Austin Higgins

Technology, Investments, Education

Consulting

Plenty of Space for the New Year Ahead

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It’s nearing the end of the year, and just like the end of 2018, I find myself jobless and clientless.

My wife and I moved to San Diego this year for a number of reasons. We’ve been visiting La Jolla, CA for years and fell in love with the calm atmosphere and ocean waves. We were married in La Jolla this year. An amazing opportunity came up at the best consulting firm in the country, so we moved to San Diego. But that opportunity didn’t work out.

My wife and I realized that for the last three holiday seasons, one of us was without a job or clients or any steady work to keep us busy. For a lot of people, this would be alarming. It would scare them or make them worried for the future. But not us. Our careers have never been linear and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Each time we had space (or free time) in our lives – whether chosen, forced or otherwise – something new and special has happened.  Why would this time be any different?

The space we had at the end of 2018 lead us to planning a beautiful wedding in La Jolla Shores and an exciting adventure moving to San Diego.

What will the space I have at the end of this decade bring me?

I have no idea. I’ve given up most of my goals and plans earlier this year to create space for something new and maybe even surprising. Now, I have all the space in the world. And I’m passionately optimistic about whatever comes next.

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Never, under any circumstance, hire a consultant

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There is no reason you should ever hire a consultant. Trust me, I’ve been a consultant for most of my career and I’ve worked alongside some of the best consultants in the business and for the best consulting firm in the industry. If you find yourself wanting to hire a consultant, stop right now. Or just burn the money you would have spent hiring a consulting firm.

Consultants exist for one reason – to improve the condition of clients. Consultants help people. They serve people. They are, after all, in the professional services industry. Most importantly, consultants partner with clients to solve a problem.

When you hire someone, that person reports to you. They take orders from you and they do what you tell them to do (or at least should do what you tell them to do).

Consultants don’t take orders and they don’t report to clients. Consultants are partners to solve a problem.

If you have a task you need completed or a role you need filled, you may be tempted to hire a consultant. Most major consulting firms will happily bill you to perform a task or to fill a role. But they are tricking you. They aren’t consultants.

Consultants solve problems, they don’t take orders.

Most of the time, what companies really need are employees, contractors and service providers. Do you need a technology system implemented? Hire a contractor or a service firm. Do you need someone to execute on your marketing plans? Hire a service firm.

Don’t hire a consultant.

There is nothing wrong with having work you need done and contracting it out to service firms, staffing agencies or employees. But there is a something fundamentally wrong with hiring a consultant instead of partnering with one. You will lose out on transforming your business. And you will waste valuable resources.

You should work with consultants to solve business problems. You should partner with someone who cares about your business, your people and your outcomes. You should create a deep, real relationships with someone who can help you. Not someone you are going to order around and handoff your to-do list to.

There is no Oath of the Consultant or a body of ethics consultants must adhere to. So, there is no way to enforce partnership or to focus on outcomes instead of inputs. This is why it’s so hard for leaders at companies to work with consultants. And why outcomes vary from person to person, project to project and firm to firm. The only way to protect your business is by knowing who you are working with and why.

Leaders understand how important it is to have the right employees. Employees make business great. And service firms (like attorneys, accountants, HR, marketers or any other mission-critical tasks) must deliver real results.

Consultants aren’t easily graded. So, they are lumped together with other service firms or employees. And they are treated the same. They shouldn’t – but they are. They are given a desk with the team, a company laptop and go to staff meetings. They are treated like employees or contractors. And it hurts the client/consultant relationship and ultimately provides a major disservice to the client.

Consultants must be partners not subordinates. They must focus on outcomes, results and improving the condition of the client. Any other focus is purely unacceptable. If a consultant is focused on anything other than solving problems, kindly stop working with them. If a consultant acts like an employee or a service firm, offer to hire them as an employee. It will be cheaper, too.

If you have a long list of tasks and projects, work with a staffing firm or hire some more team members. They can knock it out of the park and make a difference in your team’s day to day. But if you want to transform your business and solve your problems, partner with a consultant.

Never, under any circumstance, hire a consultant, though.

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My career is not my passion

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I’m not really passionate about management consulting.

It’s just something that I do.

I’m passionate about creating. And building. And solving problems. And serving others. And making those around me slightly better.

Consulting (sometimes? Or maybe once in a blue moon?) allows me to do those things.

Cooking let’s me do all of those things. Most days I would rather be in the kitchen creating meals for people I care about. Or strangers. Or anyone.

When you cook for someone you are giving a piece of yourself. It is an act of service. And it is an act of creation. You take building blocks and turn them in to (hopefully) delicious products. And you do it for someone other than your self. And you create it to simply put a small moment of joy in their life.

What better way to live your life than to build things and serve others?

Management consultants aren’t going to change the world.

But chefs and cooks change the world every single day.

And if I keep cooking, creating and serving I actually think I can, too.

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I have no idea if I’m any good at what I do

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I don’t know if I’m a good consultant.

It’s not really possible to quantify the success of a consultant or how good they are.

There’s no training or practicing to be a good consultant. You can’t go into a training montage like Rocky and come out the best consultant in the world. (I wish I could. That would be awesome.)

I’ve tried to teach consulting. That’s almost impossible, too.

In sales it’s easy to know if you are good. In marketing, development, manufacturing, accounting, all easy too. It’s easy to judge how good your accountant or marketer is. Some consultants market or sell. But that’s not the same as being a consultant.

It’s impossible to really determine how good a consultant is. You can determine how successful a project is. But is all project success related to what a consultant does? Nope. Not at all.

I don’t think I’m good at what I do. I honestly have no way to tell. A lot of my projects have been wildly successful. Some I don’t want to remember or even talk about. But a consultant is not their projects.

So, if there’s no way to tell if I’m good or not…

I very well could be the best consultant in the world.

And you can’t prove me wrong.

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