The Secret of The Good Consultant

Hold onto your hats as I’m about to reveal the Great Secret of The Good Consultant.  Ready?  Sure?  Trust.  Yup, that’s it.  But hold right there.  What looks like a mere 5 letter word is perhaps the most important weapon in the toolbox of The Good Consultant.

Allow me to explain.

In order to understand the importance of Trust in Consultancy, you need to first take a few steps in another persons shoes:  The Customer.  Ok, let’s roll the clock back a bit to the time before you or your company was engaged in the project with The Customer.  There will have been a meeting between The Customer and their colleagues where they were discussing business strategy and the technologies needed in order to achieve their business goals.  The first branch of Trust is set in place, between The Customer and The Business.  The Business is putting Trust in The Customer to deliver on a promise of the technologies needed to achieve the Businesses goals.

Then The Customer will have realised that the technologies needed to achieve the goals are complex and unknown to them.  What can they do?  Send staff on training courses?  That could take a long time for them to get up to speed and they can’t be spared from their day to day duties.

So what option is The Customer left with?  Who can they call on to assist them with implementing the technologies that they so badly require to meet The Businesses goals? As let’s be honest, no Customer implements technology for technologies sake, there’s always a business reason, especially in these economic times.  Well, in the Cisco world (it’s the one I know best), if The Customer doesn’t already have a partner, but they have decided that Cisco is the way forward for them, they’ll speak to Cisco.

The second branch of Trust is then in place, between The Customer and Cisco.  Cisco will listen to the customers requirements and put them in touch with the partner that they have the most Trust in to be the best fit for the customer and deliver the technologies needed to achieve the Businesses goals.  That’s the third branch of Trust.  So that’s three branches of Trust before The Good Consultant has even met with The Customer.

So off The Good Consultant goes to meet with The Customer to further discuss their issues and gather information needed to put together a proposal of how The Good Consultant believes the technology can be used in order to meet The Businesses goals.  The Customer agrees, an order is placed and the project then commences.

Let’s be clear now.  All The Customer has purchased from The Good Consultant is a promise.  The Promise to deliver a project, as agreed, to hit the Business goals.  The Customer needs The Good Consultant to do the work as they’re unable to complete the work themselves.  So, where is all the Trust?  That’s from The Customer to The Good Consultant to deliver on the promise.  If it all goes badly wrong, who’s going to be held accountable?  Yes, The Good Consultant will be red faced, but it’s The Customer who has the much longer term prospect of having the Business put Trust in them and failing to deliver.

There are future posts that I’m planning, discussing methods of gaining and holding Trust between The Good Consultant and various parties, not least The Customer.  Any comments that others would care to add either on the blog  (http://GoodConsultant.blogspot.com) or on Twitter (@HarrisonLeigh) would be greatly appreciated in shaping those posts.

Until then, keep working on keeping the Trust bulletproof ;-)

LH

Blind Squirrels and Purple Squirrels

Yet another kind post from The Man on The Other Side - Eman

Don't forget to check out www.ccieflyer.com

Sitting here in the office recently I was contacted by another recruiter asking for help to provide a CCIE for his client.  This is a regular occurrence for me since I have been jumping up and down so vigorously attracting attention as I provide CCIEs for Cisco Channel Partners around the world.  The CCIE Flyer, my blog CCIEagent.com, my job blog CCIEJobs.com, LinkedIn Groups CCIE Network, CCIE Life, CCIE Jobs, Women CCIEs, and CCIEs Without Borders along with CCIE Jobs on Facebook, and my profile on Twitter make it easy to find me.  So from time to time I get calls, emails, InMails, and Tweets from recruiters who are looking for help.  I turn them away constantly from my groups on LinkedIn but I will entertain partnering with them to see if some of the CCIEs I network with can benefit from the roles they are hawking.  As I read their messages or speak with them I will look them up on LinkedIn or Google their names to see what their backgrounds are.  This is such a great time for information sharing and I take advantage of it.   What I find sometimes is amusing.

LOL

Recently I was sitting here reading one such profile when I literally laughed out loud.  When a recruiter tells me they are looking for a CCIE that has passed both the written CCIE and the Lab CCIE I question what they really know about CCIEs.  This time I looked and found the recruiter had been a recruiter for three months but before this was a dodge ball instructor.   Whoa.  What the heck?  I am sorry but while I will treat everyone with respect I literally chuckled so loud my kids and wife walked into my office asking what was so funny.  I cannot go into it but suffice to say the qualifiers to be an instructor of dodge ball cannot really be similar to those of recruiting.  There are a lot of people who seem to think recruiting is an easy way to make money.  So they collect their LinkedIn account, Twitter password, and Facebook connections and off they go; recruiting.  I know a lot of successful recruiters but I don’t know any that are successful who dove into the business without a clue.  The successful ones have a background either technical or in HR Recruitment for large firms or Government agencies and some even come from sales where they have been responsible for staffing projects they have sold.  I know one very lucky one who is interning as she takes on some great work under a hugely successful recruiter, but that is the exception to the rule.  The industry is rife with tenderfoots and greenhorns who are trying recruiting as if they have headed into Sutter’s Mill in the early California gold rush days.   Beginning a journey where they expect to find gold just lying on the ground there is unrealistic and hazardous.

Blind Squirrel

There is an old saying (yup here I go with the old age thing again) and it goes, “Even a blind squirrel will find a nut sometimes.”  It’s true I have seen a couple who got lucky just that one time and then pinned their hopes and dreams on lady luck hoping she would smile on them again.  This almost always ends in frustration and broken agreements and loss of moral and what hurts most is the loss of contact with a candidate who also has hopes.  Yup, Blind Squirrel Syndrome, really this is a recruiting industry term; go look it up in the recruiting glossary.   There are professionals out there who have paid their dues, worked diligently to learn the technologies and created a good reputation and client base due to their hard work.  Be alert to those who just started and are asking you about what you do to learn about CCIEs!

Purple Squirrel

Squirrels come in many colors.  Yes I am talking about those furry creatures that scamper around and eat stuff that falls out of trees or grow in your garden.   I have a reputation for saving squirrels during bad times for them here in Delaware.   I have hunted squirrels in Texas for food while canoeing the Brazos River adding these tasty creatures to a can of beans or some bacon on a skillet at on a campfire.  In east Texas they are gray here in Delaware they are red, in Washington DC I found some that were white and once in NYC I even found some coal black squirrels in Central Park.  There are no purple squirrels though and that is why in the recruiting world we call a position that is impossible to fill or very hard to fill a purple squirrel.  Once again I have to defer to the recruiting glossary to prove this is an industry term.  Are you a purple squirrel?  You may not be but when you look in the mirror, but when you leave your job for higher ground in your wake the HR folks and IT management might create one.  Recruiters hate a job description based on a person instead of a need.  That could be a purple squirrel.  With that exception aside we still find difficult searches in my world.  A candidate search for one recruiter is often more difficult than for another, so one recruiter’s purple squirrel is another recruiter’s stock and trade.  As is the case for CCIE searches for many and those brave enough to admit they need help call me from time to time.  So, I am polite and I listen and I do sometimes guffaw while sitting here at my desk but I love it all.   Remember if you need an advocate in your job search let me know I will keep the Purple Squirrel hunters at bay!

The Good Consultant is on Twitter

Folks - I've added in a new Twitter account @harrisonleigh

I'll be throwing up ideas that I'll be writing about in the blog and will be looking to discuss content.

LH

The Good Consultant - now it's even easier to get involved!