One of the most vivid memories I have from my early consulting career was the time a Chief Operations Officer (COO) nearly torpedoed my first engagement. It was a corporate reorganisation that involved taking 8 major divisions and around a dozen support units and rebuilding them into a simpler organisational structure.
By the time the executive considered cancelling the project, our team had completed almost a hundred 90-minute interviews, two 100-slide PowerPoint decks, five board meetings, and about 15 job description files. All in all, 2 months’ worth of grunt work were about to evaporate into corporate mist.
Talk about beginner’s luck.
Much is made of critical thinking, data gathering, and framework building skills. To an extent, all these are tested in the case interviews that guard the entrances of all consulting firms. But indeed, one of the more neglected challenges management consultants face is securing buy-in from key stakeholders – simply defined as the client’s belief in project processes and results. This is a skill that cannot be rehearsed. It is forged in the heat of boardroom battles; and hammered into form by unyielding company politics.
You might be willing to put in the work. You might be capable of producing the work. Nonetheless, if you move rapidly from problem to solution without demonstrating that the solutions are relevant, then your slide deck will ultimately end up gathering dust in a circular filing cabinet.
In light of this, the remainder of this post will cover the general sources of client buy-in and the various methods of securing it. This will be written from an Analyst / Junior Associate’s point of view. It is hoped that by reading this, an entry-level consultant will be able to approach this kind of problem with calm, foresight and panache.
1. Vested Managers
I define “vested managers” as senior stakeholders that have a concrete reason to ensure project success, by virtue of professional relationships with senior consultants in your firm, or their (un)fortunate position as the engagement’s sponsor.
Said sponsors are usually the people who proposed securing the services of your consultancy in the first place. Alternatively, they could be the unit heads who will benefit the most from any ideas raised by consultants. Project failure would not only damage the consultancy, but their personal reputation and results as well. Nevertheless, disagreements – from the nature of recommendations to meeting calendars – are a matter-of-course.
Method 1 – Trust the Process:
Unfortunately for those with great initiative, dealing with Vested Managers is an area where one would usually have to rely on senior consultants. This can be your engagement manager, or in the case of the anecdote, someone as high up as a junior partner.
While management consulting is known for giving great responsibility to relatively younger people, there are still sectors and geographical areas where clients value seniority (e.g. Asia, FIGs, etc.). A CEO wouldn’t mind talking to an Analyst; but he or she would expect more contact with a Manager as well. It follows that if a Vested Manager has problems with the direction of the engagement, he or she would raise it with the senior consultant who originally “sold” the project to them.
An entry-level consultant would be most helpful by maintaining focus on his or her deliverables, so that if and when the manager successfully resolves an issue, the project will remain on schedule and within budget.
Method 2 – Leverage Bargaining Chips:
As to what the senior consultants would actually do, there is the option of making concessions regarding the recommendations to be made, in order to gain managerial support for the wider project.
A key example from the corporate reorganisation anecdote was a new manager refusing to take the VIP security portfolio. Said administrative employee did not want to take on the liability, as a fresh external hire. Should an incident happen before she had built up any relationships, she would have made an easy scapegoat.
In exchange for a minor tweak to the reorganisation plan (VIP security was a cost centre with minor effect on the bottom-line), the manager, who had been cooperative beforehand, blossomed further into a vocal ally during regular board meetings with the client.
2. Unvested Managers
“Unvested managers” are senior stakeholders that do not necessarily have a reason to support a consulting engagement. Most of the time, this can manifest as a reluctance to cooperate with data gathering efforts. In the worst case, it can become a concerted effort to derail an engagement, especially when an executive feels threatened for any reason.
Method 3 – Leverage Vested Managers
The key difference between Vested Managers and Unvested Managers is that the former can assist with the latter. For the corporate reorganisation anecdote, the Chief Administrative Officer managed to arrange lunch between the COO and another executive whom the COO felt would be given too much seniority after the reorg. After the meal, the formerly intractable COO conceded to another meeting with senior consultants, who were then able to walk him back from cancelling the project.
This heroic CAO just happened to realise her goal of avoiding the VIP security portfolio.
3. Staff
“Staff” are all non-managerial positions, from entry-level hires, to experienced operators that do not have supervisory responsibilities. Some Staff will be quite open. Others may be uncooperative, either out of fear of losing jobs to cost-cutting or a feeling of being meddled with.
Method 4 – Appeal to Culture
During another engagement, I found myself doing interviews in a packaging factory with a streetwise, informal culture of mostly men. It goes without saying that a consultant with an aloof, cerebral attitude wouldn’t have gone very far (and some Staff did make fun of me in the beginning). Over time, I found that a few off-colour jokes, and a fair amount of commiserating over being mutually over-worked entry-level workers, went a long way in disarming my interviewees. This was key as the Harvard Business Review has posited that incessant questioning can lead to friction among males.
Method 5 – Appeal to Results
Staff usually see day-to-day problems and inefficiencies that Managers do not. This can be as onerous as inefficient packaging machines, or as simple as company policies prohibiting the use of Google Docs. The words, “I know I’m an outsider. But I currently have the COO’s ear. If I could grant you 2 wishes to make your hard job easier, what would they be?” make tongues wag.
Method 6 – Appeal to Authority
However, when self-interest and fraternity fail, an effective last resort is to play the “boss” card. The aforementioned packaging factory was a closely-held family business. The owner-managers were deeply involved in operations and made a habit of caring about all significant problems. Name-dropping Managers, especially omnipresent ones, can render employees pliable.
Matthew Falcotelo works at the intersection of consulting and fintech startups. In his free time, he geeks out over equity investments, public and private.
Image: Pexels
References:
- Bulsuk, Karn. “In Asia, ignore hierarchy at your own peril.” KPMG Newsroom, 21 May 2015, http://newsroom.kpmg.com.au/1784/
- Lee, Vince. “300% more pay, bigger clients, less red tape: why I left an Asian bank to join a global one.” eFinancialCareers, 07 May 2018,
https://news.efinancialcareers.com/jp-en/248546/left-asian-bank-for-global-bank - Tannen, Deborah. “The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why.” Harvard Business Review, September 1995, https://hbr.org/1995/09/the-power-of-talk-who-gets-heard-and-why