The Four Cs of Change, and How Easily Consultants Can Get In the Way

By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

Great companies rely on consultants when it comes to changing certain things in those companies’ lives. Management knows that through the eyes of objective outsiders they can see the existing situation from a different perspective, and that can help them to better implement the necessary changes to solve their problems and then to raise the bar.

However, sometimes it is us, consultants who get in the way of smooth change. Since we, as change catalysts work closely with leaders, the change agents, our relationships can define how smooth or rough the change can be.

Every change is ambiguous in a sense that there is an ambiguous zone between the current situation, which we see daily and experience daily, and the future, which we call the vision or the strategy we want our clients to achieve.

The problem lies in the ambiguous zone, infested with all sorts of fiendish beasts preying on organisations that want to change. So, as consultants, our job is to help our clients through this maze of ambiguity. And the velocity and the certainty of ever emerging at the other end of the maze depends on the client company’s leadership.

You see, leadership comes in two flavours, and people don’t necessarily have to bite their bosses’ earlobes to find out about it. It is just a matter of observing them.

We distinguish between transactional and transformational leadership styles. The fact is, regardless of how good you are as a change catalyst, at the end of the day it is the quality of the change agent, the leader, who has to make vital decisions, thus decide the company’s fate.

In one corner we have transactional leaders. All they are interested is the external change only and don’t want to bother with internal changes.

It is like the notoriously incompetent telecom company in Canada, called Telus. This is undoubtedly the worst company I've ever come across. Nevertheless the CEO picks up $5.6 million in salary and bonuses in spite of the fact that customers, employees and shareholders demand his head on a pike. They run branding campaign after branding campaign, using monkeys pigs, frogs and all sorts of other animals, but internally the company is a disaster. They offer an exciting platter of services ranging from being put on hold for 40 minutes, inaccurate billing, chains of broken promises, etc.

Telus' leaders want to improve business externally, but not internally. Using their branding campaigns they want to create the perception of a gleaming slick Ferrari, but inside the company they are only prepared to produce rusty, burnt-out boneshakers.

The other example is when a company wants to increase sales simply by working harder on prospecting and twisting prospects’ arms, but refuse to do any marketing to attract prospects and communicate value.

In the other corner we have transformational leaders, who are truly concerned about change and improvement and know that external change, higher sales, is just a manifestation of effective internal change in areas, like passion, enthusiasm, devotion to duty, etc. They know external change in circumstances must be preceded by internal change within people on the intellectual, emotional and spiritual levels.

A change in beliefs paradigms, attitudes and behaviours. External - business - change is just the physical/material reflection or manifestation of the internal change. Basically, everything starts with people, not strategies and processes.

Yet, companies spend a small fortune on strategic planning at exotic and pretty expensive resorts but miserably fail to help their people to think differently.

Why?

Because a strategic planning session takes only three days, whereas changing people’s perspectives and behaviours take a hell of a long time. So, most leaders don’t even go there. They create systems and processes and then force their people to conform to those systems.

FIRST C: COMMUNICATION

In most firms top people lock themselves up in their offices and “invent” their firms’ vision. When they are adequately satisfied with their “creations”, they get their statements printed and wallpaper their firms’ premises with the new vision. And then they order their people to buy into the visions these top dogs have just created.

In a way they send the same message communist dictators did a few years ago (Don’t argue. I grew up in it.): We know what is best for you, oh stupid mortals. So, just follow our prescriptions blindly and never mind about using your heads. It must be perfect, after all I (the head of the communist party) - a genius with god-like attributes - have invented it.

The same is happening in so many organisations. A new salesman at one of my friend’s IT company has mentioned to me that at his previous company employees had to line up and basically beg the president for their paycheques. And the president – a 23 year old kid – who absolutely loved the process and loved intimidating people in general, acting like some kind of self-appointed god handed over their paycheques like some kind of alms.

In a way he is an emotionally insecure bastard in a rather dangerous position. In nine years (I know what you think, but he claims to be the boss for nine years, since he was 14. Hm.). He has driven the company to the verge of going tits-up anytime because of the way he treats his people. Great people come and then he quickly chases them away.

But this is just one side of the coin. The other side is when as consultants our communication is less than clear because we are worried about the possible consequences. That is, we get worried that if we speak out we may get fired. Yes, and that may happen.

But we must have enough independent wealth to be objective an impartial as much as possible. I know traditional consulting is about getting the consultant’s hooks into the clients and never let them go. We all know horror stories about the Big Five and other firms whose mantra is: “Milk them forever”. Their issue is to communicate in such as way that pleases clients so they want to retain the consultants for a longer period of time.

And when this transition is less than smooth, they call in consultants to do something. At this point, many consultants accept the diagnosis from the top dog, namely: “People do not buy into our vision, so do something, almighty consultant.”

SECOND C: COMMITMENT

This puppy go wild very easily. What happens is something like this: Clients express their need. For instance, increasing sales by 20%. Then consultants offer to do sales workshops with nice manuals and workbooks. So, after signing the contract consultants make a commitment to delivering a sales workshop (dispensing time) and creating workbooks (deliverables). The client’s wish of 20% improvement is now out of the equation. Now the consultant’s focus on dispensing the appropriate time and creating the required poundage of deliverables.

A while ago I interviewed about 120 webdesigners for a client. It turned out that most of them never checked back to see if their clients' investment' (their design) produced any return. Some of them actually told me that their clients were not interested in making money on their websites in any way. I guess they work for idiots who willingly pour their money into bottomless pits, without ever thinking of recovering that money.

I think both clients and consultants make a huge mistake. And the mistake is not fully understanding the difference between strategies (end) and tactics (means).

Instead of defining what they want to achieve (strategy or end) with the projects, they get bogged down with how to achieve it (tactics or means). There is one problem. What is the point in wallowing in the methods if we don’t know what we want to achieve? What is the logic in issuing ammunition to an army if they have no idea where the enemy is?

So, the problem is that both clients and consultant make commitment to achieving the wrong thing.

So consultants commit to perform endless analyses and all sorts of grunt work. In the meantime clients are waiting for months without action, but paying for all this “research” activities, which is available from the client anyway, but doing their own first-hand research consultants can conjure up lots of billable hours right away. And their commitment is to delivering a given number of hours. So, they are working on fulfilling their commitment.

And both for consultants and clients it is easier to commit to tasks and deliverables because they can do it without accountability.

Remember, the other option is to commit to improving sales by 20%. But that is hard, it takes some thinking and hard work. The other thing is that 20% improvement can be translated into money, so now the consultant could ask the client to invest in the outcome.

If the 20% translates to $1 million in new sales, the consultant could charge $100,000 to help the client to achieve it (it is still up to the client to reach out for the money).

But it is more convenient for the client to pay $5,000 for a full day sales workshop with nice workbooks regardless of how the programme impacts sales.

And it is more convenient for the consultant to dispense time and create deliverables than actually working on a specific improvement.

So, make certain, both you and your clients commit to the right thing. Commit to expected outcomes and then jointly create and action plan to implement.

THIRD C: COLLABORATION

Sadly, this element is missing from so many engagements. Most professionals don’t do engagements in a collaborative fashion, but do installations all by themselves and then invite the client to inspect the results of their labour.

These consultants try to play the role of some kind of messiah, trying to save their clients from themselves, but they do it the wrong way around. I believe that giving crutches to clients is a mistake. Yes, you can catch them a fish, but they will never learn how to catch a fish and feed themselves all by themselves.

This is a great scenario for many professionals who have no intention to provide independence for their clients. However without giving clients their independence these professionals are some kind of charlatans. Just like the doctors, who feed you with so many pills that you get addicted to the pills and have to take more and more. So, now the doctor can “sell” you more pills, making him/herself in the eye of the pharmaceutical company soon earning the right for a new Mercedes or a free cruise.

The whole idea is that you don’t merely expend hours and deliver deliverables for your clients, but you are there to improve the client’s condition. For that you need to know what objectives the client has.

There are tree types of objectives to consider:

The collaborations must go beyond the client’s immediate business problem.

1. Business objectives: This is about solving an existing problem clients know about.

Client: "Our sales are down", "we are losing our best talents", etc.

2. Skill building objectives: This is about teaching people at the client’s company how to keep the problem solved and how to solve it the next time without hiring a consultant. Yes, it is easier to give the client a ready-made, off-the-shelf solutions, but it is more valuable to share the skills with them too.

3. Organisation development objectives: This is a biggie, but so often missed completely. What is the impact of your intervention on clients’ “big picture”?

Clients must understand that everything you do is collaborative, that is, you don’t work FOR the client, but work WITH the client, enabling him/her to achieve his/her goals. Your job is not achieving your clients’ goals and handing it over to them. If that is the case what do we need the client for in the first place.

If I am a salesman on 20% commission, instead of selling whatever and getting 20%, I can get the client negotiate the deal and subcontract it out to my company for a competitive wage, pocketing at least 50% of the deal.

FOURTH C: CREATIVITY

This is a big thing too. Clients are so wrapped up in tactical fire-fighting that they lose sight of their strategic direction and end up running faster and faster in the wrong direction. They get busy for the sake of being busy. And this is where you as an advisor come into the equation. You bring big-picture thinking into an organisation that is up to its eyebrows with tactical firefighting.

People say we are living in the information age, and they end up on the endless roller-caster of collecting more and more information. In doing so they are also collecting more and more of the same stuff the competition is using and try to regurgitate all the “tried and tested” methods and approaches.

But what is the creativity in that?

So, let’s see how service professionals can bring more creativity into their assignments.

1) EXPERTISE

This is about constant and never ending skill-building. However, I am not talking about deepening a very narrow skill set. It is about deepening and fairly wide range of skills. That creates broad perspectives, so as a professional you can see your clients and their businesses from a holistic perspective.

2) FLEXIBLE THINKING

Here we are talking about imagination because imagination stretches clients and one of any engagement’s objectives is to stretch clients to new levels of excellence.

This approach also helps to get down to the roots of certain problems. What clients usually define as problems are usually symptoms. As a professional, you would make a grave mistake to consider clients’ diagnoses as 100% accurate. They are hardly ever more than guesswork.

Why?

Because clients are emotionally involved in their businesses and therefore cannot think objectively. And here is where the limitation lies. They end up thinking, thus rehashing the same old solutions over and over again, hoping for better results.

I have recently had a discussion with the president of an IT firm in Vancouver. They found my initial ideas worth for a face-to-face discussion. But then the operations manager explained he was not willing to do anything for marketing except cold calling. In his view marketing as a process was not an instant cash grab, thus it was not worth the effort.

3) INSPIRATION

For good collaboration, this must come both from the professional and the client. Both must be internally fired up to step up to the challenge and achieve the defined objectives of a project.

And, in spite of the growing number of motivational speakers, your people must be inspired internally, not merely motivated externally. It is doable, but is an exhausting process.

So what can you do to improve your expertise, your thinking and your inspiration?

4) FREEDOM

Yes, you must free yourself from all sorts of expectations. If you have them, you will get hindered by them, and that will impact your creativity in a negative way.

5) CHALLENGE

Health challenge stretches people and fires them up. Too much challenge strains them and burns them out. The key is to find that magic thin line and walk on it.

If you are underskilled for the challenge, you get frustrated and burnt out. If you are overskilled, you get bored. In either case, creativity vanishes. Challenge must be kept at such a level that you feel challenged enough to be excited about the project, but don’t get frustrated by not being able to solve the problem.

6) RESOURCES

Creativity is impossible without the right resources. And here we go back to learning from a broad range of sources.

A graphics designer won’t become any more creative by reading one more book on graphics design, but can drastically improve his creativity by exercising regularly.

As a result of strenuous exercise, he can increase oxygen and blood flow through the brain, the vigorous exercise floods the body, including the brain with endorphins, creating an environment for the brain in which it can create more connections (dendrites) between brain cells. And creativity is the function of the number of connections.

The other resources can be seemingly irrelevant ones. For an indecisive manager, skydiving is the ideal way of learning about decision-making and action-taking. All right, I am biased towards skydiving, but I also know that it works. People change as a result of it.

Yes, the change is sometimes undesirable, that is, some people kick the bucket every now and then, but the main point is that most people change in a positive way.