There is a very old, pretty much ancient line about what consultants do:
You give them a watch and they tell you what time it is.
I first heard this from a person who was always sure they were the smartest person in the room and made damn sure everyone in the room knew it. Not unexpectedly, this person was surprised a few years later when he was turfed in the 1st round of down sizing at his company. (Nope, like the people Iron Mike fought in his prime, he didn’t even make it to the 2nd round!)
But there’s a lesson of sort in his observation.
The value of a consultant is less about what they know and more about what they’ve experienced. This is particularly true today when AI has made us all brilliant – Everyone is the smartest person in the room.
With that considered, it’s the experience that counts.
There is no better education than failure and the longer you’ve been in business, the more education you get. And the more re-education you get – failure wears a lot of disguises and if you don’t recognize the similarities in how things are playing out, you have to repeat grades.
Our job is making sure our clients pass the first time by being their cheat sheet for the pop quizzes that come at them every day in the business:
“I just violated the cash reserves requirement on the operating capital loan I took…”
becomes “Here is how to keep enough money in the bank to get through this down period…”
- I violated the cash reserves requirement a few times. Fortunately, it only cost me once (but it cost me dearly!)
“I’m on COD with 3 critical suppliers and I need the stuff in yesterday…” is graded as
“How I keep my vendors on board even when I’m not paying them…”
- We kept key suppliers on board for 3 years, long enough to get to the stage where we could reward them for their patience. (And we did reward the ones that stayed with us!)
“My head of QA just left and took the department with them…” is really
“Staffing plans that make sense and we can afford…”
- Companies kept poaching our best people until we came up with a compensation plan that had perks the large companies couldn’t match. (And it wasn’t about money or equity!)
“I just sold half my company for half what I think it’s worth…” is taught as
“How to define value in a way that prospective investors buy into…”
- Speaking of equity, it’s very difficult to say no when you only have 3 months of runway. But it becomes easier when you know what buttons to push with the investors (it’s not all about ROI) and how to extend that runway to a year.
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Mark Logomasini, MBA, PMP
Managing Partner
