Before you hire any external help, you must know what sort of help you need. Do you need a content expert (e.g, law firm hires a lawyer to sort out an obscure issue) or a process consultant (e.g, law firm hires a consultant to help with business development, leadership, focus groups, etc.)
This questionnaire helps you to make this decision.
Instructions: The following questionnaire contains twelve sections, each of which has two possible responses. Your task is to distribute seven points between the two alternatives within each section.
Use the ten points to indicate your sense of the relative importance of each of the two options. For example, if you believe that option "B" is considerably more important than options "A", your response might look like this:
5 B
When evaluating each pair of responses, reflect on the specific assignment for which you are considering hiring a consultant. What do you want, need, and expect the external person to do for your organisation? Think about what is best for your organisation in the short term and in the long run. What kind of a working relationship do you want or need between the members of your organization and your consultants?
__ A. We have a one-of-a-kind, nonrecurring problem. There is no advantage to our organisation in acquiring the competencies necessary to deal with similar problems in the future. We expect external helpers to recommend a solution or to solve the problem and achieve the results we need.
__ B. The same or similar issues are likely to occur in the future. Therefore, we expect external helpers to collaborate with our organisation's managers and other members in dealing with the issue while simultaneously enhancing our organisational members' competence to deal with similar issues in the future.
__ A. Our organisation's management will determine the goals to be achieved by external helpers, then external helpers will determine the best methods for reaching these goals.
__ B. Management and external helpers will jointly determine what goals are to be achieved through the intervention, and what methods are to be used to achieve these goals.
__ A. The relationship between management and external helpers is not a significant factor, as long as management can trust the external helpers to provide viable solutions to the problems through the application of their specialised knowledge, skills, and procedures.
__B. A high-trust, open relationship between management and external helpers is essential. All parties have to collaborate and exchange information in a transparent and timely manner throughout the consulting assignment.
__ A. External helpers will assume primary responsibility for the successful completion of all stages of the consulting assignment, but may call on organisational members from time to time to collect information and report progress
__ B. Both management and external helpers are accountable for their own commitments to each other, but management, as ultimate decision-makers, bears sole responsibility for the successful completion of the consulting assignment. Reporting is replaced with continual collaboration and instant feedback
__ A. External helpers will have technical control over the project because they have more practical knowledge and experience in this area than organisational members. However, management will retain control over available resources, budgets, schedules, and logistics.
__ B. Management will share control with external helpers by surfacing, discussing, and negotiating all issues that may emerge.
__ A. External helpers are expected to take full responsibility for analysing the situation. They will decide what information will be required, the methods to gather it, from whom, and how it will be organised, analysed and used.
__ B. Management and external helpers will make joint decisions about what data will be collected, from whom, and how it will be organized, analysed, and used.
__ A. External helpers will derive conclusions from their analyses of the problems and will use these as the basis for personally formulating concrete recommendations for improving or correcting the existing situation.
__ B. Management, key members of the organisation, and external helpers will work in concert to draw conclusions from the data collected, to specify and prioritise issues, and to formulate recommended action plans to deal with the selected issues.
__ A. External helpers' responsibilities will end when they provide management with their recommendations for solving the problem(s) at hand or external helpers may be responsible for implementing the technical solutions that they have recommended.
__ B. Although management will take primary responsibility for implementation, external helpers will be actively involved in the whole implementation process. External helpers' roles may vary from coaching from the sidelines to project management. Whatever roles they take will be the result of negotiations between management and external helpers as they jointly develop the implementation plans.
__ A. Technical experts sometimes view any disagreements with organisational members as unjustified interference or as a lack of trust in their competence or professionalism.
__ B. Disagreements between organisational members and external helpers are expected to be resolved as quickly as humanly possible because external helpers' role is to help the organisation to become independent of the need for external help, the organisation is able to sustain the jointly initiated improvement.
__ B. Consultants are expected to help management to gain acceptance, support, and commitment from organisational members who are relevant to implementing the problem solutions and the recommended (and accepted) action plans.
__ A. Evaluation will take place at the conclusion of the consultation to determine whether technical experts have delivered what they promised. Contractors may write periodic progress reports for senior management.
__ B. Evaluations will be conducted throughout the engagement to adjust approaches and plans. These evaluations will cover such factors as (a) the progress being made, (b) the quality of the results being achieved, (c) identification of emerging issues and how they are handled, and (d) the effectiveness of the plan and the methods being used.
__ A. Management or someone assigned by management will evaluate the quality, relevance, and effectiveness of technical experts' deliverables. Or technical experts evaluate their own work.
__ B. Evaluation is conducted jointly with the client, the consultant and all the people involved. They evaluate the project both quantitatively (lower talent attrition, fewer meetings, higher sales closing ratio, etc.) and qualitatively (better sense of pride, lower stress, sense of working on purpose)
Add up your A and B scores. If you have more A scores, then you need a contractor to do something for you. If you have more B scores, then you need a consultant to work with you. Although it is unlikely that the total points in either of the two columns will be zero, you will probably give more points to one of the two consulting types than to the other.
_________ A score _________ B score
Remember contractors are doers. They do it FOR you again and again. You pay every time you need help. Consultants are catalyst, facilitators and expeditors, providing you with the perspective, insights, wisdom, environment and tools you need to achieve new heights of success and solve your own problems. Since you do the work together with me, you learn how to do it, and in doing so you become independent of me.
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