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Core Consulting Skills - The Skills the Top Management Consultants Use

by: clarkegbf on Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 Time: 9:43 PM

A consultant's skills are what will set them apart from their competitors. And surprisingly being good with numbers and having a fantastic grasp of finance are very rarely what makes a top flight consultant. More important is their ability to present, their people skills and how well they can suss out an organisation.

I got lucky, a top consultant took me under their wing and taught me everything I needed to know. Since then I've owned a management consultancy business for the past eleven years. Over that period what's set us apart from our competitors is my team's ability to grow and develop their core consulting skills. Your core consulting skills are what will set you apart from other consultants; we constantly go up against the much bigger firms and beat them for the business because our skills are so good. Read on to find out what you need to know to win and make money in management consulting.

Skill 1: You absolutely have to be a good presenter. In 2009 I ran over 90 presentations. Presenting is your shop window. Potential clients will judge you based on the 20 minutes you spend in front of them on your feet. It doesn't matter how good your CV is, you just have to know how to present. Before moving into consulting I was a Dale Carnegie Trainer, those guys are the best. However if you're just getting started forget about being smart or trying to look slick focus on the structure of your presentation. I use a simple rule: each point lasts about 6-7 minutes and includes the point I want to make, a story or example to support my point, a question to make sure the audience considers how it applies to them and finally I re-state the point. No matter how good you are spending more time learning how to present will catapult your career.

Skill 2: You must have good people skills. It seems obvious that in a job where conflict comes with the territory that consultants would be good with people - nope, not a chance! And I have not always been a shining example. I am not proud of having made a few enemies along the way (not many, honest) and every time it was because my ego got in the way of the longer term goal and I forgot to use good people skills. Here is just a few that is worth remembering (if you want to get to the top table that is). Don't criticise or talk about clients behind their back, never get into an argument, ask questions rather than always giving the answers, and allow the client to discover the insights for themselves. You can have mediocre technical skills and great people skills and you'll nearly always be asked back, unfortunately the same is not always true in reverse.

Skill 3: The ability to size up an organisation. This is why people get into consulting. It is sexy to be in the CEO's office giving her the lowdown on what is wrong with the business and what to do about it. However the truism about taking her watch and telling her the time is still alive and well today.

But you can avoid that embarrassment by following a few diagnostic principles.

1. Determine the purpose of the organisation from the customer's point of view.
2. Establish how much of the demand is related to the organisation's purpose.
3. Gather data on how well the organisation achieves its purpose.
4. Use process mapping to identify flaws in the core processes.
5. Build a system picture to connect the operations to the management policy.
6. Design a new set of polices around the needs of the customer.
7. Tell management to give up targets and incentives, they cause people to cheat.
8. Build a plan to bridge the gap to help get management from the old to the new system.

Using these rules one public sector client reduced the time for providing care for the elderly from 890 days to 55 - as the client put it 'astonishing!'

About the Author

If you'd like to learn more about how develop your consulting skills or want to find out more about how to anlyse and change organsations, go to my blog for free tips and articles on change management. Stuart's Blog. Stuart Corrigan is the Managing Director of Vanguard (Scotland) Ltd, a consultancy firm specialising in change mangement and service improvement.

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