Unless this changes it will continue to erode the clients’ confidence in these service providers and they will be seeking increasing internal solutions to tackle their problems. I think if this trend continues it will be a mistaken course.

Consultants are not addressing many of the changes occurring and ignoring opportunities to adapt to different circumstances, they are simply not putting up a strong case of their engagement by redesigning their business models or opening themselves up to different forms of collaboration.

In many ways, the consulting industry specializing in innovation is its own worst enemy.

It is highly fragmented, often highly specialized in certain innovation practices, and much of the advice comes from a cottage industry of independent practitioners, caught up in executing and little time for advancing their own knowledge.

There is this sense that consultants are resolutely staying very internally driven, self-promoting, still trying to convey the story of innovation mastery, when clearly this is lacking in rapidly changing market and technology conditions and due to this staying ahead of the knowledge curve are actually failing the client.

Many consulting firms have spent the last decade trying to make themselves more efficient, going from craftwork to selling one solution as a mass production to many, to yield ever-increasing fees, so as to gain a re-occurring return on a one-off invested solution. Innovation solutions simply need to be crafted to each set of circumstances mostly, in my opinion, and that conflicts with this repeating model.

When clients were pushing down prices it made sense to offer general solutions but the disruptive forces occurring in clients’ markets are requiring far more the return to crafting individual solutions.

Larger Consultants have been offering body shops, and set-piece solutions, to offset client resource shortfalls. This sits less well in a time where demand for unique innovation is required to offset these disruptive forces coming from often unexpected sources.

The two, quality versus quantity of consulting, are difficult to equate coming from the same consulting firm. Bespoke needs to be recognized as necessary for innovative solutions.

The scrabble for consultants is to re-position themselves back at the high-value end but they need a greater depth of knowledge, expertise and experience to convince clients of this need to change differently than simply providing resources. Both clients and consultants are struggling with their own legacy of where resources reside and what value these can provide.

The mismatch of client needs and consultants’ offerings.

The client is increasingly requiring more organic or holistic solutions not a ‘piecemeal’ innovation offerings. These separate pieces often don’t dovetail into one complete innovation system because they are supplied by a variety of different service providers, all having their own ‘pet’ approaches.

Perhaps there is a real mismatch between clients’ needs in aspirations and budgets and the available innovation consultants’ ability to match and relate to specific industry practices and scale to meet client needs.

There also seems this perpetual dilemma of clients’ wishes that are hard to reconcile with operational realities to turn their organizations from being focused on effective and efficient into agile and adaptive, required for innovation.

Often the two are caught in the classic “who does what”, “how much each can and should manage” and the ability to handover or what happens when the consultant finishes the project and leaves, taking a level of knowledge with them that was never given time to reside inside the clients.

Consultants are far too cautious for their own good

Consultant firms, on the other hand, are moving far too cautiously to any form of collaborative form, they tend to bring ‘experts’ in for ad hoc, one-off assignments when they need deeper expertise. Wherever possible consultants want to manage as much as possible internally to ‘keep’ the fees generated inside. This is not a recipe for building lasting relationships that have mutual value in growing understanding.

Often this ‘keep it in-house’ whatever it takes, promotes that in-breed fault and is not reflecting the commonly held view today, “that all knowledge does not reside within its own walls”; they still reluctantly hang on to the closed system of inventing only inside here.

This often manifests itself in the host of variations in what is claimed as their ‘unique’ versions of “common innovation” where they constantly reinvent the wheel in their own approaches to processes, definitions, tools, frameworks, systems of working and idea management etc. I often feel those “unique solutions” are often just simply mutton dressed up as lamb.’

The resultant cost of rework if clients bring in a different consultant grows.

Today I think part of the clients experimenting and learning internally is due to this disappointment with the consultant. Clients are becoming extremely selective for the use of any outside advice. Many clients are simply building their own innovation teams with individuals that have had some given time consulting to offset, defray and strengthen their own in-house capabilities.

The reality is these are often more ‘at odds’ with the business units, seen as elite, out of touch often just pursuing their own agenda, not accountable, and often less supportive of the current business needs.

Also, innovation itself is going through really a massive change.
The need for ecosystems, platforms, the greater use of analytics, big data and reliance on technology are all crowding in on innovation delivery.

The emphasis on thinking through new business models, combining design thinking, lean management, customer development, prototyping, experimenting outside the lab, collaborating with clients, finding different partners, the different exploitation of research techniques are all breaking out in different forms and combinations is radically altering approaches to innovation.

Also collaborating and networking are far more essential to innovation exchange, be this in the early idea forming stages but increasing in the development and execution of innovative solutions. Partnerships are diverse, delivering on the need of the job to be done. Orchestration is increasingly playing its part to manage all the assets and knowledge coming into play.

The innovation consultant can lead or can be simply a bit player in this synchronizing of innovation activities or offering ‘leading’ advice.

I have suggested in past posts that we all need to think differently:

innovation is based on the thinking around the shift from products to solutions, from transactions to growing far more value-adding ongoing relationships, from a supplier of product services, into highly valued network partnerships, exploring innovation across all options, instead of delivering on discrete elements; this requires managing the whole ecosystem of the innovation design differently.

The external innovation consultant needs to change

I get the distinct impression the focus of most innovation consultants is still locked into product innovation or improving the process of the pipeline/portfolio, the idea generation and project execution model. It is not evolving into broader services or accounting for the transformations underway at the clients end.

While the consulting firm stays closed-up, intent on delivering their own solutions,will mean they are often far too busy catching up, lagging in their own emerging practice and due to this ‘lag’ have lost any leadership position in many things relating to innovation.

To overcome this you need to be engaged, to be able to piece together fragments of information to gain the insights that independence can offer. Consultants need to explore and experiment themselves in a laboratory and pilot testing environment, that allows clients to work alongside them to learn and gain from this in collaborative ways. Both learn and both benefit going forward in new ways.

Sadly general well experienced innovation practitioners are actually thin on the ground. You do need to search hard for these but they are available. This exploring and extracting insight requires dedicated experience and constant involvement in broader innovation understanding

Often even the large consulting practices can’t afford to have more than a few experts scanning this innovation terrain yet clients, again and again turn to the broad consulting provider for specialist advice.

The one real change that is occurring is in thought leadership from consultants

Clients often lack real deep insight or draw out the implications of these emerging practices, they want to work more alongside others in experimental practice spaces to truly figure out how to respond to them or understand the implications to their own business. It is only part of the innovation knowledge puzzle for the client.

They need to constantly look elsewhere to piece this together, if at all they can, as so often the reporting loses much of its value as it is not translated into suggested solutions if the consulting industry fails to provide these services or knowledge laboratories.

There is increasing value in the thought leadership pieces emerging from the large, well connected consulting firms. Their ability to extract knowledge from their clients and increasingly match this with merging practice is valuable.

The work of many of the larger consultants in the field of thought leadership, including Deloitte’s, Bains, McKinsey, Booz, PWC, A D Little, PA Consulting and some others, has begun to provide a much greater insight through their access to C-level people and their ability to provide reports on best or emerging practice.

This is helping understand changes occurring and the emerging practices around organizations’ current thinking of innovation, yet it is failing to be fully translated into the client application.

Translating thought leadership to new practice is a real opportunity for all
Presently much of this thought leadership is failing to be translated into practical solutions, they remain research findings.

Thought leadership seems to be increasingly dominating the marketing activities of consulting firms, and with some good cause: clients require evidence and good thought leadership, it does matter to them, to figure out their internal solutions.

I’m not unhappy with that, I’ll be honest, as my competitive space is largely about understanding emergent innovation practice to relate and absorb the findings and then attempt to connect the thinking to improving innovation practice within client thinking at individual, team or organizational level.

I’ve been shifting my business model in the past few years, into a far more advisory one than consultative for clients, attempting to connect the multiple and different dots coming in from multiple sources to help this thinking and understanding.

We come back to the reason why, what used to work before, often doesn’t now.

If the innovation consultant needs to question the changes occurring all around them, then they need to ask “why not develop a different type of sustaining collaborative arrangement?” One where they, the consulting firm have scale and resources, become far more aligned with people like me, who have the entrepreneurial energy and zeal that explores and exploits, probes and connects, offering a further validation path that clients might value.

There is so much convergence, linkage, networking, and integration pieces occurring that none of us can remain islands of specific knowledge, we must find innovative ways to collaborate, to build an ecosystem of knowledge that provides clients a real competitive advantage. I want to participate in far more scaling, proving and validating.

Consultants must learn within themselves to collaborate, exchange and value a greater ‘collective pool’ of innovation knowledge, otherwise, solutions being offered to clients remain incomplete, stilted and lack the real diversity of understanding they require to combat a different set of market conditions than in the past. They need greater transformational services.

Collaboration in the making?

Perhaps we have here a collaboration in the making, that is for the clients (markets) benefit and bridges some of the current client / consulting gaps that I feel are there.

I wonder if the larger consulting company can see beyond their own noses for the value in this?

The post The Challenges Being Faced by Innovation Consultants first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Am I the only one getting overwhelmed in choice, underwhelmed in content value?

This is a bit of a long rant, so turn away now those who love all the free choices you currently have, don’t waste your time reading on.

Those a little more curious, as my friend Michael Fruhling always says in his useful blog “then read on, dear friends….”

What do you get of real value when it is offered free?
You are getting experts offering free webinars or short ‘tasters’ with even offers of “fly me to your destination- no fees just cover my costs”, others offering “join my (global) network” as entreaties. Then you are equally getting software providers giving their take on innovation solutions galore, with the “three lessons learnt” mantra as the takeaways.

These all increasingly add up to you being bombarded daily with their knowledge, that often you can’t really decide if it did have value or not, by the end of the hour you had invested.

Then you get the innovation community providers linking up, providing web chats, drawing in different and diverse opinions from practitioners, academics or specialists, under let’s “ask the experts”, all hosted and moved along to stay within the prescribed time period.

Yet even these are so often totally failing to get to solve your solutions, all you end up getting is their experiences or observations, in someone else’s often unrelated situation, that might even be dangerous to extract and simply apply.

Maybe this is a bad day for me.

I am getting really frustrated by this constant ‘streaming’. I know I can ignore it, click the invite off, I can simply tune out and I think this is where many of us all seem to be heading. Are we really getting the value out of these ‘free’ offers?

You can go on and add in the free mix, different academic courses being offered on innovation from one day, to three days, a week or even longer as on-line courses by providers building their brand for the future. Then you are getting the “upgrade or get left behind” messages from all these. Are these really worth the time investment or just self-promoting?

I’m constantly being told I need upgrading on my innovation skills, nudged to check out the latest software update, and enticed to participate in a debate. It simply goes on and on.

Can it stop? Should it? Will it?

Then we have conference and forum providers for anything innovation, be this open innovation, CEO’s, social innovation, digital innovation. Then you have these consistent meetings offered by the European Union or different institutions, non-profit making organizations etc., etc for half-days- are they mad in what this means in invested time, or are we simply mad to go?

We have so much time on our hands, really?

I certainly can’t afford the time. And then for what, some long introductions and a few ‘choice’ bullet points. Thank god for streaming these live events so you can tune out much but being there, can you run and hide? Did I mention the radio talk shows, and book publicity videos?

Then you have the reading material. OMG! That is me included here! We do need a break from all this, we are all progressively tuning out, not actually in.

Can we afford to miss out- our Kiasu fears– many it seems are saying yes and exactly doing that, others seem caught in this fear of missing out.

Real lasting value or just simply filling in our time?

No seriously, we are so far running ahead of ourselves in delivering ‘something’ as service providers but is it of real, lasting value? We have opened up the spigot to allow a deluge of “anyone” who can simply take hold of an idea or a thought, quickly put it together through a host of technologies and social platforms, so as to deliver their contribution to the mountain of advice equally piling on, I mean mountains of advice.

Can we call stop, surely we are all gradually switching off or do we just totally tune out? I believe clients, meaningful decision-makers in clients are tuning out, as they surely do not have the time for all this.

I just feel we are all getting a little frantic in offering free advice

How can we get back to the basics within innovation, those that can put to simplification back in innovation? Well actually getting back to the basics on anything come to think of it?

I was reading a short article from Ron Asakenas over on Forbes (subject innovation) commenting about “It’s time to simplify innovation”. He prompted this post of mine. His opener I liked:

“Innovation is one of the most popular topics in the world these days, with new books and articles on the subject appearing almost daily. (For example, there are over 70,000 book listings about innovation in Amazon). The problem is that nobody quite knows what the word actually means.

Instead, we’ve gotten tangled up in all of the variations, nuances, tools, techniques, models, frameworks, and paradigms of innovation. So what was once a simple concept — the idea of systematically finding, encouraging, and implementing new ideas — has become horribly complex. Unfortunately, by complexifying innovation, we’ve probably started to kill it.

To reverse this trend, we need to simplify how we approach innovation – by better defining what it is (and isn’t), what it takes to carry it out, and what is needed to enable truly new thinking to thrive”

Personally, I really am not so sure we can reverse this trend but we do need new thinking.

The technology is becoming so pervasive, it just seems to get easier to ‘knock out’ a presentation, offer a webinar, or write an article. We are in a ‘swamp’ of material ‘up to our necks’.

We are making innovation complex, needlessly complicated and increasingly unattractive. We are failing in really “moving that innovation needle” because we are getting more and more people simply “tuning out” and the more we try, the more they reject this and then seemingly tune out even more. We are simply the dog chasing its own tail and enjoying it because we know no better.

The real art of engagement is being lost.
I’m noticing more and more, poorer engagement by everyone, we are in the deteriorating engagement cycle. Where are the meaningful dialogues instead of the ‘like’ symbol?

It is harder to grab someone’s attention, and hold it sufficiently long enough to move through an issue to the next one. We are all becoming so distracted and I’m struggling with an answer to how we collectively can pull back and recalibrate around innovation knowledge and its meaningful exchange?

I’m all for seeking simplification but for innovation to really return and begin to move ahead again it needs this engagement but it needs equally for me, every time, context.

For me Context is King

Maybe it is the one real arbiter of success; it really provides the need to simplify. In an innovation process, context becomes the most important arbiter of success, it is the point we gather around to understand so we can see and understand our role and contribution.

Sorting through for simplification and worthwhile engagement for all concerned

Here is my first attempt to recalibrate all this current flow of (harmful) innovation ‘intensity’. Just an opening suggested context framing, for sorting through this deluge of workshops, and webinars and getting them more personal in simplification, solving needs and offering value.

It needs more work but goes like this for all the multitude of organizations (and individuals) offering innovation advice that needs to reconsider what they are offering and need to ask a set of pre-qualifier questions:

One– If the idea, approach or value proposition isn’t aligned with the needs of the firm or the corporate strategy, (also context) then it will most probably be ignored and tuned out by those we are in need to actually engage with. Do we bother?

Two– How can these ‘open’ webinar sessions be aligned PRIOR, otherwise we end up with a service provider’s generic offering? It is up to the provider to understand the client’s needs, to perhaps work a lot harder on these, otherwise is not time relevant and valuable; it simply stays generic and less valuable. It simply is ‘casting around’ without knowing if there is any catch in this. A scatter-gun approach and not client targeted. Is this really worth all the effort?

Three– Once an idea, theme, the specific need is identified and ‘fleshed out’ and these have to be more client or issue/problem specific for clients to consider then they need clear deliverables not just boring ‘takeaways from mindlessly listening’ – what problem will it solve that is relevant to my issues, how can it be applied, its benefits and impact understanding. Can we deliver on this?

Four– Without this ‘need related’ information on the idea or concept delivered through a workshop, or webinar then it becomes too disconnected to adequately consider, evaluate and convert into useful consideration, then it is not worth it unless you want the simply curious how can afford the time but don’t make decisions. Is that worth all the costs involved?

Five– Surely as service providers if we fail to get through these ‘points of client relevancy’ then there is no new product or service connection or consulting engagement that most of this current activity is trying to generate. Then we should find another, perhaps those that are certainly much harder, to engage, as this easy route is not yielding a ‘reasonable’ return on all the ‘invested’ time. Well is it?

Stepping back to move forward.

There is nothing rocket science here in these five points to be considered but we do need to turn all this innovation advice, this deluge of stuff into something clearer, with a more specific value and context.

We do need to define this upfront far more. It means working on innovation a little harder before we rush to offer these webinars, conferences, half-day meetings.

It might mean less “bums on seat” for the webinar, so be it. If we can get ‘real engagement’ because we are closer to understanding specific needs and not opting for generic solutions, the quality of the material automatically lifts as the group tuning into it has a very specific interest that can have higher chances of leading onto ‘something’.

This automatically raises the engagement game, from the discussion and reduces the ‘also runs’ who don’t have the meaningful insight and knowledge that clients are actually needing to make this engagement really valuable to them.

It also stops the random roaming, the needless cruising around, the mindless listening to the droning on, that is taking place today. We begin to simplify as the context is clearer for us, the value exchange higher and the potential to advance from ‘free anything’ moves into showing that you (we), the provider of the service, have real value to bring into the conversation.

Today, finding good innovation insights that can be applied to a relevant situation that might be coming from general webinars, is a little like ‘panning for gold, it is back-breaking work in your investment in time and eventual application. Knowing the ‘needs specific’ means we can all ‘pan smarter’.

Where is the exchange point of money and value?

I always remember a lovely throwaway comment I heard years back when it came to client and consulting / advisory engagement

“If you wish to have value for money, would you give money for value”

Offering anything free I believe you are not offering any real value equation or much in my mind. Does Apple give anything away for free? No, it builds value through its offering or its partnerships and we need to go back and do this for the knowledge we are offering to prospective clients.

Where we are today with this “free” approach provides very little apart from sucking up an awful lot of everyone’s time and screwing up client-provider engagements into this “race to the bottom”.

We are sacrificing much in quality and carefully considered advice. I believe real decision-makers are tuned out from this channel to market approach mostly.

Now I’ve had my little rant I better go back and check out the value of my own webinars. Do they stack up to offering real value, in addressing specific needs? I’d like to believe so but this also does give me my own pause for thought and by the way, they are actually not free.

The post Tuning out, a need for simplification and better value first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I really do wonder where it is all going inside the business organization.

Consulting has become a huge business dealing with our global and local organizations and governments.

Just take a peek around the board room doors, just who are all those strange faces, bulging muscles, huddled in meetings with the boss? Ready to take on the world.

Following on from my recent post on “the value of the visiting consultative fireman” this further post explores the external reliance on the consultant our organizations have become accustomed too. It got a little long, my apologies for that.

‘We’ seemingly can’t live without consultants.
They are now competing constantly for those semi-permanent, year-in, year-out relationships with companies willing enough to pay millions of annual fees for help and advice.

It is all about repeating the consulting / client engagement across the entire business in as many different ways as possible.

Consultants are necessary or so it seems for any big decision in our global business organizations as the employment of consultants helps ‘sit behind’ the recommendations made, the often billions about to be spent, for them to validate, investigate, recommend and then rubber-stamp your decision.

Who will fire you for bringing in a respected global brand like McKinsey, a few perhaps but not many?

You wonder if the executive within our large corporations would be allowed to sneeze without the consultant stepping up with the handy handkerchief or latest prescribed medicine to easy his/her discomfort.

Consultants seem to underpin decisions everywhere and today are equally asked to execute on these, as the resources within our business organizations or government departments are ‘far too thin on the ground and busy just keeping what we have going”.

Consultants are not just recommending the changes but being highly paid to make it happen.

Scale, scope and size are needed today to be a global consulting player
In the words of McKinsey on their website: “We strive for world-shaping client impact” where they then claim their “scale, scope and knowledge allows us to address problems that no one else can.”

They suggest “we bring out the capabilities of clients to fully participate in the process and lead the ongoing work”. Really I’m not sold on that one. At McKinsey they claim to “hire as many MDs, PhDs, MAs and JDs as MBAs” and well that just must be why business organizations fail without them isn’t it? Yawn.

The ever-growing big numbers of ‘boots on the ground’ to deliver solutions on client’s needs.
So much of McKinsey’s ability to ‘land’ work and secure ongoing work is due to McKinsey’s famous alumni network where more than 20,000 former colleagues connect with each other and with our firm.

It is a juggernaut in consulting support ‘within’ our organizations, highly interconnected into the very heart of our business organizations, to secure acceptance and validation of choice.

Of course, they still have to deliver otherwise next time it might get harder.

Today McKinsey has 17,000 employees and 9,000 of these are consultants. Others offering ‘pure’ consulting equally are sizeable organizations. BCG has 9,700 employees and 6,200 consultants, Bain & Co 6,000. A T Kerney have 3,200 with 2,300 consultants, PA Consulting with 2,150, Bearing Point with 3,350, Roland Berger with 2,700 consultants, Monitor Deliottes with 1,500 and the emergence from the combining of PwC’s consulting with Booz & Co into Strategy& with around 3,000 employees makes for a formidable array of business consultants to call upon, when in need. Let alone the countless smaller, more specialised ones below these global players.

Then you briefly look at the jaw-dropping numbers employed at PwC of 184,000 due to their tax and advisory services, Deloitte 203,000 employees, Ernst & Young have around 175,000 and making up the big four is KPMG with 155,000. These make up the ‘muscle’ within the International management consulting firms.

Then as we move into technology we get Accenture with 280,000, CapGemini with 131,000 and we have IBM, Hitachi Consulting. It goes on and on.

Consulting is a huge, big business utterly dependent on generating repeating revenue
We knew that, didn’t we? The combination of Credentials, Reputation and Size cultivated around the consulting brand has become intoxicating for business organizations.

They seem to simply not live without the consultant being ever-present. They can’t let go, surveys seem to be recently indicating the need to bring more consultants in to solve their problems.

Consulting is an integrated big business, designed to extract the numbers, be indispensable.

Spending on consulting can rise (and fall) dramatically. For the large consultants their constant focus on communicating the value they add and differentiating themselves from competitors is vital.

While there is this ongoing pressure among businesses to keep head count low it is stimulating growth for consulting firms, the ones constantly providing the research of global volatility, uncertainty and the need for constant vigilance.

The very consultants that argue for a lean approach to be flexible and ‘reactive’, ready to seize opportunities, with the consultant’s help.

No wonder headcounts are kept low with the very ‘solution masters’ whispering in your ear all the possible doom and gloom from their latest research and global surveys. Even if businesses did relax the head-count restrictions it seems all the brightest, not necessary the best, are locked up in the consulting company, happily moving from one different challenge to another. Why would they join one firm and become part of the permanent furniture?

Moving down and across the consulting food chain is essential today for all involved.

To feed these large ‘fee guzzling consulting beasts’ the larger management consultant firm not just search for the ‘big whale’ projects that might have $20 million and upwards in price tags to complete post-merger activities, they often bring them to the board room table. With the recent merger frenzy re-entering the Pharmaceutical scene these fee’s if you land the ‘whale’ become huge.

The shift to combining strategy and technology, the challenge to redesign total system structures is requiring each consulting firm to make their own ever-increasing bets on where to focus. The growing shift is to more operational work, the move away from ‘pure’ strategy work, is redesigning the consultants into more ‘one-stop’ solution providers.

The lower end of fees, below half a million dollars for a piece of work is nothing today, this is becoming table stakes to play at the big consultants table.

Consultants are charging $2+ million for a stand-alone study, constantly looking to turn this into the $15 to $20 million total system redesign. This requires having the infrastructure available internally for these more broadly based assignments.

Fee’s are clearly on the rise as mega-mergers and risky projects drive the numbers up even more.

The ‘rub’ of repeating money
The ‘rub is’ that these designs have to be repeated and repeated, to earn the profit margins expected from the investment in those initial up front solutions designed for one customer.

‘Suddenly’ these are turned into global solutions that meet the ’emerging’ shifts in trends to make this a global movement of the many seeking the latest practice.

The solutions suddenly become the large ‘big tent templates’ for repeating revenue as many more clients are needed to be found where this ‘trending’ redesign will help meet this new business imperatives outlined by, oh yes, the same consultants as a must have.

The profit comes from as much as you can ‘repeat’ to ensure you don’t keep reoccurring those dreaded origination costs. The consulting business model requires this repeating even more today than in the past.

It simply has too, with all the employees on the books made up of all those very bright “MDs, PhDs, MAs and JDs and countless MBAs” all expecting their bonus to be better than previous years.

I wonder if we are having the conflicts of vested interest in consulting as we have been witnessing in banking with the ‘dual’ chase for big bonuses driving our decisions?

The huge consulting bandwagon rolls on and on
Without doubt consulting companies are working exceptionally hard on their overall reputation, culling the consultants that don’t perform to prescribed formats and time lines, seeking to accelerate those that do constantly perform.

To support this consultant firms are investing in deepening experiences and exposures into different clients to wring out more projects and ‘drive’ the revenue they need.

They are working really hard on improving their tools/techniques, adding in thought leadership and innovative thinking, improving their reports/presentations into more visual feasts.

They are certainly highly conscious about the results they are delivering as just standing outside the door is the alternative consulting company, just itching to be let in.

Is hiring the outside consultant totally addictive?

I think the use of outside consultants is for ever growing. Consultants are operating up and down our business organizations today. As Organizations have shrunk their resources right down and are still certainly very reluctant to employ new people this will continue.

The pay-off is for whom? Call in the six-pack abs-solution man

Consultants have a great advantage over their clients; they can provide their solutions with new understanding, they are the feeders of “best practice” that magical potion waved over you providing you engage me to ‘reveal all’.

They are constantly working out to keep in shape to help.

They have the equivalent of the six-pack abs as the good looking solutions.

Also they are not only ‘solution fit’ but they are provide the surgeons, doctors to nurse you back to health using their solutions for you to keep your body stable as long as you don’t go off their life support system.

This allows you still the opportunity to be able to take on the physical challenges of everyday life in your stride focusing on the efficiencies and improving the effectiveness, moving the flab around, leaving the consultants with the real challenges, the heavy lifting as they bring in the ability to deliver on this.

The consultant offers the solutions to keep you lean and lacking in in-house resource

They provide the solutions to make sure any spare resource (or fat) is quickly eliminated so you can continue to gaze at the solution abs pack of the consultants, simply because you never had the time or real determination to get into the shape to manage these challenges yourself.

The leaner you are, the more dependent on the consulting supplements to keep you going. We are back to the semi-permanent dependence we crave for as ‘we’ simply don’t have the talent or resources to call upon whereas the consultant has plus the ‘revolving door’ experiences.

When the consultant leaves the building (if ever)

With this prevalent “leave it to others” more often than not when their solution abs consultant leaves the premises, all you are left with is the leftover pizzas and flat cokes from all those late-night burns the consultant put in to complete the required data crunches and show to you, their perfect solution.

Thank heavens they are only one phone call away or is it simply one floor below away, working on different problems you always seem to have, to adapt the business to the global forces at work?

Don’t tell me it can also be different- not possible

Sorry Mr Faithful employee, just get back to your everyday work. Innovation, oh forget that. We have no time for that; we are plotting the next big thing alongside our consultants.

No, look, I mean there are no merger drama’s, complex wheeling and dealings, it is based on too many intangibles, innovation always seems to have long development processes or complex testing procedures, ending up with mixed results. It is best you stick to the incremental stuff and leave me and the big consultant to manage growth, we know best.

“We will simply buy in innovation success” Oh yeah really!

Talking of different innovations that can take place within their organizations (disruptive, radical, reverse engineered etc) makes many of those sitting at the top of our organizations have an uncomfortable feeling simply because the big consultants don’t also seem to have the answers to this innovation stuff. Surely if they don’t we can’t possibly!

Understanding the ability to field genuine experts that can be highly valued and focused, well there must be a catch in that surely?

Thankfully today that genuine expert still offers the ‘sweet spot’ for innovation. It is a place for the small, independent, highly focused consulting person or specialized teams that connect the many necessary ‘dots’.

Yet getting top management’s attention or sign off is getting harder to achieve, when the big consultant likes to show his growing muscle mass, attempting to cover off the innovation bases as well.

Presently many of the bigger consultants still seem to have little true understanding of the underlying dynamics needed for internally generated innovation, those solutions than can equally lead the growth, if only they were given the same amount of attention at the top.

Equally the timeline for this can be long, solutions are often unique and much is often not repeatable, this goes against the business model mostly found in bigger consultants.

Thankfully innovation is one of those last frontiers that still mostly come from within when it is given the chance and the limited external resource that can help facilitate this.

The post That sheer consulting muscle hopefully delivering global momentum first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

These thoughts have covered the topics of suggesting different consulting models, exploring the shifts taking place in consulting and where consulting can contribute.

Then I offered a post late last year under the title of “client engagement- full of whipped cream and lumpy gravy?”

So in this post I will reflect and look at the visiting fireman here, the ones I experienced in the corporate world. I still believe they are far from endangered species.

Consultants hold a specific fascination for me, they come in all shapes and sizes, offering a bewildering array of solutions for your business.
For many clients, consultants have become ‘totally essential’  yet for others a necessary evil.

Today with far less resource within our business to call upon and coping with increasing pressure on time there is also this total reluctance to employ someone on the books, it is better to bring it in on an ‘as and when’ basis.

Keep it lean and mean, charge it off against that years operating expenses, don’t bring it onto the longer-term books.

Mostly the consultants knowledge leaves when they do
What comes in and what leaves gives the value to you in you applying their knowledge not just the consultants solution. Often this knowledge understanding totally ‘fails’ to reside or be absorbed as ongoing learning.

Partly it is not so easy to transfer, especially to those that are too busy to learn it!. We often miss this critical point of transference and we continually bring in consultants time and time again, actually for the majority of seemingly ongoing work, the repeating part we should be resourcing from inside but never seem to get around to recruiting or convincing others of the need.

We also never pick up the rhythm and real understanding how the external expert connected all the dots differently from you and we then fail to copy down the important notes to recreate the understanding. Many time I had to ‘catch myself’ on one particular slide, fascinated how that was put together, failing to hear the message behind it.

Have you also noticed how the outsiders always give us those ‘bells and whistles’ we fail to hear within our own immediate surrounding although it was there for us to see but we were too busy to find it, so we simply let others at potentially a higher end cost.

Experiencing the different visiting fireman
In this post I wanted to recall the visit of many visiting firemen when I was running various country operations in different parts of the world for a handful of global corporations.

More than one organization called outside expertise “the visiting fireman”.

There to help fight the fires, hose down the areas of critical combustion, recommend the essential fire fighting equipment and escape drills you will need from their experience.

I had experienced three types of visiting fireman in corporate life.

There were three general types; the regional fireman, the corporate fireman and the outside consultant one. Can you relate to these and the mixed emotions they can give you?

Are visiting firemen important to your business?

Yes I expect they are, they can make the real difference between ‘dosing the fire early enough’ to bringing their expertise and resources to bear, helping in managing that crisis or difficult problem you would be unable to resolve without the outside perspective, contribution or support. Yet they all seem to leave one holy of holy messes. There is always some form of re-building to take place from these consultations.

Often I think we all need to ask questions on the value of consultants. Would ‘things’ fall apart without the required dose of consulting medicine? Do they come into the organization, create havoc and then move on? Or do you value them as essential, as you quiet simply do not have the time or resources and expertise ‘in-house’ and they help ensure the delivery alongside you on what is needed within your business?

There are three groups of ‘visiting fireman’ associated with large organizations.

Do these ring any bells with you? These were my experiences and maybe yours are somewhat different, managing in specific operating structures. I spent more of my corporate career tackling difficult operating conditions, often very thin on resources, battling volatile market conditions. Now that does seem like today’s operating world doesn’t it?

I tried to remember some of these ’emotions’ when I then became the visiting fireman myself, in all three different types I will mention here
The first firemen was coming from the regional support group
These seemed to announce their pending arrival sometimes weeks in advance to fit their crowded agenda of moving from one type of regional or global meeting to another.

Or they were suddenly ‘dispatched’ to handle growing issues. That sudden crisis where they ‘must’ be seen to be on hand, Then we had the Sherpa type preparing future visits, fixing the lines and ropes for visitors from ‘on high’ trying to influence your agenda or shape your presentation.

Lastly arriving just a week or so before the key yearly strategic discussion meetings, so as they could be better prepared to fully participate in the discussions to catch up and ‘form’ their opinion. You had to watch the hose on this one, its power and potentially disruptive force coming from multiple sources based on the latest intelligence gleaned on these simple fact-finding missions.

They came sweeping in offering detailed advice on their specialized area, be that marketing, finance or product development. These tended to be the most difficult discussions, as they were pushing often their personal agendas, holding back a critical element of the corporate agenda.

They often were believing what you were doing was going against company policy, general direction or conflicting with branding issues. I found much ‘creative friction’ in these visits from the regional fireman.

Ultimately you may have the final decision, or you thought you did,being responsible for the P&L but these visiting firemen could wreak havoc in the ‘whispering game’ back at regional group, prompting numerous conversations with the regional president to clear these ‘conflicts’ up. Most were short on specifics or detailed understanding, grabbing at potential ‘straws’ to be floated in the corporate wind.

I found this group of visiting firemen far less supportive than expected; they had enough understanding to be dangerous but could potentially provide those valuable additional insights or access to resources you needed.

These visits were the most difficult. These were closer inspections to see that the house was in good order and you were not a potential ‘fire hazard.’ It often was a fine balance between their contributing value and what they constrained. These visits often disturbed and confused the local teams.

The second group of visiting firemen, the corporate ‘big-wig’

These were usually the corporate executive vice presidents, the chief operating officer, the corporate legal beaver or even the CEO himself.

This was a visit where you polished your credentials and went through countless preparations and checks around the facilities.

They always had one or two of the regional group in close attendance at least; to point out areas they felt helped the ‘broader agenda’ that “facilitated” the discussions or messed the visit up completely by going off script and you spent the rest of the visit in ‘personal crisis’ mode.

These were times of real pressure where you had two to three hours of getting the message across on what was happening, what needed to be resolved, what was missing, what was the value of appreciating making further investments within the country and why it (and you) was relevant in their bigger picture of things.

Then off on visiting the multiple manufacturing facilities, you pray continuously that the plants would not come to a grinding halt at that precise moment. A ‘lightning inspection’ by this big wig where you always know the visitors will simply compare, suggest and sometimes to pick up on something that did not fit with their view but was totally out of your local context.

Or how they would become (briefly) misty-eyed and comment on “when I was running an operation like this”. These visits from the corporate fireman often were defining moments, often that career or future investment defining one rested on the ‘good visit’ deemed by all in the food chain that determined your career.

I always searched for the opportunities for one-on-ones with this corporate fireman where you got the deepest ‘transfer’ of their knowledge. Cutting out dedicated time from the encircling herd of ‘minders’ allowed for some terrific and intense conversations that become the real bond that cemented understanding.

These exchanges allowed for my constant learning of the mind-set of the corporate visitor and the value it gave to what you could contribute into the bigger corporate ecosystem.

These visits gave real moments of identity for the team that often drove it on for weeks and months after. These were also times when you could separate the personal agendas of the more frequent visitor with the corporate agenda, to ‘ground’ the contribution you could make to the corporate set of goals and tasks. These were hugely important visits by the corporate firemen and women.

Then we had the final group of visiting firemen, these were the outside consultant

Outside consultants were often brought in on behalf of someone else or because you needed some different perspectives or solutions. They break down into two types.

The first type is the ones that arrive to make an assessment on behalf of others always had that ‘air’ of real detachment. That ease of knowing what you don’t know but you would love to find out. They listened, they seemed to always take many notes, made countless photocopies that clearly supported their investigation and only gave away what they wanted to, then left.

These types of visiting fireman is what I regarded as always “short” on advice, even though they had such a potentially richer potential to offer me thoughts than I would benefit from. They were not there for that!

I had to work really hard to ‘draw them out’ by separating what they were there for and what issues they could offer me alternative thinking. It was in many of these conversations you gained some terrific insights on alternative practices, and possible avenues of investigation to help you.

Then the ones you were paying for, well not you but it is coming out of your P&L

Then the other ones, where you needed their expertise and the funds for this were to come out of your P&L. I never really seemed to work out this group, or extract the value I was expecting.

I think my need and their agenda mostly with often prepared solutions beforehand often were incompatible. They never seemed to learn the full context before they were of fire fighting. In all honesty, I would reckon I got better value from about 25% of those I engaged. They seemed to come well-equipped though

I was recently reading on www.sourceforconsulting.com that only 27% of clients say that the value added by consultants exceeds the amount paid to them in fees when they completed one survey in the Gulf region.

I wish I knew then what I know now.

It is this group, the ones you engage with as consultants, employed by you that I want to spend some time on, in a future post. This will relate more than likely to innovation consulting, although I think most of the comments and observations can be generally applied to most consulting that is for sure.

Where do you feel about the visiting fireman, the expert or the consultant and how it work for you? Do you suffer from the many mixed emotions I felt?

The post The value of the visiting consultative fireman first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Today I think we are yet again at yet another crossroads in this innovation understanding and perspective. That is to extract the leading edges required from their innovation activities within organizations. This will require fresh innovation consulting business models to exploit the growing complexity of managing emerging innovation practice to support and extend their understanding.

I’m attempting to get my head around it, let me share some of my thinking here.

There has been a continual shift of where innovation knowledge resides. The external provider, who was the main source of latest insight, hands on practice and leading ideas in the past, I think have been significantly falling behind in recent years, on their contribution and value to organizations.

The advice they are providing is shifting from deep research and repeating practice into investing into offering more the insights of what might constitutes leading edge models to then suggest offerings that generate client value, as a must to understand and have. They have moved from clear ‘leading’ practice proponents to often ‘lagging’ but are exploiting their connections for knowledge insights to offset this.

Innovation knowledge is residing far more in-house of the client

The innovation knowledge needed for completing innovation has transferred more and more within the actual organizations needing to achieve the innovating. Through their constant ‘sets of experience’, working daily within innovation they are building up some essential capabilities and capacities. The external provider has to be able to spot and fill the gaps to offer any value, they are not leading but responding.

With the growing reliance on collaborative tools and the use of technology has meant much more of the complexity of projects has to be managed from within, far too much of the necessary insights and linkages needed cannot come from external resources.

Consultants are being relegated to issues that remain complex but essentially generic, important to organizations but not the vital part of innovation need.  The use of external providers has progressively reduced in high-end value activities into more gap filling ones, as they lack the depth of inside knowledge to pull together the thinking and outcomes needed for delivering the innovation outcomes.

Their value as project specialists has even diminished due to the network need becoming so vital within dispersed organizations and this requires a deepening internal understanding and where the knowledge resides to be extracted.

It seems the role of the consultant has become more marginalised or specialised.

The business model for innovation consulting needs changing. Innovation within consultancies has been seen to be a cheap exercise to support, often not seen as the powerful force for driving the growth and fortunes of the organization as it should have been.

Much of innovations troubles today have been this poor recognition of the need of innovation to ‘reside’ in the boardroom.  It was disconnected from the strategic domain as it was a little ‘abstract’ and intangible, light on established practice.

Today that has changed, innovation needs a much higher focus, it needs to be fully aligned to what an organization wants to do, if it wants to thrive and grow. Innovation is very strategic.

There was also the ‘established practice’ over many years of consulting multiple times across similar issues that were just repeating themselves across many clients that had value that clients were willing to pay for. Often the consultant invested in the costs only once to find the (common) solutions and then set about extracted an increasing yield of return from repeating this multiple times. Today clients see through these practices and are certainly seeking uniqueness to their specific problems. Best practice still extracts from that rather tired model of establishing common practice.

Today innovation needed has to be increasingly unique, for the end results to stand out. This has its implications for anyone providing a service.   The value of best practice might give assurances to the doubters but it is the growing focus on emerging or novel practice that is more valuable to know about.

Also the growing use of open innovation has also enabled more organizations to learn from others and exclude the middle man, by working directly with others tackling similar problems and learning from each other.

Large Consultants are becoming marginalised as they lack the depth of expertise, collaborative inputs that contribute, the notable exception being still in technology application and the expertise and knowledge to link this across global organizations.

The large consulting practices certainly still possess the ‘on-hand’ extra ‘feet-on-the ground’ to augment the repeating work being undertaken within organizations or validating its position. These shift means thinner margins, more chasing to cover growing fixed costs being built up in the broad scoped consulting practice.

Shifting focus on what innovation consultants need to offer.

Consultants working in innovation today, are less ‘innovation factories’ producing the solutions and are often left with more ‘constant’ re-bottling the wine’ to maintain their place. The taste is for consistency not challenging the palate. Consultants can become more advocates for change but this needs a consistency of focus to extract value out of, as the external source of championing change, by providing the knowledge insight.

There is also this rapidly adjusting position into specific ‘knowledge providers’ and validators. Just look at the explosion of thought leadership coming from consulting firms, their ability to hone in and benchmark trends by having access to C-level executives provides a more ‘open’ understanding that internal analysis can ‘pick apart’ and absorb or reject.

Actually in a recent piece of research by www.sourceforconsulting.com they are suggesting the Law of Inverse Audiences for though leadership pieces: the narrower your focus (research or thought piece) the smaller the number of readers but the more interested and engaged those readers are likely to be.

The real insight in this was not so much thinking you know your audience here but the trend that is occurring- to forward this insight onto colleagues as validation or collateral to doubters. Yet the consultant who researched or wrote the piece will most probably never know where it has been used as it’s gone internal. Inside absorption of this external knowledge and what was actually achieved by the consulting firm that undertook this. The old model states “the client will think of us when needed” Will they?

No, the business model for innovation consulting is actually under attack, the position of making money is becoming a whole lot harder unless you shift perspectives and redesign what you can offer so it ‘fits’ far more with the internal needs of clients today.

Are these some of the shifts we are detecting?

An initial work-in-progress list of the shifts in consulting taking place relating to innovation – so what is missing here? This is certainly not exhaustive and not set out to be that, it is attempting to ‘ indicate’ the consistent shifting that has and is taking place in adapting the innovation consulting business model, in search of growth and utilization.

What does the future hold for ‘traditional’ innovation consulting?

Whatever the shifts taking place and I think there are many, the established, more traditional consulting model is not working for innovation. They are being marginalized, left often to catch up with the work going on within their clients. The consultant is not leading; they are following in the practice of innovation. Greater specialization is required and seemingly valued by clients. Knowing what this is becomes the hard part.

There also needs to be further work on what differentiates’ one consultant with another. The client is far more discerning, reacts very negatively to any ‘one size’ fits all approach as innovation activity is unique to each client. The establishment of more Chief Innovation Offices or Vice Presidents for innovation are demanding more from their service providers than ever before. These providers need to be clearly seen as differentiators otherwise that will not get house room.

Shifting sands, covering up old weaknesses

The world of consulting does need to change but many of the client issues still continue to remain the same or in some cases might have even got worse. It becomes  the consultants challenge on more how you can reduce the ‘pressures’ on internal teams or provides real ‘impact’ that supports ‘delivery’ differently than before and can’t be achieved internally alone.

Clients still struggle with a consistent ‘lack of time’ and as we know time is either a friend if you have it or the worst enemy to innovation if you don’t. Just simply chasing for client answers is getting worse rather than better.  Clients are constantly stretched in their utilization of the limited resources they have available to them. They are constantly being distracted away from managing the bigger picture, into side events or having ‘dual’ roles.

There remains this chronic attitude of “I’m not taking any risk or we don’t have a real appetite for experimentation” pervading board rooms. The reality is clients still want tried and tested solutions, yet for me, crazy as this is, they are reluctant to be the experiment lab yet they cry out for the need to be different. How do you ‘square that off’ with what innovation needs to have – a constantly exploring and experimental climate – to find new solutions?

Client budgets seem to be tighter each year, the cost of each innovation undertaken is rising and taking more time and cost as well as the toll for dealing with growing complexity and conflict is demanding. Organizations and the individuals responsible are under growing pressure for innovation to generate real sustaining growth.

Consultants have to manage complexity within today’s dynamics.

Consultants have to work through these dynamics to find their position to offer value and how to figure out what their position is so as to provide the relevant services. This will increasingly call for a far more flexible, agile and focused model than ever before. The pressure on margins, the inability to have more ‘bench strength’ simply waiting around for that client call, the procurement procedures that batter down fees, scope and future options, limit detailed discussions until contracts are awarded makes this harder to work through, yet consultants must.

There are also seemingly more competitors around, in the form of boutique providers of really specialised focus or industry specific expertise, a clutch of independent providers of detailed innovation knowledge and plenty of workshop and training providers, all nibbling away at those finite client budgets that keep eroding the margins and scope for building a reputation for innovation consulting.

Can today’s consulting practice for innovation stand out?

How can they provide real needed and welcomed services to the client? It is getting harder I feel out there for many and the search for different and unique innovation consulting business models is definitely on.

Some are managing this by working on their value position to offer 1) new solutions, 2) adapting solutions that are more evolutionary in their growing understanding, 3) thought leadership that provides new insights and advice to underpin selected competencies and 4) being masters of creative problem solving.

Getting your specialization right

For me I designate these emerging inovation practices as made up of 1) Systems thinkers,2) Structure implementers, 3) Subject Matter experts and those that are 4)Advocacy Catalysts within innovation, or there is a hybrid of all of these, aligned more than likely to a given innovation specialisation.

Whatever the services offered, these still need to be valued by the client (as their clear jobs-to-be-done) and to be positioned and recognized as the service provider who can deliver a higher degree of uniqueness for supporting the specific solutions on these.

I think this is calling for very different innovation consulting business models, more agile, flexible and adapting to unique conditions found within each client.

So if you are an innovation consultant are you mapping your one out or working through the multiple options on your business model canvas yet? I would, as it is not just to survive but to search and find the winning ways to thrive and be recognized as the expert needed.

As for clients, to extract real value from your providers are you clear enough on what you need? Perhaps I can help? I prefer to work in the advocacy space and try to offer subject matter thinking.

The post Are we getting real value out of innovation consultants? first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.