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This is where all third party firms and most consulting firms believe you as a client should reside- in their stable. Once they weasel their way in to your inner circle or directly to you (disclosure- of course I also have to do this part) they want to “own” you like a Kentucky rancher. Any use of you for any reason that has to do with their connection, in their scheme, requires a fee. The more valuable you are to the other ranchers the higher the fee. This might work for raising horses. For consulting it makes no sense to you or to the consultants who can provide service (the actual solution) to you directly (note the ranchers were left out of this sentence).
Enter the non-compete clause.
This is the fear clause that staffing firms, employers and (IMHO) paranoid consulting firms put in their contracts. For an excellent post on this as an issue look here- http://tinyurl.com/4ddpd. Thankfully here in California that clause according to CA code 16600 is unenforceable and often illegal. In my dealings I choose to sign and ignore (although now I am reading of firms that use the court process to bleed/victimize the secondary party knowing full well they themselves are in the wrong).
Why is this important to you the client?
- A barrier (and a big one) has just been placed between you and your solution. If any continued work with you has a 40% fee cut included you will either have to increase your budget or lose the consultant to higher paid direct roles.
- Someone else is trying to screen your decision making process.
- Someone else is keeping resources at arms distance (or more) from you.
- You begin with a consultant who may not be too thrilled with the contracting arrangement.
- You build in a permanent “telephone game” with an unnecessary person(s) inserted into all of your communication with the consultant
- You add time. For interactions with clients that take a day or two I have often needed a week or more with third parties. How long do you want to wait to begin that engagement?
Time, money and control all taken away from you by the needless fear of non-competes. I am guessing those are three things you hold dear as a client and business person.
Technorati Tags: Buyer, External Consultant, Fees, Value, vision to work
A peer of mine asked me the other day what is the best way to save a CM initiative put on hold. The question fits well as a sum up of the last two years- at least here on the US west coast. I have had time set for contracts that were then reneged, had conversations and “interviews” that were obviously fishes for approach and information with no intention of going forward, been asked in and then waited and then asked in for the same role and then had the role disappear.
Blame it on the economy maybe, but, I think, stalls, restarts, delays and “on holds” are always going to happen with projects in general and especially with the change component. Except for the fishing (if you are a client who does this shame on you- Our time is less valuable than yours?) these things will happen.
The peer scenario to him seemed like bad news. Things were going great then the brakes were put on with no definitive start back up time. Ah, but this is good in a lot of ways. First he was not asked to leave or let go (happens all the time- the reason at Vision to Work we have an expectation of upfront invoicing). And second he was not given another role, simply told to “wait”. Perfect.
Assess
Now would be the time in this scenario to asses the change process up to this point. I tend to question the value (partly because of validity) of questionnaires, this is when they are valuable. Assess whether or not there is a better understanding of the change process and the role of change management within initiatives and the organization as a whole. Assess stakeholders reaction to you in general as the person in the change role.
Lay the Framework for Sustainability
Use the assessment information and a new chance to dialogue, with the time to get it right, to build a structure that can make pieces of the change process repeatable. Look at where you are with the current change and see if you can get what has been done so far to stick. Continue the dialogue by illustrating change management’s influence in sustaining the change.
Develop Leadership
Part of the foundation for change that sticks is leadership. Leadership is needed to make the transition to the new and continues to be necessary to carry on the positive effects of the change. If you had good leaders to start this initiative, lucky you. If not you are now responsible for helping to build them so that your restart is “locked and loaded” with leadership resources. Now then is the time for seminars around change and the ability to influence and guide others through the process.
Build Collateral
Like any good consultant take “beach time” and build tools and collateral for this time or the next time around. Booklets, presentations, PDF’s, eBooks can all come in handy for both the restart and the current potential development environment.
As I have said in previous posts Change Management on a grand scale is not just about guiding individual projects. It is about the overall connection between the work of individuals and ideas/strategy. With this assumption and perspective CM becomes tightly connected to and at times responsible for OD, training, executive development, communications and collaboration.
My peer friend above was given a gift.
When you are given time to build these areas separate from the pressure and constraints of tight timelines, by all means, use the time!
Technorati Tags: Buyer, Change Design, change excercise, Fees, Garrett Gitchell, horizontal change management
I have seen and heard lately the term “over qualified”. In my own context I take it as a compliment, albeit a strange one. In forums it sounds as if this is a nasty symptom of the last tough 2 years.
Over an over I have turned this term to make sense of it. On a run this morning I got the “aha”. It has nothing to do with qualifications really, it has to do with potential for influence. Someone brought in for one of the new pseudo-consulting roles (an actual role is created that looks much like an employee position with the same type of requirements and the client also expects genuine consulting at the same time- like two people wearing the same hat) can quickly become a threat to the very person who brought them in.
I get it, especially in this cutthroat environment where it appears careers will remain at a stand still for years. Everyone is fighting for the next or at least a different spot.
Here is why it makes no sense-
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Good consultants are always working themselves out of the role
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They do not want your job (if they are overqualified presumably they could be in your spot if they chose to)
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They are there to help you- the leverage they might have is to your advantage (assuming you shoot for end states in the case of CM consultants)
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You and those on your team are probably deliverable based whereas a qualified consultant is solution based- err on the side of consulting with externals and let them use deliverables for leverage
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Clients are price sensitive, consultants (good ones) refuse to compete on price- when a consultant is willing to meet in the middle you get value and price (now thanks to s sluggish business environment)
Senior executives tend to understand all these internal to external role to consultant connections. And therein is, perhaps, a lesson. Did they figure this out and use it to climb to their positions? While the fearful resisted?
Technorati Tags: change management consultant, External Consultant, Fees, Value
Having an external consultant with a broad peer network that you can trust is invaluable. They can break the expensive staffing firm middle man cost, they can refer from specific knowledge of capability and they can find answers and comparisons for your organizational conundrums.
There was a discussion recently on LinkedIn about an internal employee recommending a consultant to his boss. The poster wondered if there should be referral fee; if it was ethical. The answer is no, but look at the arrangements that are made with third parties- one consultant bringing another in under the cover of “sub-contracting”. How come that is ok?
However lucrative I am not comfortable with these arrangements (staffing firms calling themselves consultants being the worst example) because now cash can guide recommendations. How strong is that referral now that money is changing hands?
When it does hasn’t your trusted advisor just turned into a gatekeeper?
Gate keeping can have its advantages if that person truly understands the individuals and the need. Impartial makes the understanding objective. Cash turns the pick of who to recommend into a subjective exercise.
The other way around view, from the consultant’s perspective can get even more confusing. Many consultants feel they “own” the client relationship. Weasel (their word not mine) into that “trusted” arrangement and you have broken the consultant ethical code. Most consultants will expect a fee for that connection (enter the non compete contract- which , thankfully, here in CA is not worth the paper its printed on).
At that exchange your trusted advisor just became a gatekeeper. A gatekeeper in the interests of their own pocket book not your needs.
Ask that key consultant of yours what they think of the ethics of consultant referrals and payment before you give them the trusted advisor label/role.
Technorati Tags: business objectives, Buyer, C level, CEO, Fees, Garrett Gitchell, vision to work
In keeping with my practical, as efficient as possible approach, I have to ask Why? Why the push lately for metrics, ROI and just plain justification? Maybe we are on the long tail of the same pattern from HR, OD, Human Capital (did I miss any?)…Somehow there is a group think around the need for metrics for the “people side”.
You would think that is coming from the business focused metrics guided senior executives. Only one snag- from one career and one CM practitioner- in my 13 years working with over 70 firms I have never had a senior leader ask for metrics. And I, wisely I think, do not suggest them.
The last thing I want is for the insufficient CM budget to be stripped further by metrics design and gathering. Although if you are a client reading this a full budget with the opportunity to design the metrics would be nice…
Let’s formulate the front end.
There are two types of CM to consider. One is the kind that gets inserted or overlaid on the project process, the other my horizontal/circular view of change. For mine ongoing operational measures can often be used since large scale transformational change must be weaved into the organizations overall process. For the other the only true measures would be speed to get change accomplished and effectiveness against inevitable slowdown.
Both have problems. It is not fair to use operational metrics when you are mixing in more work and effort. The “more” slows things down while the CM helps get to the new state, but they likely balance out. Speed only works if you have an equal initiative to measure against. Same with facilitating slowdown.
CM at its core is a discipline that helps corral and funnel work and effort toward the accomplishment of a business goal. A good measurement of that would show that less time was spent on understanding, learning, collaborating, dialoguing and planning than would have happened without CM. I personally would value subjective measures taken from stakeholders (senior leaders being part of that category). Surveys and questionnaires can turn those responses into measurements. The ask why approach must be critically evaluated since those tools are favorites of consultants looking to expand their revenue base (and are, apparently, crucial for that group looking to legitimize).
Now my commentary.
If assumptions are wrong, then approaches are tainted, which makes results less than optimal, which begs the question, Why measure a substandard delivery? Previous posts of mine have pushed the idea of separating CM from typical performance measures. This metric group think is a perfect example of the desire to monitor and control, coincidentally one of the foremost roadblocks for change.
This is also another example of pushing CM deeper into the organization since it is analysts that will typically do the work of actual measurement. This is a connection and use of time that is essential to successful CM. The work of connecting to and gathering metrics would (I avoided using will although human nature as it is that is the right word) take away valuable connection time with stakeholders. So it becomes a time issue as well as a money issue-two strikes. And, of course, that time now potentially effects the actual metrics and makes CM look less successful- nice loop.
Technorati Tags: Big Picture, business objectives, Buyer, change awareness, change failure, engagement, Fees, Garrett Gitchell, Gate Keeper, resistance to change, stakeholders, Value, vision to work
Contracting between the actual owner of the change and the external CM practitioner is a crucial piece of the foundation for success. That contract- both the formal written version and the informal initial interaction- lays out expectations, introduces the client to a new and better understanding of the change process and glues the owner to the practitioner in a people and business relationship.
The insertion of anything in the middle of this business and person to person relationship is always detrimental.
Some reasons-
Third parties want to “own” the relationship- their definition of ownership is revenue based. Their way to protect that is to always insert themselves between the consultant and the client. And that helps Who?
Third parties skim the budget dollars. Direct contracts are at or less than those with a third party. Experienced consultants know that. So you can either save (by splitting the difference) or you can feel good about compensating the talent that is tied to your end states rather than burning dollars on overhead.
By using a third party you turn consulting into a commodity. Commodities have a direct tie to pricing. So the consultant gets a direct offer from another client at 50% and you assume they will stay? You, as a client, chose to use a third party so you have broken the ethical connection. As you can imagine consultants feel very little tie to the third party firms…
Third parties (no matter what they say) do not “know” your business. I have interacted with recruiters, staffing firms that think they are somehow consulting, consulting firms that somehow became staffing firms (unbeknown to them), internal contracted recruiters and internal recruiters. Except for the last one (and maybe the penultimate) they “knew” what they needed, but did not understand the whole picture (as in you within this initiative and the consultant and what they do and provide) . If I were a client paying upwards of 50% for this work I would have huge expectations for the “relationship”.
They do not find your talent faster. If a consultant has a LinkedIn profile you can find them with a phone call. And you get the added plus of relationship building right from the start.
They certainly do not find the best. Third party work for the best consultants is always fill-in. Because of the compensation difference between third party and direct they will be focusing how to fill in the missing revenue.
This is an important post because there is a trend to using more and more procurement type situations for true consulting. I have had to go through the dance (and waste a lot of precious change management time) a couple of times for high level roles because the client organization insisted on it. Judging by my own experience this is an area where there should be some loud shouting from clients and consultants.
The contracting relationship, the core of the process, is being sanded down and it is having an effect on implementation.
Technorati Tags: Buyer, CEO, change management consultant, engagement, External Consultant, Fees, Garrett Gitchell, Gate Keeper, Insights, Value, vision to work
With a little contemplative time the other day I made a list of the things that have happened as a result of my “being there” with clients. These are things we did not contract for, were not expectations and in fact were not expected or anticipated and…and this is important… were strictly value add.
I can think of three times when a meeting I had with a client created languaging that got some important point or perspective across. In one Fortune 50 organization it actually created a model that is now becoming a signature change languaging and process element (it has to do with camels).
I can list countless times where the fact that I was there, greasing connections from a change management-look- at-the-end state (rather than your performance review) perspective created a leadership horizontal that did not exist before I arrived.
Energy that was not there before.
Conversations that did not happen previous to me taking up a little of their space.
Dialogue over difficulty that was just…well… too difficult without an external perspective.
Etc.
I say this not to toot my horn or that of the external consultants (although if the horn has a nice sound please do search for it) but to illustrate the fact that an external injection of perspective, approach and energy push can be healing and healthy to you as a leader and your organization as a group of individuals that love to accomplish. Holistic medicine for business.
Technorati Tags: Big Picture, business objectives, Buyer, C level, engagement, External Consultant, Fees, Garrett Gitchell, Value, vision to work
One theme running through the conference this week is the Change Funding Gap.
There is a massive disparity between what it costs to guide change effectively and what is budgeted for. The knowledge of the complexities and the time needed for change and the American, at least, insistence on short term timing.
The time needed for change
This is as much a factor of the period it takes for individuals to move to a change as it is for filling in all the blanks of the process. My own critical push here is that many of the firms and practitioners out there out wasting some of that precious time with their model checks and tasks.
The budgeting
Client awareness, at the senior level because that is the true lasting budget area, is the biggest, but maybe the easiest way to fill in the gap. My add in is that change management can actually save money in places rather than cost. If change management is part of the operational structure savings can be had.
Technorati Tags: Buyer, C level, CEO, change awareness, change management, change management consultant, Change Strategy, External Consultant, Fees, Garrett Gitchell, Value, vision to work
A few things I have seen recently that must be blamed on the economy because they would not have made much sense two years ago-
- Big firms (those beginning with A, D, P, etc.) appear to be morphing into staffing firms. The evidence? I personally have been contacted five times this year for leading roles as a subcontractor. Smart business or vicious cost cutting showing its ugly head?
- Roles are reappearing. One comical example I can think of is a role that I have been contacted for 15 times over the last 2 years on 5 separate occasions. Please do not tell me that means a 4 consultant burn only to return to the original senior (read qualified) consultants.
- Open and shut and open again and repeat, contracts and roles. I like to keep an eye on posted positions and stay connected to recruiters because, wise or not, that is where a lot of change management resourcing begins. The last two years has had a whole lot of trolling.
- Internal change management positions at higher levels. Dare I say even VP? The internal roles almost always appear at the same time as the requisitions for the sub contractor. In other words the cart is standing alone well in front of the horse.
So what’s all this about?
It is an interesting combination of client missteps that occur in any environment thanks to a low level of understanding about the change management big picture and an economy that has put tremendous pressure on pricing (with, at times, a forgetfulness about value). Some strange circles have appeared-
Client looks for consultants at extremely adjusted prices, client gets what they pay for or cannot get what they need, client uses third party (and erodes prices further for the consultant which exacerbates the clients original problem), client gives up on change management, giving up turns out to not be a good option, finally client goes back to original consultant with a more reasonable rate. Side note- original consultant is now faced with a drop in the middle change engagement, the most difficult.
Another loop. Big firm needs to charge exceptionally high prices (literally and compared to value). Client thinks there may be an individual or boutique firm they could use, but fear wins out (and those big firms are excellent scapegoats). Economy hits. Now difference in price is especially noticeable. Client contracts with third parties or posts requisitions while big firm takes huge hit in revenue. Big firm strips ranks. Look inside the loop now- client is requisitioning the people, through third parties, who would have come through the big firms. As the loop closes the big firms begin to contact outside consultants (that would be those laid off from the other firms and the senior independent consultants that were part of the mix in the first place). Big firm has effectively become an expensive staffing agency. Client has added an extra layer (because believe it or not the big firm uses a fourth party) in a price/budget sensitive environment.
I throw all this out because it is important and comical at the same time.
Part of the reason these loops appear (in bad times and good) is that CM roles are often thrown into the middle of the organization. For the contracting process, for leading large initiatives and for timing that throw is a bad fit for CM. In the middle lies price sensitivity. Price sensitivity is not where the senior, experienced, whole picture (people and business) sit.
Excellent consultants, priced reasonably and loaded with potential value, are a search and click away. The smart ones, in this price sensitive environment wrapped up extra value in their existing price structures. Smart clients realized that and capitalized on the extras (instead of trolling in the shallows). Smart client into the future means eliminating the supply chain and contracting directly with the resource that will guide the project (in fairness that could actually be a big firm- a couple of years ago). Those resources may even have the exact same network as the third parties (with much stronger relationships) for the supplementary implementation roles.
This explanation (OK maybe my first official rant) looks a lot like the process that takes place with change initiatives. Everything too late, everything narrow focused.
As a practitioner I often stand back and think, “doesn’t anyone notice how silly these dances are?”
Technorati Tags: Big Picture, business objectives, Buyer, change failure, change management, change management consultant, Fees, Garrett Gitchell, organizational change, Value, vision to work
Is change management art or science?
Do artists have techniques, repeatable processes, templates (if only in their minds eye)?
Do technicians think through their plan before beginning the work/experiment?
The answer is, it is both, because art itself often has scientific components while science must look for new horizons.
Beware science that always follows proscribed instructions and art that has no process.
As an executive change owner beware the “change management scientists”.
They are there to spread their wings to increase revenue, market their tools and get to their own end state rather than yours. Odds are they will not be “good” with people and you will then need the best of the “change management artists”. Good art is not cheap.
The science part of change management- of late an intense pursuit of a few change management practitioners- works well within the implementation of the change plan. The closer the tasks get to project management the more streamlined and templated the process can be. Leverage the best of the artists to guide the scientists (not the other way around which is more common).
Those who yearn to create across the board consistency for change management are forgetting clients see their organizations, people, processes, industries and structure as unique. Creating the grand change management template flies in the face of a core client perspective. Not a good mix for the initial contracting- unless the work is directed to someone other than the true owner of the change…It then becomes a procurement process which feeds right into the consultants “spread their wings” approach.
My advice do not feed the hand that bites you.
Technorati Tags: Big Picture, Buyer, Change, change awareness, change failure, change management, change management strategy, End State, Executive, external, External Consultant, Fees, Garrett Gitchell, horizontal change management, Value, vision to work
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