Consultant = analyst, expert, coordinator, or decision maker?

At what point in time a consultant should show expertise and choose a solution, and when to offer a wide range of options without insisting?

I am an expert in Agile and IT management, so I will use this topic for an example below. An area of your consulting specialization does not impact the recommendations below, however, your expertise in that specific area is the reason a potential client invited you to the first meeting.

Picture from web

Situation and typical actions

Imagine, you are a consultant, and you come to a meeting with a prospective client.

The client outlines the situation for you in 5 minutes and asks:

What approach to solving our problem should we use?

You do not yet know the details you are lacking to choose a suitable solution, and you will only find them out only after a more thorough examination and analysis. However, you have to answer now.

Option 1. You answer:

There are 3 popular approaches A-B-C that have proven their effectiveness in different situations. And I suggest you use approach B for reasons 1–2–3.

But why we use approach B, exactly? And what if the client is already targeting approach C? So, the dialogue doesn’t stick. (In the Agile area these options would be SAFe, LeSS, Nexus on a program level and Scrum/Kanban-method on a team level, or a special mixture.)

Option 2. Replying to the question “Which approach should we use?” you answer:

There are approaches A-B-C, here are briefly their pros and cons. Let’s decide together along the way which approach we should use. And the entire further action plan (and hence the list of affected departments and employees, and the degree of their participation) will depend on this.

It’s like you’re telling the client: I can do this, I can do that — choose. (SAFe is good, and command topologies can be different, and LeSS with feature teams is also cool. All frameworks work.) This option will also not appeal to the client, because for a long time it will be unknown what needs to be done, and they want to have a preliminary plan earlier.

What should a consultant do?

When to provide an opportunity for choice, and when to show expertise to make a decision?

The answer to this question is surprisingly simple. The consultant is expected to provide not just coaching and soft support, but rather expertise based on an extensive set of knowledge and constant analysis of their own and industry experience. And this expertise needs to be shown constantly, but in different degrees and in different forms.

I’ll explain.

Stage 1 — acquaintance, first meetings

1. List the popular solutions, briefly compare them by benefits, limitations, areas of application — explain which option to use in what conditions. This will demonstrate your expertise of knowledge.
2. Compare the benefits and limitations of each option on general examples, divorced from the real picture of the client’s company, because, firstly, the comparison will be made in a safe environment and will not cause a defensive reaction of the participants, and secondly, after the analysis stage you will be able to refer to these criteria as independent, showing that the conditions are not adjusted to the solution, but the solution is chosen based on real-life conditions. (There are quite a lot of criteria for choosing a work organization model. Here are some of them: product boundaries, alignment of teams and products, efficiency of service departments, ease of changing the organizational structure, the presence of external teams of contractors and vendors, the number and severity of dependencies between teams, the duration and participants of approval processes, ownership of systems, and others.)
3. Point out the preferred solution from the suggested popular options, noting that it is more often used by companies of the same size and product as the client. Thus, you will show your expertise of experience. (Show that in the current situation, you can start using SAFe pretty quickly, whereas it will take much more time to create feature teams.)
4. Show a more detailed preliminary plan of further actions for this preferred solution. If there are experts in this field among the client’s employees, then they will have the opportunity to offer other options listed by you. What is more, you will remain on the same page with your client, since you have listed the options and shown expertise, but you recognize client's authority to make a decision, and gave him the opportunity to choose.
5. In the action plan specify the decision point — the moment when the client chooses one of the options. This usually happens after a preliminary or detailed analysis is completed and you provided the collected factual information (as is) and assessed the situation.

Stage 2 — after analyzing "as is"

It’s time to propose a specific solution, justifying the choice with the criteria listed earlier and the collected factual information.

1. Describe the current situation and demonstrate the negative consequences of it on the example of a specific department or situation.
2. Pre-choose a solution, propose and present its benefits on the example of the same department or situation. In order to show the objectivity of the chosen solution, give these pros and cons, benefits and limitations in the same statements, in which you talked about them before the analysis stage. Moreover, once again show and speak the same slide/materials as before. (For example, you conclude that, given the current division into products and existing competencies of team members, with management support and fulfillment of conditions 1–2–3, in division number 4, it will be possible to form 7 feature teams and establish work on the product according to LeSS. People will not be disposed of by 120%, as it was before, but the team will be able to deliver every sprint.)
3. Indicate that this is only an example, and that the client can, and even more — you encourage them to, offer their adjustments. The decision is to be made by the client, but you have done the homework and there is already a ready-made example/draft plan. Thus, you will demonstrate the ability to apply your expertise of knowledge and experience to the benefit of the client.
4. Show a more detailed implementation plan for the proposed solution. Having enough knowledge about the current situation, incl. the number of employees, supplement the plan with numbers: the number of meetings, their frequency, participants by roles, necessary actions prio to the meetings, expected result, output documents and decisions to make. This will demonstrate your planning expertise.
5. Present a communication plan: who communicates and meets with whom and when, on what issues, via what channels, what decisions they make, who is being consulted, who is being notified. Thus, you will demonstrate the expertise of coordination.

Why do you need the User story to fit in one sprint?

And so on

At each stage you should:

1. show a general plan without details, and leave space for a client to choose one of the options — a client is the accountable who makes a decision,
2. but to make it easier for them you pre-choose one option yourself and show a more detailed plan for its implementation — you are the expert who highlights the most suitable solution.

Main recommendations briefly

1. Demonstrate the breadth of options, but always expertly emphasize the most preferable option — if the client wants, they can incline the choice to another option, and if don't, they will choose the proposed option and give the go-ahead for implementation.
2. Offer the client to adjust the details, but always come with a ready-made draft of the solution — if the client wants, they can change the details, and if don't, they will only have to approve the proposed option.
3. The decision is up to the client, and 99% of the preparation is up to you. It is more comfortable for everyone if the client feels that they can relax, reduce control, and remain confident that the process will not go off the rails. And in case the superior managers ask them about the reasons for choosing a specific solution, you and your client always have a justification ready with the options considered and a choice made according to criteria.

Even briefer

As a consultant you responsible for providing:

• three options for solving each problem,
• one of the options highlighted — that is preferred based on your expertise or according to the current actual situation;
• clear “do 1–2–3” for the main implementation scenario;
• a hand on the pulse.

The client is responsible for decision-making, confidence in you (backed up by your behavior) and trust.

PS for myself: this article in two languages took me 5 hours.