On smaller projects a single consultant can negotiate the contract and scope of work with the client, design the work plan, and often carry out all the required tasks from information gathering to analysis and from facilitating negotiations to drafting agreements and reports.

Larger, more complex projects require a team, either because the work entails specialized expertise which no one consultant may possess (financial analysis and board development, for example), or because there is simply too much work for one person to accomplish (interview 50 stakeholders, analyze the competition, and develop a business plan within a short period).

Team work among consultants adds its own level of complexity to the equation — coordinating work plan elements, timelines and personal styles, as well as juggling multiple demands from other projects, co-workers, and supervisors. Thus, team work skills are a key to success on larger projects.

Some larger firms use a strictly hierarchical approach to control work flow and keep sanity in complex engagements. A typical project for them might entail one day a week from a partner, two days from a manager and the full time efforts of two to three junior people.

This approach involves a great deal of leverage of the senior person’s time, spreading him or her across multiple clients, but allowing junior people to do the bulk of the work. It is a highly profitable way to approach the business of consulting. In this structure teamwork is less important than understanding your role and having the ability to follow directions.

In my firm we developed a different model, partly out of our value system, where collegiality is highly prized, and partly because we were not hampered by the existing processes of large firms or the inexorable drive toward ever-higher profits.

As a bunch of nonprofit people, we built a firm where 90% of the consultants are senior people, capable of leading a project. We know this is what our clients want and need, because this is what we wanted and needed when we led nonprofits. Our senior people work closely with our junior staff to develop their abilities as well as to share the work.

We have very little hierarchy. In fact, anyone, including me, might be assigned to work on a project where someone else, someone of nominally “lower” status, is the project leader. It seems to work.

Tags: nonprofit

This entry was posted on Monday, March 6th, 2006 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Consulting for Nonprofits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.