Consultants are expensive, they deliver no concrete results, have no heart for your company and take over the work of your own employees. We can outline all preconceptions. Where there's smoke, there's fire: these preconceptions don't come out of the blue. There are plenty of books written that may or may not confirm these preconceptions. But let's not forget that working with consultants can also bring you a lot, if you keep a few things in mind. In this blog, Arjen Verwer, management consultant at Summiteers, gives you eight tips on how to achieve a successful collaboration.

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1. Do it for the right reasons

If you're considering working with external consultants, the first thing you need to do is make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. Ask yourself: are we really not able to do this ourselves? Sometimes you need specific expertise or extra capacity that you don't have in-house, or you're looking for someone who can take a fresh look at a problem. In such a case, you can indeed choose to let your own people focus on content and decision making, while the consultant leads the process. A consultant often has less knowledge of the specific industry or situation in which your company is located, but what they do know is how to effectively bring about change. And that ability to achieve change, what we call “Strategy Execution”, is universally applicable. For example, Thijs and Wietse said in an earlier article that a sustainability issue is' just 'a strategic issue like any other strategic issue.

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2. Have your expectations clear

If you do decide to hire a consultant, make sure your expectations are crystal clear. Before you hire an external consultant, it's essential to define exactly what you expect from this collaboration. It must be crystal clear what role the consultant will play in your project, so that there are no misunderstandings afterwards. For example, are you looking for someone who supervises a process, brings specific expertise, raises the internal quality bar to a higher level, or can fill a combination of different roles? Making clear agreements right from the start about what support you ask for ensures that you use a consultant on what you are looking for support in. By the way, you can expect a good consultant to help you make mutual expectations crystal clear, even if you have little experience with them yourself.

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3. Set the correct selection criteria

Well, now it's time to select the right partner. To do this, it is important to carefully set the correct selection criteria that match your expectations. Some important points to pay attention to:

- Check the consultant's experience and references. It is not only important what a consultant or consultancy firm has achieved, but also what specific role they have taken on in previous projects. This gives you insight into how they work in practice and what you can expect from them. Taking the time for a short reference check is therefore very well spent time!

- Are the people you talk to in the preliminary phase also the ones who will get the job done? It happens that during the preliminary phase, different consultants are introduced than those who will eventually do the work. Make sure you know exactly who you're going to be working with and whether you trust them to get the job done.

- Research how flexible the consultancy party is in adapting their role during the project. You may need to scale up, scale down, or add extra seniority to tasks. How agile is the consultant in meeting your needs? This flexibility can also mean that they do less than originally planned, should your organization be able to perform certain tasks itself.

- Do you expect the consultant to keep challenging you with the question: Wouldn't you do this better yourself? This stimulates self-reflection and self-reliance within your team.

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4. Make clear agreements about knowledge transfer

Once you have found the right partner, an important point of attention is the transfer of knowledge. It is crucial that the consultant, during the project, is already busy transferring his or her knowledge and expertise to your team in such a way that you are internally able to continue independently. The last thing you want is to become permanently dependent on the consultant. Be in control of safeguarding knowledge in your organization, so that you also reap the benefits of the consultancy process in the long term.

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5. During cooperation: keep the wheel in your hands

There are things that you arrange in advance, but there are also aspects where you need to stay alert throughout the process. You can expect a consultant to always be transparent and communicate openly about the status, direction and challenges of the process. As a client, you must remain in control. You don't want any surprises. The idea is that the consultant helps you get to your desired destination, not that he or she takes control.

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6. Keep pragmatism at the forefront

It's essential to keep your focus on what you ultimately want to achieve with the consultant's help. Don't stare blindly at an appointment you made at the beginning of the process, but keep reflecting permanently on mutual cooperation. Are we still taking the right actions to achieve our goal? Is the target we initially set still true? Are the activities we focus on still a priority? Is the current division of roles still appropriate for the project? This requires a continuous process of evaluation and coordination and it is important to take the time to do so. If it is the case that new developments or insights cause priorities to shift, you must be able to make adjustments in consultation. This may mean that the context of the project changes and thus also the content of the plan, or that you decide to go in a different direction earlier than planned. This flexibility is a prerequisite for successful cooperation.

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7. Make sure that the consultant does not take a permanent position

Make sure that the consultant will not unintentionally play a permanent role within your organization. You hire a consultant to bring in temporary expertise, capacity or a fresh perspective. You want someone who works 15 minutes and then ensures that you can take over those tasks internally. If a consultant starts sharing his or her vacation plans for next year or stops introducing himself as an external one, you need to be alert. This may be a sign that the consultant's role is becoming more permanent than originally intended. If you're actually looking for someone who can hold a longer or more permanent position within your organization, it might be wiser to hire an interim manager instead of a consultant.

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8. Conclusion and reflection: the key to a successful collaboration

At the end of a process, it is important to take a look back at what has been learned. Discuss again how you will ensure the transfer of knowledge. How does the consultant ensure that he or she remains available as a source of information for a while? Or can you still support the assurance of the process in another role? How do you keep in touch after completing the process? And what are valuable lessons that you have learned yourself, or want to teach others?

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Need help with strategy execution?

We are Summiteers, we create movement, make something that is complex understandable again, something big achievable, a - vague - idea concrete and make something difficult succeed. Can you use help with this? Take contact with us.

Interested, but not ready for the trip yet? Follow our LinkedIn page and get inspired.

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