It was the winter of 2012 when we were getting ready for a board meeting after 100-hour week x 4 weeks to deliver groundbreaking insights that could drive one of the largest M&As in telecom.
That’s how every management consultant rolls! – acting as an analytical powerhouse, navigating through tough questions to deliver change.
However, this talent is hard to attract and expensive to hire. Large corporates or well-funded ventures can hire large consulting firms or individuals from such firms to rally in-house strategy teams. What about the rest — how can a budget-constrained business leader access these rockstars to accelerate his/ her mission-critical projects?
Firstly, let’s address the elephant in the room — why does one need a consultant? They are famed to borrow your watch to tell the time and then charge you for it! Here’s the reality: if the problem statement is crisply defined then a consultant can go deep and could add significant value vs. your current team that is otherwise busy in other critical assignments. Want to maximize the value out of a consultant? Guide them, take the ownership (the project is your baby), and give feedbacks — you will be surprised what you get.
Consider the following two scenarios:
- Your Project Brief Scenario 1: Our current consumer app is not gaining any traction. Help me define my 5-year digital strategy.
- Your Project Brief Scenario 2: We have launched a consumer app. Benchmark our application and articulate plausible gaps so that it becomes one of the inputs to the product roadmap. Also, draft a cost model for the budget plan — # of engineers to hire, benchmarked salary, hosting, computation costs, etc.
These high-powered individuals can work wonders in Scope Brief 2 not because they cannot structure Scope Brief 1 — they can but the output might come out misaligned leading to multiple iterations — but because the need is crystal clear that enables them to dive deep in the first go. Also, the client-consultant experience yields winning results only if the client cares about the problem statement and puts it as one of his/ her top priorities (your baby, right?)— otherwise, the project could turn into a “futile”, “low quality”, “too high-level” kind of disaster.
Let’s come back to the key question — how can a budget-constrained business leader access these rockstars? Freelance consultants or the current matching platforms come to mind. Problem solved? The answer to this question is a bit nuanced. How?
- 95% of the strategic projects are not a one-man show anymore. It’s hard to find consultants who get the context, brainstorms problem statements, writes insightful actionable documents, builds data models, designs high-quality customer journey, builds business performance metrics etcetera.
- The high risk posed by a single point of failure – what if the hired consultant is not the right fit for your mission-critical project?
The magic happens when one can deploy a tightly organized cross-functional team, with layered back-ups, ready to deliver at an affordable value. This is the magic we strive to create in every single engagement at StrategyConnect.
Since such a cross-functional team is inherently expensive to deploy, we challenge ourselves at StrategyConnect trying to turn this behemoth of an industry upside down every single day, one project at a time — enabling the region to leapfrog the talent gap cost-effectively.
Our talent network is curated. Our technology and processes are battle-tested. Our clients are our evangelists.
About StrategyConnect: We are a managed marketplace helping business leaders accelerate their strategic projects at an affordable value. Our consultants come from leading professional services firms and tech giants. Our clients represent a pool of relentless high impact executives willing to go the extra mile in delivering value and fundamental business shifts. Visit strategyconnect.co for more details.
