Passenger or driver?

The biggest difference between a good consultant and a bad consultant is how they see themselves in the vehicle of a project. Are they a driver or a passenger?

The driver realises that although they may have a map, it’s not the territory. A map doesn’t show you the potholes, the wild animals and also tell you when it’s time to ditch the map. In the movie ‘Sully’, when captain Sully was asked what logic he used to decide to land in the Hudson, what calculations he made, effectively what map he’d used, his answer was that he used decades of experience to make a split second decision, leadership.

A driver is someone who hunts down the detail they need, they are incredibly resourceful, they take guesses and then check if they’re right, they have a point of view and they are also incredibly humble knowing that it is highly likely they are wrong but being wrong quickly is a lot cheaper than not being wrong, and making it someone else’s responsibility to be right. I’ll dive into some practical examples of a driver in a bit. Let’s first chat about being a passenger.

A passenger expects to be told what to do, when to do it, how to do it. They expect the heavy emotional labour to be done by someone else. Sadly, in the consulting industry I think that this is now more common than ever before. It’s not directly the consultant’s fault either. As an industry they are carrying the baggage of failed delivery, blown budgets, chaotic executive decision making and niche skillset pricing. What I mean by the pricing is that in the coffee industry, if you were paying several $1000 per day for a barista, you’d expect the world’s best service, coffee, smile and experience. However in consulting, where several roles are incredibly niche, such as a CRM Health Services Business Analyst for Private Day Surgery, they are able to command a huge premium, but deliver instant coffee, and not even Nescafe instant coffee, rather the unlabelled generic brand.

The common excuses here are, “the business don’t know what they want”, “I just write the stories”. These are the consultants that haven’t even visited the website of their new client, read their annual report or even done a quick google of great examples of transformation by their client’s peers.

They see themselves as there to do whatever the roles and responsibilities chart tells them they are responsible for. Sadly, this attitude affects the entire project. It blows the budget, and slows everything down. Ultimately you move faster without having passengers on board.

Then there are the drivers. I love these people. They make sure their roles and responsibilities are catered for but ultimately they are driven by a higher purpose, project success, not just contractual role success. These are the people you don’t have to ask to call someone, they just do, they mock things up, they build their way through a problem, they have a point of view. They have fun, they are themselves, and yes, sometimes they cop a beating because they got it so wrong, but that’s always temporary. They make a difference, they make THE difference in a project. You need 3 of these people, not 10 passengers. These people are also the first to leave if a project gets far too political. They are ok with chaos, in fact they know it’s necessary, but they aren’t ok with stupid executive behaviour. Backstabbing, changing priorities, lack of focus… being asked to build a chatbot before your core CRM solution is even stable, because some exec say it at a conference.

Here are some scenarios of a driver vs passenger. These are real quotes.

Passenger — “These are the requirements for the sign up process”
Driver — “I signed up to your free service to see what the current experience is like”

Passenger — “give me the requirements document”
Driver — “I took a guess and made a start. Here, I built this”

Passenger — “I’m the BA, I just write the requirement I’m told”
Driver — “I’m not comfortable with the detail they’re giving me, I’ve documented a ton of new requirements I think they need, can you help me find the right person to check this with?”

Passenger — “I’m waiting on them to make a design decision before can continue”
Driver — “I’ve mocked up all 3 approaches, shared that, and my current point of view is option 1, so I’m running with that until I’m told otherwise”

Passenger — “They say their users are undecided”
Driver — “I’ve arranged to spend some time with their users to show them how the solution works”

Passenger — “That’s not my responsibility”
Driver — “I can’t help you with that, but I’ll find someone who can”

Passenger — “That’s out of scope”
Driver — “There may be a simpler way to accomplish what you’re trying to do”

Passenger — “Here is the list of requirements for sign off”
Driver — “Here is the list of requirements AND mockups of each of the screens and processes as I know I can’t possibly expect someone to make sense of this alone”

A small group of drivers is all you need. Treat them well, give them autonomy, let them loose. They will however be the first to leave if political ridiculousness ensues.