What Type of Consulting Business Are You Running?
Game plan
The first critical stage in starting your own practice is to be specific about your business direction by defining your vision for the future of your consulting business, identifying your unique selling proposition, and categorizing the main responsibilities for your consulting business.
The purpose of this chapter therefore is to help you:
X Create a vision for your consulting business to keep you focused on ‘bad days’.
X More clearly articulate your possible strengths and weaknesses as a consultant.
X Clearly define what you can uniquely contribute to the client.
X Analyse your business using SWOT analysis.
X Build an overview of your business activities so that you can focus on what is important.
Why de¢ne your business before jumping in?
Often when individuals consider becoming a consultant, they think of the logistical steps in getting started such as getting business cards, setting up the office, buying a computer, etc. But the first critical stage in starting your own practice is to define what you want your business to ‘be’. Most people begin with a vague notion they want to be a consultant but it is very important to become specific.
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Foul!
When people describe what they want to do they make two main mistakes:
X First, they explain what they want to do in vague, long sentences.
X Second, they try to be a‘jack-of-all-trades’and not be tied to one area. Trying to be all things to all people can result in not being anything to anyone!
Vision
Unique selling proposition SWOT analysis
Key result areas
Objectives
Fig. 3.1. Steps in setting business direction.
De¢ning your vision
What is a vision statement?
True vision is always twofold. It involves emotional comprehension as well as physical perception.
Ross Parmenter
A vision is defined as a picture of future greatness, a definition of core values, and a lighthouse towards the frontier. Your vision must make sense to others, stretch your imagination, give an ‘aha’ effect, but at the same time be within the bounds of possibility.
Your vision statement describes the grand idea of what you are about, the future as you want it to be: ‘I am in the business of. . .’ The vision statement must be reasonably precise yet still provide a general direction to your consulting business.
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Coaching point
While some of these exercises in this section may appear time consuming and not directly linked to deliverables, investing in this area will produce long term bene¢ts for you and your consulting business through greater focus and raised motivation.
The vision statement tends to be abstract, high level, without much concrete detail. It has also been compared to the North Star: high above, constantly present, universally known, guiding direction. The purpose of your vision statement is to guide your decision-making, provide a yardstick to keep you on track and provide inspiration in achieving your goals.
Examples of vision statements
Examples of Vision statements from organizations are:
Oracle: To enable the Information Age through network computing.
Kepner Tregoe: We focus on the human side of change through providing skills development programs and consulting services.
Raychem: To win the respect of our Customers around the world by being a leader in delivering innovative solutions.
Case study: Frank’s vision
Frank defined his vision as ‘To help call centres optimize their productivity’. He believed this provided a good overall direction, but that it did not limit him to only process reengineering.
Key words in his vision statement were ‘call centres’ (this could include technical support and customer service centres), ‘optimize’, ‘productivity’. He wanted to ensure that any work he conducted would have a tangible bottom line effect on the company. ‘If it did not make a difference at 9 on a Monday morning, he would not have succeeded.’
Differentiating between vision and mission statements
A mission statement communicates the vision by considering several critical variables:
X What is it that the organization wants to do?
X Who is the organization’s customer?
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X What are our values?
X What profit do we need to make?
When you are getting started in your consulting business, using a vision statement alone, with key result areas is probably adequate. Adding another level of detail may make the process too complex.
Creating your vision statement
T|me out!
A man was passing a work site and saw three bricklayers. He approached the ¢rst bricklayer and asked ‘What are you doing?’ The man answered,‘Making a living.’ He asked the second man the same question and he answered,‘Laying bricks.’ He asked the third worker the same question and the man responded,‘Building a Cathedral.’A strong vision statement enables you to feel as though you are building a cathedral, not just laying bricks or making a living.
Exercise 3.1 De¢ning your vision statement
X Take a moment and think about the following questions:
– Why do you want to be a consultant?
– What is it that you primarily want to achieve?
– What do you want your customers to achieve using your services?
– What is your ultimate theme?
– What is the reason your consulting business was created?
– What would success look like for you?
– Think of an ideal day: what would you do? Who would you work with?
Where would you work? What would be the result?
– Think of some times you felt really motivated: what were you doing? With whom?
– What made it motivational for you?
X Now try to write your vision statement in the space below:
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My vision statement is:
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
X Now check your vision statement using the following questions.
Yes No
& &
Does your vision statement energize you?& &
Does your vision statement reflect all the services you could provide?& &
Can you remember your vision statement without referring to a written version?X Share your answers with friends and consultants to get feedback.
X Now integrate these ideas to create a more focused vision statement. Make sure it answers the earlier questions and that it consists of less than nine words to ensure that it is easy to remember.
My vision statement is:
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
Coaching point
Creating a vision statement will take you some time to complete. Often the ¢rst ideas you come up with tend to be more detail oriented. If this is the case you will need to continue re¢ning the statement by talking to friends, professional acquaintances and prospective customers. T|me invested in this area will reap rewards for your business in the long term.
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Case study: Marie
Marie defined her vision as ‘To provide consulting services to allow individuals and teams to maximize results’. Although the statement is a little long, she believes the vision encompasses the critical direction of her business: the key words are ‘consulting’, and
‘individuals’, ‘teams’, and ‘results’. She would have preferred to say ‘develop their potential’ but she thinks that these words might not be acceptable in the business community.
Common challenges that arise in trying to define a vision include being too specific, too
‘pie in the sky’; not able to share with customers, or appearing as if they are not related to business objectives.
De¢ning strengths and weaknesses
Now that we have identified our vision, we need to define what we ‘bring to the table’ to aid our clients; our unique selling proposition. The first step in this process is to be able to objectively define our strengths and competencies. Many are natural to us and therefore we do not think about them, but in order to capitalize on our strengths we need to be aware of them.
This above all; to thine own self be true.
William Shakespeare
When we raised the topic of self-knowledge while working with a 50-year-old client from IBM, he questioned ‘Do you honestly think people reach the age of 50 without knowing themselves?’ Our answer: ‘Absolutely!’ Understanding what is important to us and how we operate is not necessarily as obvious as you might think. Looking inside and trying to sort out the collage of abilities, skills, strengths and weaknesses that make up our personality can be quite a challenge.
Consider the complexity of developing an accurate perception of your own strengths and weaknesses. In the strengths and weaknesses window below, there are four quadrants.
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