What makes a good consultant?

Most of the successful consultants I know stand out because of their specializations.  You can find a freelancer, mercenary, or agency for pretty much anything these days.  Indeed there is an app-for-that and on-demand-humans are pretty much an 'add to cart' commodity.  This makes a whole lot of sense as it's become so much easier to connect people with subject matter expertise to the people who need it. 

Mighty Dynamo is atypical to most consultancies. My utility lends itself to a broad range of business scenarios, probably more-so than other individual or small shops. I have a history of handling broken or ‘uncharted territory’ situations; where there is change, there is uncertainty.

This bring us to Lesson 1: The world is shockingly small and word gets around, so beware and protect your reputation.  You never know who might need whatever the fuck you are known for doing.

I fell into my first consulting gig thanks to my reputation of resurrecting legacy brands/technologies and transforming them on new platforms with different business models.  Having experience with sleuthing a problem, re-imagining the opportunity, and then orchestrating the moving parts within an organization to get something out the door, turns out to be a generally useful skill.

When facing these kinds of business problems, clients tend to also request things like innovation and something patentable; as though those words themselves were some kind of requirement. Defining what such desirable words actually mean is the mystery bag of "what the fuck do you want?". Seems silly to ask for bionic arms when the patient is bleeding out, however, solutions can be future-proofed with the fairy dust of hope and good intentions.

My background is design and despite the fact that I am a mediocre designer, it has been this foundation that has formed how I tackle problems and how I do business.  There really is something to be said of 'design thinking' and how powerful it is to have an open mind, active imagination and adaptive approaches to address highly complicated or constrained problems. 

IMHO it is a disservice to be regarded as an 'ideas guy' because an idea is worthless without the follow-through.   Deriving the process by which an idea is nurtured and shaped into a state where it actually delivers against intention, that is the real mission. For this reason, I work on the strategic and tactical cusp – doing the trench work and crossing the lines within an organization is the only way to operate.

Lesson 2:

Even though you need to have a lot of confidence in your abilities to do whatever you do, being the most skilled is not necessarily the deciding factor of being a stellar consultant.  Of course, your client needs solid confidence in your ability to deliver, but it is their TRUST in you, as a human being, that is paramount.  You will naturally observe that this is closely connected to lesson 1, but trust is an intimate thing... not only do you need to earn it, it does not auto-renew... you are only trustworthy until you lose that status, whereby regaining that trust becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible. Inconsistency is risk and someone you can’t trust consistently is basically someone you can’t trust at all. 

Lesson 3:

For sure, there are practices and behaviours that any consultant can observe to maintain a strong and healthy relationship with clients.  The reality is, there are many techniques to entrench and milk a client.  If it is really just a recurring revenue stream and nothing else, what’s the point? Sure, there are loveless marriages too, so there is nothing wrong with a sterile partnership, but that isn’t something particularly rewarding. For me and my team, this makes a huge difference on how performant we are.  Genuinely liking your clients and wanting them to succeed is essential. There are many circumstances of necessity where such principles may be too ideal, but this is a defining factor for any work we take on. Without this, the other lessons don’t work.

Why share such thoughts?

When I formed Mighty Dynamo it was solely meant to incubate and protect new project concepts. I was unaware that consulting was an incredible gift. Only after years of client-side work did I finally appreciate the true benefits. Consulting can be financially rewarding; it can provide exposure and insights to lateral challenges, it trains you to view the world through a different lens; and it is extremely gratifying when you help people. 

What I find rewarding from consulting is likely quite different than others. In my opinion, to engage in consulting with the intention of becoming a better consultant means it is a perpetual self-help program. Building a reputation, being a trusted advisor, and actually giving a fuck are all inward propositions and life-long work. What you strive for yourself matters. After all, as a consultant, you are the product and no one really wants a stagnant product.