Building and Maintaining Your Consulting Power

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

Many people look at the word "power" as a negative word. It is often associated with controlling people and misusing one's position. It can also mean the ability to influence people to make them take action in their own best interest.

Many consulting projects fail not because the hired consultants were incompetent but because clients didn't act upon what they wanted to achieve as a result of the project. They have dreams and aspirations but no guts to actually take action to turn their dreams into reality. And that is the point when consultants' power is called upon.

Power has two major ingredients: Knowing and doing. Clients usually know what to do but get so buried in day-to-day "busy-ness" that they simply don't take the necessary action to move forward and stay buried. We have all heard comments which essentially say the same: "I am so busy that I have no time to prospect for new business, have no time to help my people to improve their performance, etc."

However, power also comes with the potential for abuse in forms of being self-centred, blaming, money-oriented - "it's all about the dough, stupid" mentality. When a people are in search of power we tend to think they are power-hungry, controlling, dictatorial and manipulative.

These negative attributes can give power a negative meaning, and with that in mind, we just have to get rid of the negative elements and focus on the positive meanings of power.

So, let's discover all power as an essential positive tool in our relationships with clients. Remember, as consultants we must be powerful to make a difference in our clients' lives. The question is just how we apply this power. Do we use power over clients or power with clients?

Types of Powers We Can Develop

Power of authority - You are in a power position for your client's organisation has given you certain responsibilities. You offer advice which the people of your client's company are supposed to follow and implement. There is one important caveat here: This power is temporary, so we'd better not build anything significant on it. Therefore we must use the power of authority sparingly.

2) Power of association - This refers to the connections you have built over the years. In this network there are many people who are crucial to your success and are willing to listen to you. As a result of being connected to influential people, more people will pay attention to your work and what you say.

If these people have the six powers we are discussing here, some of that power becomes available to us too. However, we must use it very carefully. So, whichever power the people you associate with use, you will be regarded as a person who uses the same power(s). If you are associated to people with power of punishment, you will be seen as a punisher.

3) Power of reward - These are rewards you can offer to people. This power includes oney, recognition, gifts, improved relationships, etc. We must know which rewards best motivates people. According to various research some of the five greatest motivating factors - thus can be used as rewards - are: 1) Interest, 2) Performance, 3) Opportunity for development, 4) recognition and 5) autonomy. Interestingly money ranks at 10th place. Even if we consider certain inaccuracies, we can see money is not even on the top of the list of motivators. There is one important point here though: Lack of money is the greatest demotivator.

4) Power of punishment - We can practise this kind of power by taking something away from people they want. It may be in the form of withholding information, open communication. It can be physical and/or emotional hurt. We all have this power and unfortunately end up using it even unbeknownst to us. However, when we use our position and/or the confidential information bestowed upon us, we are running the risk of severing the relationship with clients and their people. There are some actions that appear to be punishing to people, but it is in the organisation's interest. If you are hired to install a new voice mail system, you cannot give in to the emotion that the receptionist is about to lose her job. If a CEO is stupid enough to replace a live receptionist with a cold (but relatively cheap) machine, that company deserves to go broke, and the secretary is better off to jump ship when the company just starts "stinking" but before it starts sinking. All in all, do your best to filter punishing power out of your repertoire.

5) Power of skills - Over the years of both formal and informal education, we have piled up a truckload of skills and knowledge. Furthermore, repeated applications we have turned all those skills and knowledge into valuable know-how. And when that know- how comes with the courage of using it, it can be very valuable and very attractive to others. People want to benefit from your talents. However, it is important to know that expertise can put us in the door in front of potential buyers, but cannot keep us there for long. When we use this know-how to provide insights, wisdom and new perspectives to clients, we are valuable. When we use it simply to "fix things", we are commodity, purchased solely on price. This is a very important power but to make lasting relationships we must use much more than expertise.

6) Power of relationship - This is the ability to develop lasting relationships with a broad range of people. This and the power of skills are the most important powers we can practise. This power helps us to develop mutual trust, respect and peer-level credibility with clients. This is also a very fragile power, thus must be continuously nurtured. Without this, skill power is pretty useful. This is where the majority of IT consultants fall flat on their faces. They are all over the place with their degrees and certificates that they often forget about enhancing their relationships.

Some of you may think that it is inappropriate to use all of these powers but either knowingly or unknowingly we use all of them. But which powers serve us best to improve our clients' performance. I believe if we truly have the client's best interest at heart, we are likely to use all of them. We use skills and relationships mainly, and call upon the other powers when we see fit.

There is one more factor to consider regarding powers. That is the client's perception. It is important that both you and your clients are aware of the power you are using and respond accordingly. If we consider, for example, the power of skills, we can see that our value goes up and down depending how our clients perceive the existence or the lack skills. When we use more of this power, we get more involved and push back if necessary.

We know that our strength as advisors depends on the appropriate use of these powers. However, power can also be a strange zero-sum game. The more we have, the less our clients have. In a way it is just like encountering a dog. If the dog perceives you to be weak, he will get the upper hand (paw) on you. If you stand your ground, the dog will cringe back and stops barking. Sometimes clients try to put us up on pedestals, and we must resist the temptation. The higher we are on our pedestals, the lower in the ditch we perceive our clients to be. This is a dangerous situation, for they become dependent upon us. We end up feeding them fish, instead of teaching them how to fish.

Avoiding Misusing Our Consulting Power

Every now and then, inadvertently though, we may misuse some of the powers we possess as advisors. Denying this basic fact would blind us to the truth, that is, to everything we do to our clients' our own lives.

Let's get bone honest with ourselves regarding our work. And we can only be honest if we bring out our dark sides to the light and examine it - if not under a microscope, but at least - under a magnifying glass.

Let's look at this list of what we all do consciously or subconsciously to get ahead in our trade:
Consultants distort the collected data to make the problem more outstanding and urgent, and in doing so pushing the client into panic-stricken action to eliminate the problem.

Consultants pretend they know more about the client's situation than they actually do. They believe: "I have an MBA, so I must know this. If I admit I don't know it, they believe I am an idiot."

Consultants use their expertise to sell alternative methodologies that will not necessarily improve clients' condition but makes extra money for consultants. One example is many computer consultants who are also partners - euphemism for commissioned-based product peddlers - for IBM or Microsoft and a bunch of other companies.

From consultants they become products pushers. It can be done with discretion, but very often it is obvious that these firms are "pushing" theire boxes. Would you partner with a firm that tries to shove boxes down your throat? Many buyers can see this and send the message to the consulting firm: "Shove it up your arse, box pushing man. We need real consultants, do you understand?" (Paraphrasing one of Frank Zappa's songs, in which Frank meets the devil, a.k.a. Terry Bozzio)

Some consultants are not clear about their limitations. My pet peeve is when accountants call themselves business consultants. Where is the problem here? Running a great business is about taking educated risks, being on the edge and using lots of innovation.

Most accountants are allergic to risks and ambiguity, because that stirs up their neatly-organised spreadsheets. So, we must be clear about what we do and not do. Learning from each engagement is one thing and it is fine, but taking on a gig, so we can learn on the client's dime is somewhat unethical.

And we consultants do not do these things because we are bad folks. We are simply humans with some need to elevate our egos and images. Lots of us have done personal development workshops to subordinate our egos, but it will never totally disappear. Some of the reasons are ego, expertise, vanity, power, control, aspirations, recognition, anxiety and - last but not least - fear.

Manipulating the Facts

Manipulation is about pushing our own agendas. Look at some large accounting firms that do business consulting. They have "cobbled together" an - according to them very unique – approach, trademarked it, and use it over and over again. After all, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, doesn't it?

The other manifestation of this problem is computer consultants who become commissioned salespeople. They call themselves "strategic partners" for computer manufacturers but the meaning is the same. Many of them have no intention to solve clients' problems, but only to sell more "boxes" and get the commissions from manufacturers. That is okay, but that is not consulting but peddling.

For some firms this is a very subtle process, for some it is more open and obvious. As consultants we have quite a bit of trust and power bestowed upon us. It is up to us how we use it. We are there to achieve certain ends, and together with the implementing team we have to figure out the means to those ends. We want to be both provocative and accommodating. We are at the client's company to initiate some sort of change. Change means ambiguity, and most people are scared shitless when we talk about change. Well, the mention of ambiguity may even kill some of those people. Well, many of them rather die than change, and some of them actually do with amazing style and elegance.

So, on the one hand we are provoking people to change, but we must also check how much they are willing to change in a certain space of time. Are they ready for this change? And sometimes we do have to manipulate clients to make them see the unadulterated truth: The emperor has no clothes. They may have "known" this before but due to dysfunctional company culture, nobody dared to point this out, so they carried on marching barefoot and butt-naked.

What happens here is similar to telling alcoholics that they have drinking problems. They work up a rage to be ready to kill you. If you have been thrown out of executives' offices for "emperor" comments, then you know what it means. Most companies desperately try to avoid going to areas they really need to go. Just as alcoholics get emotionally triggered by talking to non-drinkers, and broke people get upset by chatting with bankers about investments, many executives get angry when we point out problems at the company. They think we just called them incompetent nincompoops and they hate us for it.

So, at this point we can use a bit of good manipulation, and instead of pointing out the obvious by citing the "emperor" comment, through good questions we hold up mirrors in front of them, so they can discover their own nakedness. We just have to point out that the mirror tells as it is.

Pretending to Be Different

This is interesting. Many consultants think they have their personal and
professional selves, and they can be different. I believe we have only
one Self, and that one's Self is impacted by both personal and
professional issues.

What causes this difference? I reckon it is very often the fear of loss. We detect some shortcomings in ourselves, and we want to compensate for it. But we sometimes overcompensate.

Look at a person who is a brilliant consultant but she has just found out about her husband's mistress, and now the whole relationship is going down. We can say her personal life is on quicksand, and it can nosedive anytime.

She is likely to use any method with her clients to maintain the "business as usual" perception. After all, she is an educated, highly competent consultant, and nobody is supposed to detect this little personal issue. Well, people do detect it for we act them out subconsciously.

This is when exaggeration comes in. We also refer more and more to past big clients, credentials, awards we have won, etc. And since we use exaggeration more and more extensively to balance the mess in our personal lives, after a while we will not even know the magnitude of that exaggeration. We just keep repeating it.

How can we solve this problem. I reckon the best way is to clean up our own personal lives. When we are happy, healthy, enthusiastic, we act it out both personally and professionally.

Superiority

Dealing with an organisation's problem can distort our perspectives after a while. We cannot help it. We become part of the client's company's culture and we can easily end up turning into "Yes" people. And we all know this, so to avoid this trap we often click into a superior mode. We believe that we know it better because we are outsiders and have seen this or similar situation before. Besides, it is the client's company which is in deep shit anyway. We just want to pull it out. We send a message that we know it better and clients should not even think about solving this problem without consulting with us first.

With this action we are building dependency on us. Also, we tell clients things they want to hear, so they can keep us as their "hit squads" in case they need extra votes.

Deceiving Clients

Deceiving clients is mainly about pursuing personal agendas on clients' dimes. This happens when IT companies learn and implement new technologies they don't know yet, but use a client project to make even the learning process profitable. The other manifestation of this disease is when some accounting firms take on projects, relegate them to junior staff and invoice the client for senior work at senior rates. Is it legal? Well, yes. Is it ethical? No bloody way. Is it widely practised?

You had better believe it.

The other form of deceiving clients is telling them what they want to hear. Yes, you can lose the gig for pointing out: The emperor has no clothes, but if you get thrown out for an honest comment like that, then what is the point in working with a client like that anyway.

Copyright Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan. All rights reserved. You are free to use this article in whole or in part. One favour though: Can I ask you to you include complete attribution, including a live website link. Also, can you please let me know where you plan to publish the article.

The attribution: This article was written by Organisational Provocateur, Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan of Dynamic Innovations Squad, a firm specialising in helping consulting firms to sell their expertise at the highest margins. Get Tom's free Practice Management Black Paper when you sign up for his monthly newsletter, Commando Consulting: Lessons And Practices From The Ultimate Professional Service Firm, The Military. Visit Tom's website at http://www.di-squad.com.

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