The consultation process - What about the client?
There are hundreds of chapters written about the consulting process. There are countless more articles and case studies in academic and trade journals, investigating the relationship between the consultant and the client during the assignment. There is a multitude of theories, observations and models exploring the nature of the client-consultant engagement, its stages and elements. It is taught in the field and in the classroom. There is a whole bunch of materials on the consultants’ involvement and different roles and expectations before, during, and after the consultancy project.
However, little has been written on the clients’ involvement during the project and hardly anything on the clients’ journey before or after the actual assignment. For the purpose of this study the focus will be on the process ‘prior’ to the client – consultant assignment.
So, what is happening before the assignment starts on a Monday morning, at 9 am?
That is the question.
What is happening in the client’s world between the initial recognition of a need up to the initial first day of the assignment?
The very fact we are throwing such a question in the open suggests that there already is an idea of what it is the author is asking after. The journey, the client is going through; the individual steps from defining what the engagement will be to the consultant selection process itself, in other words, is not a complete mystery to the industry since in practice, clients and consultants are already thinking about this in their day to day business. So it is not totally 'virgintoritary' in practice . Yet, having clients going through the process of hiring consultancy firms or specialised consultants helping the client through the tendering process in practice does not necessarily indicate that the process is actually fully understood by the client or the consultant himself.
In fact, it might challenge the question if the client or the consultant is even aware of a process or stage model and not just act upon common sense ideas of doing things on a day to day base.
There is, as current literature shows, a lot of material written on the client-consultant engagement and important, related process variables involving tips and advice on how to prepare for an assignment as a consultant and how to guide the client through each stage of the project.
Most of the information obtained, however it occurs, starts off with the consultant’s preparation phase before the assignment, the consultant’s engagement with the client during the assignment and ends with the consultant’s departure.
In this respect, the consultation process seems to resist easy the multi dimensional and complex role of the client system shaping this engagement right from the beginning.
This view expresses the lack of understanding of the clients world and the need for a more thoroughly investigation into the nature of the client’s journey and the different aspects and dimensions the consultancy selection process withholds.
The idea here is not to reject the field, research done on the consultation process in its entirety, but to encourage current literature to rework it into a slightly different shape and open up new ideas and areas that complete the cycle.
Saskia Giebl, Business Consultant
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