanced. Secondly, the need to ensure cross-department conversations. So together we
re-engineered a tool to track projects and BAU
captured the difference between ‘accountable’ and ‘consulted’
we built a process of populating the tool before meetings, so meetings could focus on issues arising, not data entry
The improvement the clients condition required was in this cross-department working, not just in their tracking of big change initiatives.
With a wellbeing support organisation, the assignment began as exploring improvements in Board governance, centred on a Board workshop. But a change of leadership, and some new issues coming to light inside the organisation, meant that the Board’s needs morphed into defining and distinguishing short- and long-term actions to address the immediate issues while planning for success over the coming years. Some governance improvements were agreed and woven into the plan; the original brief was adapted not ignored. But this was making sense from the confusion, together, in a complex and changing organisational context, rather than blindly continuing to focus on the issue that had dropped from priority one to priority two.
Based on these thoughts, I would suggest clients...
assess consultants' proficiency in process, not content (I'm not an expert in wellbeing, medicine or community service)
ascertain a consultant's mindset - do they believe in your ability, or just in their own?
uncover their approach to hierarchy - do they think insight comes primarily from the Boardroom? Or do they want to talk to the staff?
seek evidence the consultant is tolerant of ambiguity - all sense-making begins with non-sense
This is being more Ted Lasso. Throughout the series (it is well worth AppleTV subscription, knock off Disclaimer and Severance while you're there), he doesn't do a damn thing to advance strategy himself. Team tactics come from two deputies and the players, who he encourages and listens to. At one critical moment, he hands the whiteboard to the cheeky dumb star who creates a new strategy on the fly and saves the game. He repeatedly says he doesn't understand.
Ted Lasso meets all my four points above - I'd hire him for developing strategy.
Fin
Consultants – white collar tradies – when acting genuinely in service to improve the client’s condition, are essential to most sectors. I hope this offers some ways the field can improve, and suggests ways for clients to get more value for their money.
If the approaches above resonate, I’d be keen to explore with you – send me a DM.
In the meantime, please add a 'like' if you like, and I'll see you next bi week.
Paul
