High
Impact Consulting—Getting Real
Results
Setting the
Record Straight on Accountability and Consulting for
Measurable Results
We’ve all heard the
familiar phrase, “Change is inevitable.” But
the next time your company’s unhappy with an
employee’s performance and hires a consultant to
“change” current processes, you may want to
pry a bit to find out if there’s more to the
“change” than the act itself. Robert Schaffer
believes all too often firms are hired to come in and
update or change a certain process but are not
responsible for achieving measurable results.
Schaffer, author and management consultant, was impressed
by the wealth of good ideas and untapped potential he
found in most organizations and launched a firm that
would be devoted to helping managers exploit that
“hidden potential,” not just providing expert
advice. He’s authored High Impact Consulting:
How Clients and Consultants Can Work Together to Achieve
Extraordinary Results and The Breakthrough
Strategy: Using Short-Term Successes To Build the High
Performance Organization. Schaffer sets the record
straight on accountability and consulting for
results.
NFC: How do you get through to people
that feel trapped even though they know they need to
change the way they approach improvement and change
processes?
Schaffer: There are two things I sometimes do
with groups to help people understand that.
1.
I have everybody stand as I read descriptions in groups
of two and three—so nobody is embarrassed. Then I
say if any of these descriptions match you, sit down. The
descriptions are items such as: “You know you have
to exercise, maybe a doctor has told you that, but you
have not done anything about it.” I do about five
or six of those and everybody’s sitting down.
So, then I say, “This group has the most highly
motivated people in your company in it; you have
leadership here and yet you’re telling me that
you’ve got critical personal goals that
you’re not achieving.” And I ask, “Does
it have anything to do with the fact that you don’t
understand the importance of these goals?” Of
course everybody laughs because it’s quite clear.
We look at why they may not be doing it.
2.
Then, I suggest, “Let’s take your corporate
goals, the goals you’re doing in business. Is there
anything different with them?” Of course the answer
is no, there is no difference.
There are all kinds of psychological reasons why people
stay trapped and don’t do the things they sort of
“know” they’ve got to do. I have
several exercises that really help people catch the point
you’re making, which is there is so much that keeps
us trapped in the old fear of venturing forward. And when
you give people an intellectual picture of what they
should be doing or if you give them a tool, it may be a
marvelous tool but they’ve never used it before.
Then expecting great results at the other end is like
high stakes gambling. It works occasionally but very
occasionally.
NFC: Maybe your success rate is high
because having someone speak to them like you do is
pretty rare. Or is it that when someone comes to you they
have already made the decision they really have to do
something?
Schaffer: It’s interesting. There is a
certain self-selection when we get clients who really
want to do something; they work hard at it. When they
know they have to be involved—to be learners and
experiment with change—they come to us more
interested in working with us. The people who don’t
want to do that, they’re the ones who will pay any
kind of money, millions of dollars for big name
consulting reports where they can say, “Hey, we
hired the best.”
NFC: Let’s back up for a moment,
if we can. In a nutshell, if no one’s read the
book, what’s the message of high impact
consulting?
Schaffer: The message is that trying to find
success in consulting is not just the introduction of
better ideas, systems, and methods, but also the
introduction of those new technologies, methods, and
insights in ways that actually produce concrete,
measurable client results and produce them in ways that
are sustainable. Not just a one shot thing. That’s
my definition of success.
Consultants have to take responsibility for working with
their clients to produce results. Most of the time they
don’t. What consultants take responsibility for is
their deliverables and what I call and emphasize in this
edition is the notion of an implementation gap, which
is:
The discrepancy between all the things a client
organization would have to do to really fully benefit
from a consultant’s inputs on the one hand, and
on the other what they are actually ready,
willing, and able to do.
That gap is, I believe, very large and frequent.
Many dollars that are spent on consulting don’t
produce results because of that implementation
gap.
NFC: So you’re saying if
you’ve got multiple customer service sites or
different customer service groups working in your
organization and they’ll have someone come in and
they’ll do work in one or two of the customer
service groups and they find, oh this really works well,
and never bother then to introduce it to all the rest of
their groups? Something like that?
Schaffer: Even
getting something to work in a few groups and produce
results is beyond what many consultants simply introduce
whether it’s training or new systems, new
information systems, or new processes. They introduce
those processes, those methods, or those recommendations
and at that point declare a success.
NFC: Just because the training has
been done?
Schaffer: Yes, if you look at the contracts
that consultants enter into with their clients, even
though they say the aim is to reduce inventory, basically
the consultant does not share responsibility for that.
The consultant says we’re going to try to increase
inventory returns, reduce inventory, blah, blah, blah.
But what we’re going to do is introduce a new
inventory system. In high impact consulting, the most
important shift is that the client and the consultant
contract together to produce certain results and
improvements in the client organization versus the
consultant agreeing to deliver certain deliverables. Once
you’ve made that shift it brings up all the other
shifts. If you’re going to produce results then the
consultant has to pay attention to what the client
organization might be ready to do and able to do. Whereas
if you’re just going to give
recommendations, it’s not that critical
as to whether they’re ready to absorb
and use them.
NFC: In some ways it must not be very
popular with a lot of trainers. If you
didn’t have specific goals you wanted to achieve,
you’re not going to be able to deliver measurable
effects, is that what you’re
saying?
Schaffer: The trainers’ contract is to
deliver the training. If you need to improve teamwork and
get results, they’ll give you training in teamwork
but they will not say....
NFC: Well they actually may not be
asked for anything very specific, they may deliver what
they’ve been asked to deliver.
Schaffer: That’s another point. I
believe the way consulting is practiced, with all its
defects, is not the fault of consultants. I believe
it’s an unwritten and maybe unwitting co-conspiracy
between clients and consultants. Clients are just as
accountable.
NFC: That’s what I get at when I
say people have an agreed upon lie. I won’t say
that you’re overweight and you won’t tell me
I ought to quit smoking, for example, and we’re
both going to tell others that we’re on these
programs. But we’re not doing
anything.
Schaffer: I point out why
both clients and consultants are very cozy in the present
arrangement. They both know how to do the study. They
know how to write the programs. They know how to conduct
the training. So they’re in control in the
conventional mode. If they agree the consultant is going
to introduce a new inventory control method, and they go
ahead, then as soon as the consultant delivers that the
consultant can say, well, it was a success. If it
doesn’t actually reduce inventory the client can
say, “Well, gee I expected them to do it, but they
must have given us a defective product.” And the
consultant can say, “Oh no, we gave you a great
product but you just haven’t used it
properly.” So everybody has a nice out in the
conventional mode—the hand-off mode.
But as soon as you say we’re going to try to
increase inventory turns by 10% or 20% over the next few
months, now immediately a consultant has to say to
himself or herself, “Aww… to get that result
I’ll have to work. The client has to change but I
don’t have any control over that.”
Once the client and consultant have agreed to produce a
result, both the client and the consultant are on the
hook. They’ve announced publicly that they’re
going to do something and improve it by 10%. So they both
have to produce it. You’re under
pressure.
NFC: This morning I was listening to
something on National Public Radio about people who serve
on boards. They said if you ask really hard questions
while serving on a board, the risk you take is that you
may not get asked to serve on any other boards. Which is
the same thing that’s going on inside a
company.
Let me ask your advice this way. Someone picks up your
book and says, “This is great! Schaffer’s
really on the mark.” But they look around and say,
“I think I’m the only one inside the company
who will think so.” What’s my step number one
here to change the conversation?
Schaffer: Well, there are a couple of things;
first, I suggest pick a spot and try it out and see how
it works. Do it on a project. Do it on a couple of
projects. In addition I have specific comments both to
clients and consultants in the book. That’s one of
the things I’ve introduced in this edition—at
the end of most chapters are specific suggestions
addressed to both the client and to the consultant about
how they might think about this. So any consultant who
uses the book this way can mark particular places you
want your client to read if they don’t want to read
the whole book.
NFC: When are you going to rewrite the
Breakthrough Strategy?
Schaffer: I’ll tell you what I have in
mind. I’d be interested in your thoughts on
it.
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June 2002 News for
a Change Homepage
High Impact Consulting— Getting Real
Results
