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Hidden Consultants Within Your Organization
You've all heard the old joke about a consultant being someone who uses your watch to tell you the time, and then steals your watch. There's some truth to the story: consultant recommendations are often the same things that your employees or customers have been telling you all along. But while you will listen to a consultant, you don't listen to your employees and customers. Why is that? Why do companies pay more attention to consultants then they do to employees or customers? And what should you do about it? But let's start with an even more important question: why should you listen to employees and customers? Why listen? So why don't companies listen to employees and customers? Based on my own experience, here are the primary reasons why companies don't take advantage of their hidden consultants: No Clear Summarization When I'm working as a consultant doing interviews with employees and customers, I often hear significant statements, but I notice them because I'm listening for them. My brain is focused on gathering important information, and so I'm able to separate out the irrelevant stuff from the important things. Most people don't listen that way on a day-to-day basis. Then, after I've heard an important statement and verified it with others, I'll figure out the best way to convey the statement to my client. Sometimes the issue with accepting a recommendation isn't so much the recommendation itself; it's how the recommendation is presented. Important truths have to be presented in a way that makes the client see the light without taking offense. Employees and customers don't often use appropriate summarization and presentation techniques, and so we reject their recommendations. Bias Reluctance Other reasons ? Some managers don't want to acknowledge that their own employees can be more knowledgeable about a subject than the managers are. The managers forget that the employees (a) are usually closer to everyday problems, and (b) have had a life before working for this manager, and so they have other experience to bring to the table. ? Managers sometimes feel that giving an employee a strong say in an issue will be viewed as "giving up control." We forget that we aren't in control anyway. At best we're leading and steering, and certainly we're accountable, but the employees who do the work actually have control over the process-not the managers. ? There's a feeling of "you get what you pay for," so we feel that a low-paid employee can't provide as good an opinion as a high-paid consultant. This is a narrow viewpoint, but it feeds the families of many consultants. How to use your hidden consultants 1. Help your hidden consultants learn how to focus. Provide training for your employees and customers in techniques that help them find the root cause of a problem, determine possible solutions, and put together a plan to solve the problem. 2. Provide a way to get feedback from employees without you being biased by the source of the feedback. Create a method for employees to submit suggestions and ideas anonymously, but with a way to subsequently identify the suggester if you want to provide a reward. 3. Identify someone (internally or externally) who is good at summarizing and presenting. Have that person summarize employee and customer feedback and present it in the way that an outside consultant would. 4. Have a program in which selected employees can be "consultants for a week." Having these employees think like consultants takes them outside the day-to-day process, if only temporarily, and gives the employees the opportunity to identify issues and recommend solutions. Sometimes this approach is even more effective if the employees act as consultants for different departments than their own. 5. Help your employees to learn how to differentiate between a "reason" (why you are a certain way) and an "excuse" (why you stay that way). And make sure that you understand the difference yourself. Conclusion ? Providing skills and expertise that don't exist within your organization, and ? Helping your organization develop better processes for optimizing your own skills and expertise. You have a huge pool of hidden consulting talent within your organization. You just have to focus it and use it. © 2004 MakingITclear, Inc. This article was originally published in the June, 2004 issue of the MakingITclear® Newsletter, a free monthly email newsletter published by MakingITclear, Inc. MakingITclear is a registered trademark of MakingITclear, Inc. Harwell Thrasher is an author, speaker, and coach specializing in the human side of Information Technology. His workshops show IT people and their non-IT customers how to work together to make more effective use of technology. See more on Harwell's web site at http://www.makingITclear.com. And join Harwell's free monthly email newsletter that's focused on making your IT organization (or any organization) more effective.
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