Job One: Make Yourself Unnecessary
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
Project management consulting is becoming an important function. As projects become ever more critical to organizational success, those organizations are looking to optimize how their projects are delivered. That umbrella term of “PM consulting” now covers everything from helping review and improve processes and methodologies, to strategically aligning planning, execution and benefits realization—with numerous variations in between.
As someone who makes their money from this type of consulting, I’m very happy to see this trend, but I think there are a few things that the project management consulting profession needs to do in order to ensure that it remains a growth discipline that is perceived as delivering value for clients. And those things that we need to do fall under the general advice of making ourselves unnecessary.
Wait…what?!
Understanding what success looks like
That statement obviously requires a bit of explanation. Whenever I take on a client engagement, I always try to ask myself what it is that will make the client successful. If we’re talking about real consulting (as opposed to more work-based contracting), the client is looking for me to help it achieve something that it doesn’t believe it can do on its own (or at least that it can’t do as well).
In that scenario, I don’t think that it’s…
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"I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man." - Chuang Tzu |
