Consultant Value: the outsiders POV

Why we people need consultants? What Value do we provide?

At one customer site an Shift Supervisor who we regularly bumped heads with (constructively it turns out) stated very clearly that the problem with us is that we did not have to live their lives (consequently that was one of our strengths). The outsiders perspective allows for a alteration of the context that any given problem can be viewed in.



For me this was made more relevant by this video example of "predictable irrationality" from Jeff Monday and

Mondaydots.com and my subsequent listening to Dan Ariely's book by that name.

The ability of the consultant, or any voice of an outsider, breaks the pattern of the relativity that often blinds ourselves to the irrational decisions we make.

It is not necessarily that consultants have better insights because they are who they are, it is often times that they come to us without the baggage of our organization.

Additionally we risk upsetting this balance when we internalize that consulting function. External Change Agents are value added.





PS the reading by Simon Jones in the Audio Book is FANTASTIC it adds great dimension to the book, with a very crisp delivery of the irony of peoples predictably irrational behavior.

Software solutions: I disliked __ so much I wouldn't even evaluate what he sold me

Recently a sales guy relayed a funny story (not ha ha funny more sad funny). He had traveled to a customer site with an officer of the company to do a little discovery and "technology partner" dog and pony show.

During the discussion the customer tried to re tell a story about how during a demo 3 years ago (one he did not deign to sit through, opting to scurry in and out to show his importance to us). He mis-remembered that our simulation results were not good enough (the review of the results were the part he was not in our demo for).

But the highlight of the visit was when he told the corporate officer that he so disliked one of us who had made that original demo that he discounted our product for the past years of dutiful licensing of our solution. Adding the __ acted like he knew everything but did not, and that is why he knew that our solution was not worth evaluating.

Now who is guilty of talking about things they know nothing about?
Eric Kam, broadcasting from an undisclosed location via BlackBerry