Monday, February 4, 2019

Friday, January 18, 2019

Process vs. Content Consulting

Content consultants offer expertise in one function (i.e. accounting) or industry (i.e. aviation). My most successful consulting engagements—where I really improve my clients—come as a process consultant, where I help them with strategy and change. Companies are full of content experts. What they really need help with are identifying and processing change / improvements

Learning AND Doing

After you attend a seminar or read a book just pick one or two improvements, ignore the rest, and work on implementing them successfully. You return on investment on the book or seminar will be much higher than if you greedily try to process everything to "get your money's worth".

Monday, January 14, 2019

Business Strategy vs. Implementation


For help with business strategy, it is better to use a solo or boutique firm, such as Puri Consulting.

When you engage a single, highly skilled and experienced consultant, you can develop a focused plan around a few, key changes that let you leverage great results, without disruption to your existing business.  You can get a 10:1 return in terms of resources spent vs. results.

With large consulting firms, they have an army of young consultants that they have to put to work.  These consultants, who don't have many years of experience in the business world, are taught to implement the firm's pet "best practice" model.  They then descend on your business and create 40 page Power Points on how to convert your business over to their preferred model.  The result is an ambitious plan that, during implementation, results in disruptions to normal business and large re-learning curve for employees.  The return may only net 1.2:1.

The best results are gained from using the small consulting firm to create the strategy, and then use the large consulting firm to handle the implementation.

Sunday, January 13, 2019