Using experts & being advised

2024-02-06

A relative told a funny story: they were working at a data science consultancy, on a customer acquisition project for a bank. One of the client’s teams were irritated by the engagement and they decided to run their own customer acquisition project. They spent half a million Euros. At the end of the project, how many new customers had they acquired?

One.

This is embarrassing for the client team, but it’s also a bad look for the consultancy. Your advice is supposed to stop this kind of thing from happening. As a consultant, you’re advised to develop your soft skills to avoid scenarios like this. You’re supposed to take responsibility for getting the client to listen to your advice.

Tom Critchlow’s self published book about consulting has some more to say about this from the consultant’s point of view:

In fact, for senior executives - sometimes you really can’t give them advice - they’re too type-A and overly confident. The only way to convince them is to help them see the problem in a new light - to see things as you see them.

This places too much emphasis on the consultant. If one is going to engage expert advisers, one must acquire and master the skill of being advised¹.