When to Start a Consulting Project
By Adrian Travis, President
When I meet with executives, the notion of ‘the right timing’ frequently comes up as a question as part of the scoping and structuring process. While there’s never a convenient time to undergo an intensive consulting project that is going to challenge staff and drive business results, there are some relatively good pointers that I can provide. In deciding when to engage in a consulting project, an executive’s prime consideration should always be maximizing the likelihood of a project’s success.
First, a good question to ask is whether your consulting partner has the right people available. Often projects generate sub-optimal returns because a client is in a rush to meet an artificial deadline, or feels pressured to engage by certain point in time – to placate upper management, to meet the constraints of a particular fiscal year, for example. Take the time to ask your consulting partner when the ‘best possible’ staffing scenario would be from their perspective. The relationship should be a two-way dialogue. You should seek to have not only the most seasoned consultants on your project, but also the ones who are motivated and would enjoy the particular consulting assignment. If a consultant is slightly out of their element, or might not be a match for the particular working culture, or geographic location for the project, you can expect lesser results. Be wary of any consultancy that can accept a project on short notice. Strong consultancies have good people and a backlog of work, and typically book their teams three to six months ahead – because there is demand for their expertise. You wouldn’t trust a roofing or plumbing contractor who could start work immediately, would you?
Second, steer clear of starting a consulting engagement in the summer, or immediately preceding the holiday season. While most workplaces never stop, there are some periods of time in the calendar year that significant involve staff vacations, and may slow the pace of delivery on any consulting project. Consulting teams need unfettered access to your staff, and enough people in the workplace to get things done. Also consider the vacation schedules of the consultants staffed to your project – ideally they should be focused on the project.
Third, ensure the setup is done right. A well-run consulting project involves advance data collection, nuanced stakeholder communication, and ensuring that there’s a very clear set of operational and financial objectives for the project. Part of this process is meeting with your consulting partner enough so that there is a clear understanding of the particular problem, and your business objectives. Always ensure that your staff are thorough and careful in providing the right data and information.
The makings of a successful consulting project are rooted in good preparation. If you ensure there’s a good project team on your assignment, ensure that your people are 100% available and engaged in the process, and there is enough time for proper setup and diligence, you stand a much greater likelihood of a resounding success.
7 Steps to Making Your Meetings More Effective
All too often, our schedules become completely booked with back to back meetings and leave us questioning at the end of the day whether our time was spent effectively. The truth is, meetings are one of the most expensive time wasters in business. According to a study performed by Altassian, the average employee attends 62 meetings per month. If we assume the average meeting is 1 hour and the average American worker is paid $24.57 per hour according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average monthly cost of meetings is $1,523 per employee. The cost of meetings continues to grow exponentially depending on the number of team members and their seniority.
However, when executed effectively, meetings can be the necessary instrument for a team to drive improvement and deliver results. Keywords, when executed effectively!
Here are 7 steps to making your meetings more effective:
- Clearly Outline the Goal/Objectives of the Meeting
First off, ask the question, do we need a meeting to meet this objective. If not, then go with the alternative and do not hold the meeting. Once there is an objective, communicate this to all attendees so they can be engaged and understand the reason they are devoting their time.
- Distribute Agenda and Materials Prior to the Meeting
All effective meetings have an agenda and more importantly, they follow the agenda. The agenda should be distributed prior to the meeting to allow participants to prepare useful contributions. Other materials that will be reviewed or referenced should also be distributed whether this be performance dashboards, budgets, or schedules.
- Ensure Attendees Come Prepared to Contribute
Although distributing the agenda and materials before the meeting will allow for participant engagement, this is not all that’s needed. It’s also important to establish the expectation with your attendees that everyone will be consulted/called to contribute.
- Keep to the Time Contract
37% of meetings start late and an even larger percentage run over time. To ensure meetings are no longer than intended, start and end the meeting as per the agenda. It can also help to designate one participant as the timekeeper to prevent the meeting from running over.
- Table Discussions that don’t Align with the Objective or Agenda
A certain degree of discussion is obviously needed during a meeting. However, when this discussion does not follow the agenda or is not driving towards the goal, the meeting facilitator should step in and reschedule the separate the discussion.
- Assign Actions to Owners with Due Dates
For a meeting to be effective, there must be follow up actions. Effective meetings do a good job capturing these actions and assigning them to a sole owner with a due date. To close the meeting, it’s always good to review the decisions, action items, accountable owners and due dates.
- Follow up on actions assigned prior to the next meeting
Effective meetings are only 20% meeting, 80% of the work associated is with effective follow-up and preparation. Without effective follow up on the actions assigned the meeting becomes a waste of time.
Following these steps will ensure your meetings are not an unnecessary cost to your organization and instead a tool used to achieve results. It is important to remember that good meetings do not just happen, they are managed events!
5 Ps of a Meeting – Ensuring Your Next Meeting is Effective
As consultants we love problems that exists everywhere –across teams, organizations and industries. Such problems are dear to us because we would have experience addressing these problems on multiple occasions using various tools. This helps us quickly solve problem for the client and who does not like a quick effective solution!
One such problem, that is prevalent everywhere, is ineffective meetings. And as with any prevalent problem there are multiple solutions to address the issue. One of the most efficient solutions that I have come across for this problem is what is called ‘the 5Ps for the meeting’. I especially like this solution because it not only is easy to implement but it also has an ability to prevent an ineffective meeting happening at the first place.
So, what are the 5Ps? The 5Ps are Purpose, Participants, Process, Payoff and Preparation (some suggest it should be 6Ps including Pizza).
Purpose: Every meeting should have a purpose and it has to better than just a subject line calling for a ‘daily meeting’ (why should the team meet daily?)
Participants: Listing the participants makes the invitee think about who they are inviting and why they are inviting them. The invitee doesn’t have to list the name in the body of the invite, but nevertheless should make a conscious decision about who are the part of the meeting.
Process: How are we going to run this meeting? What is the agenda and what is the time per agenda item? This is key, because this is where the meeting organizer thinks about the time that he needs for the meeting. This helps the team stay away from setting meetings in 30 minute chunks just because that is the norm.
Payoff: What does organizer want to accomplish at the end of the meeting. This should be specific so that the meeting participants can be held accountable.
Preparation: What preparation is need from the participants (helps the meeting organizer to revisit the payoff and right size the participants)
Ensuring every meeting invite has the 5Ps listed is one of the easiest ways to have an effective meeting and in my opinion is the best preparation anyone can do to organize an effective meeting.