DBM 633

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND
BUSINESS CONSULTANCY
TOPIC 4: CONSULTING
RELATIONSHIP

By Lecturer: Lillian Bertha Chimungeni

TOPIC 4: Consultancy Relationship

4.1: The role of a consultant

4.1.1 Technical expert
One of the roles adopted by any consultant is that of technical specialist or
expert. As mentioned above, the traditional role of a consultant is that of an
expert who uses special knowledge, skill and professional experience to
provide a service to the client. The client is mainly responsible for defining the
objectives of the consultation. Thereafter the consultant assumes a directive
role until the client is comfortable with the particular approach selected. Later
in the relationship the consultant may act as a catalyst in helping to
implement the recommendations made. The consultant may be a resource
(content) specialist in the client’s problem, or a process specialist advising
how to cope with a problem and how to implement change. This particular
role makes use of the consultant’s substantive knowledge.

4.1.2 Trainer and educator

Innovative consultation frequently requires the consultant to carry out periodic
or continuous training and education within the client system. In this aspect of
the helping relationship, the consultant can suggest the most appropriate
learning process, depending upon the situation and the need. The consultant
may design learning experiences, or train or teach by imparting information
and knowledge directly. This work requires the consultant to possess the
skills of a trainer and developer of others’ potential.

4.1.3 Collaborator in problem-solving

The helping role assumed by the consultant uses a synergistic (cooperative)
approach to complement and collaborate with the client in the perceptual,
cognitive and action-taking processes needed to solve the problem. The
consultant helps to maintain objectivity while stimulating conceptualization
during the formulation of the problem. Additionally, he or she must help to
isolate and define the dependent and independent variables that influenced
the problem’s cause, and will ultimately influence its solution. He or she also
assists in weighing alternatives, sorting out salient causal relationships that
may affect them, and synthesizing and developing a course of action for an
effective resolution. The consultant in this role is involved in decision-making
as a peer.

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 4.1.4 Identifier of alternatives
There are direct costs associated with decision-making. While the value of a
decision is dependent upon the attainment of a given set of objectives, in
selecting an appropriate solution to a problem the consultant can normally
identify several alternatives, along with their attendant risks. The alternatives,
together with their economic and other identifiable implications, should be
discovered jointly by the client and the consultant. In this helping relationship,
the consultant establishes relevant criteria for assessing alternatives and
develops cause–effect relationships for each, along with an appropriate set of
strategies. In this role, however, the consultant is not a direct participant in
decision-making, but a retriever of appropriate alternatives facing the
decision-maker.

4.1.5 Fact-finder
Fact-finding is an integral part of any consulting assignment, both for
developing a database and for resolving intricate client problems. The
consultant’s role may even be confined to fact-finding. In this case he or she
will assist the client system by choosing the sources of data, using a
technique that will get the client more or less involved in gathering and
examining data, and presenting data to the client in a way that will show
where and why improvements are needed. In this role the consultant
functions basically as a researcher.

4.1.6 Process specialist

This is the “pure” process role as described in section 3.4. The consultant
focuses chiefly on the interpersonal and intergroup dynamics affecting the
process of problem-solving and change. He or she works on developing
joint client–consultant diagnostic skills for addressing specific and relevant
problems in order to focus on how things are done rather than on what
tasks are performed. Furthermore, the consultant helps the client to
integrate inter- personal and group skills and events with task-oriented
activities, and to observe the best match of relationships. In this role, an
important function of the consultant is to provide feedback.

4.1.7 Reflector
When operating in the mode of a reflector, the consultant stimulates the
client to prepare and make decisions by asking reflective questions which
may help to clarify, modify or change a given situation. In doing so, the
consultant may be an arbitrator, an integrator or an emphatic respondent
who experiences jointly with the client those blocks that provided the
structure and provoked the situation initially.

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4.2: The role of the client
A “client” is, according to Oxford English Dictionary: “someone who is
under the protection or patronage of another, a dependant” (Oxford
English Dictionary). The client image on the other hand depicts a client
who in need of a service and support from a consultant as the client is in a
situation where s/he has trouble in his/her job. Fact is that the client does
not know the problem. The consultant is therefore a helper, who possesses
the skills to solve the client’s problems due to his expertise and superior
skills.
In Schein’s model, six basic types can be distinguished:
1. Contact clients – the individuals who first contact the consultant with a
request, question or issue.
2. Intermediate clients – the individuals or groups who or which get
involved in various interviews, meetings, and other activities as the
project evolves.
3. Primary clients – the individuals who ultimately ‘own’ the problem or
issue being worked on; they are typically also the ones who pays the
consulting bills or whose budget covers the consulting project.
4. Unwitting clients – members of the organisation or client system above,
below and laterally related to the primary clients who will be affected by
interventions but who are not aware they will be impacted.
5. Indirect clients – members of the organisation who are aware that they
will be affected by the interventions but who are unknown to the
consultant and who may feel either positive or negative about these
effects.
6. Ultimate clients – the community, the total organisation, an
occupational group, or any other group that the consultant cares about
and whose welfare must be considered in any intervention that the
consultant makes.
Thus, role of the client is not straightforward. Different types of clients may
well have different needs, expectations, influence and degrees of
participation in the consultancy.

The consultant, in fact the team, has to be clear as to who the client
actually is at all times in the project. It is important to consider experiences
from the clients and consultants in more detail, to understand the nature of
these relationships initially for the client’s point of view, and the consultants.

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Below are the client’s role in consultancy:-

1. Central point of accountability across the enterprise for consultant

spend and for validation of the value realized from such spend.
2. Define the problem, perhaps with some consultant support but without
being unduly influenced by consultants.
3. Define the metrics (documenting baseline and target values) for the
desired business outcome against which the project will be measured.
4. Executives, managers, and employees who will be working with
consultants are educated on how to work with and manage consultants.
5. Configures the project team with a mix of competent internal
employees, relevant contractors, and selected consultants in
consultation with the chosen consulting firm.
6. Each role is filled by someone who has the actual skills required and is
committed for the appropriate duration and participation level to the
project.
7. Provides their own consulting contract rather than working off the
consulting firm’s standard version.
8. Retains a strong role in project management which may be
supplemented with the consulting firm’s engagement manager.
9. Consultants are controlled and managed during the course of their
engagement as if they were an internal team.
10.An independent group conducts post-completion reviews of consulting
projects.
11.Lessons learned by employees working on projects with consultants
are captured, retained, and disseminated.

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Plotting consulting project experience on the matrix

1. Failure—when relatively junior consultants or consultants are

employed in roles that could be sourced more cost-effectively
elsewhere. Compounded by a lack of oversight and management on
the part of the client, this results in an outright project failure or a
result that significantly misses expectations.
2. Over Payment—the project objectives were mostly achieved, but
expensive consulting resources were used in staff- augmentation-
type roles, so the project cost more than it should have.
3. Under-Achievement—results are less than what could have been
achieved with the assigned resources, often because the scope was
not tightly managed and/or the client did not actively manage the
consultant’s activities.
4. Meet or exceed expectations - The client and consulting staff work
together as an integrated team, with the consultant focused on
advising, facilitating, knowledge-transfer roles and tasks that require
expertise that the client does not have. At the same time, the client
actively controls the relationship, the resources, the project and the
deliverables.

Figure 2.1: Client vs Consultant roles. Source: Wright D. 2004

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4.3: Role of the employees and other stakeholders
Good personnel policies and people management are essential to quality
management and to ensuring that continuous quality improvement is
achieved. Apart from the application of high standards, appraisal and
training provide the vehicles for taking corrective action and addressing
client satisfaction. Quality can be enhanced by:
● The consistent application of high standards in recruiting new

consulting staff and in selecting subcontractors;

● Induction and training in core skills to equip consultants with the

necessary competencies;
● Coaching, helping and supervising people on the job;

● Practicing knowledge management to make sure that best practice

experience is available to operating consultants and that they are

encouraged to seek it and use it;
● Assignment appraisals which feed into an individual’s longer-term

development, remuneration and promotion;

● Using databases of skills and experience which enable properly

structured and highly competent teams to be formed for client

assignments;
● Feeding back results of client satisfaction surveys into consultant

appraisals and training;

● Defining and publishing a code of ethics for the firm and

encouraging voluntary membership in professional associations

and institutes.

4.4: Consultancy as a learning process

Consultants educate, teach clients and their staff to manage better for
themselves. Many clients turn to consultants to acquire the consultants’
special technical knowledge in e.g. environmental analysis, business
restructuring or consulting management.

The methods used in assessing organisations, identify problems and

opportunities, developing improvements and implementing changes
(interviewing, diagnosis, communications, feedback, evaluation and similar
skills.)

Consulting assignments become learning assignments. The purpose is to

empower the client by bringing new competencies into the organisation and
helping managers and staff to learn from their own and the consultant’s
experience.

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In this way, organisations are helped to help themselves and become
learning organisations. This is a two-way exchange, since by helping clients
to learn from experience a management consultant enhances his or her own
knowledge and competence.

Recap your knowledge

1. What are the roles of a consultant?

2. Explain the consultant-client relationship.
3. What is the role of employees and stakeholders?

Click on the video below on client relationship…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9FRQqRwsEw

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THE END: THANK
YOU
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