Sample Essay What is a Consultant

Sample Essay What is a Consultant Sample Essay: What is a Consultant? Most professions have well defined criteria for acquiring the professional skills required to practice. That is quite contrary to consultancy; any person at any time can become a consultant if they so wish.In consultancy, there is no barrier to entry, which is both good and bad news. Although the Institute of Management Consultants has tried a lot to create a formal and legal framework within which consultants can work, the membership continues to decline. There is no indication that they will succeed any time soon. Consultancy is a profession that can givepractitioners’ unimaginable wealth. The wealth in this case is both in the form of money and learning. 1. I am told that listings on the Internet, using brokers, and optimizing my place on search engines will gain me more traction. Is this a good investment?Contrary to that notion, rarely will buyers go to the internet to seek consultants. The Big Three is the sure way. This is referral from buyer-to-buyer, books and a good public image. 2. Won’t we need economies of scale in tough times and be better off joining large organizations? Isn’t the solo consultant going to be being phased out? That is not correct since the singular consultant can easily get work in comparison to the bigger organizations. Propulsion and Volition Alan Weis, the author of Million Dollar Consulting came up with a fundamental concept in one of his consultancy assignments. The concept was that employees should not let their jobs get in the way of their career. The idea was that short term goals can easily get in the way of the long term goals and hinder enduring achievement. That expression effectively describes the work of a consultant in many occasions. A consultant can easily be caught up in the day to day making of reports, arranging travel, marketing himself and offering services. When that happens, it easily shatters the bigger goal of consultancy. He learnt that at one time when he got a work referral from a consultancy friend. According to him, making of the report was the job of the consultant. At that time, he was hoping that his friend’s firm would do it. He was surprised when the friend informed him that the responsibility was the client’s; he had missed it all this time. The idea according to Bob, his friend, was in looking at the result, which making a report was not. That should take away the notion that a client should see the consultant every day. His job is not to attend meetings but rather offer the service requested. One secret in consultancy is that one should always stay on the learning curve. 1. Isn’t it tough to educate clients who have been educated incorrectly by countless consultants before me? Although this is the case, there is no point in following the footsteps of fools of the old. 2. What is the line between following up with prospects and hounding them? The idea is not in defining where the line is, it is in doing business. Break Away Speed According to Allan Weis, success is never final, and neither is defeat fatal. One thing that a consultant should know is to learn from both success and failure. More people have failed in their consultancy practice than those who have failed due to defeat. In that case, when one is defeated in something, they should work hard to learn the cause of defeat. This is what he calls controllable rejection. In the case where failure was due to avoidable reasons, then the correct steps should be to correct it. In case it was because of something that is out of reach, then it should not be a bother. The same case applies in success. A person can get so engrossed in doing a successful thing repeatedly that they abandon the growth curve. To become a successful consultant, one needs to push success to the limits until there is nothing else to do. It is at that point that they can look for another way of improving on the same. So many successful consultants remain in capped success since they repeatedly apply the same methods and see no need to innovate. In that case, their growth becomes lateral and not vertical. All firms face a plateau at one point or another. In the case of start-ups, it is due to the exhaustion in start-up fire, exhaustion in initial contacts and so on. It is at that time that one should consider whether they are a going concern or just lucky. Seasoned firms can also plateau when they have repetitive unchecked success. 1. If you’re continually climbing and never content with the plateau, then don’t you continually increase your labor intensity and work? The secret to dealing with this is to change the business and delivery modelsregularly. 2. Don’t you have to look backward to learn from your failures and successes? Although this is a good approach, it can easily hinder growth by not focusing ahead.