The Advice Game: Becoming an Internal Consultant

Carleton Chinner is the Managing Director of MagniStrat, a Brisbane, Australia-based project consultancy specializing in program capability maturity improvement. Carleton works on large complex projects and is often called upon to speak about his experiences.

  Consulting  

Once you reach the stage of your career where you have several successful projects under your belt, you may be wondering how to progress further. Becoming a consultant is one possibility, but stepping away from a project focus to start a new career as a full-time consultant is a big step with a steep learning curve.

What if you could play at being a consultant in your current role? At worst, you could improve your skills as a project manager; at best, you would be able to leap into the world of consulting with prior experience. Here is how to become an internal consultant and increase your value to the business and your future career…

Transferable Skills
You have a wealth of ready-made skills at your disposal as an experienced project manager. Many of these skills are applicable to acting as a business consultant. How many of these can you tick off?

• A deep understanding of how to develop a problem definition and potential solutions
• The ability to shape a business case
• Capable of speaking to a group and presenting ideas
• Comfortable with influencing decision makers
• Deliver professional quality reports
• Basic understanding of the legal principles of contacts
• Deliver defined outcomes

If you have worked on the right kind of projects, you may also have a few of the following skills:

• Develop and/or change business processes
• Business …

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