What is a consultant? The consulting industry has a long-standing classic definition of consultant. A client spent a lot of money to start a project. The main problem solved by this project is: "What time is it?" Then the consultant came up and said, "Please borrow your watch." Then he looked at it and said, "It's 3 o'clock in the afternoon." Then he put on the customer's watch and left. Of course, this is just a joke, but in reality, there are many consultants who give customers this feeling, and there are also many consultants from global TOP 5 consulting companies, especially several big customers who have implemented strategic planning projects in China. Their boss once told me that your consultant just sorted out what we know and told us later. Although this statement is biased, because the domestic consulting industry started late, many consultants are still in the stage of experience accumulation, so most of the projects are consultants looking at customers' watches (watches represent the accumulated knowledge of customers). After learning this knowledge, they left with their watches (knowledge). So what should a real consultant look like? The Oxford Dictionary defines a consultant as "a person who is qualified enough to provide professional advice and services." Among them, "qualification" refers to two aspects, one is to have the comprehensive ability of consultants; The second is to have professional knowledge and experience in specific industries or fields, including medical treatment, engineering, management, manufacturing, design, information technology and other industries. I believe everyone can easily understand the second point. For the first point, many people will have questions. Why do you need communication skills, leadership and the like? This is because if you want to tap the real needs of customers, customers don't always express or realize what the real needs are. As a consultant, you need to use some skills, methods and tools to collect customer information, which requires high communication skills. At the same time, many consulting projects need to change with the changes of customer organizations. In order to ensure the success of the project, you should have enough ability to lead customers, coordinate relevant departments and solve various obstacles and conflicts. From these aspects, we can see that the successful implementation of consulting projects requires you to have the comprehensive ability of consultants. Consulting can be divided into two categories in terms of working methods: expert type and process type. These are two extreme states. In the process of expert consultation, the relationship between consultant and client is just like the relationship between teacher and student. Consultants have absolute power, and customers are eager to learn advanced methods from consultants. The early business environment changes slowly, and work efficiency is the key factor of business success. This kind of consultation is a very effective way, but now, if the scheme is not successfully implemented, it is easy for customers to shirk their responsibilities. They clapped their hands and said, this is not our responsibility. The strategy adopted by McKinsey, a well-known consulting company, tends to be expert consultation, but its early strategy of planning without implementation avoids possible problems in the implementation process. (Now it has been implemented, I don't know how effective it is in the implementation process. At the other extreme, it is process-based negotiation. In this process, the consultant makes the client fully responsible. They keep their own opinions and guide customers to find results under the guise of assistance. For example, they often use Socratic questions to guide their clients to conclusions, even though these consultants already know the answers. The advantages and disadvantages of these two working methods are compared as follows: advantages of expert consultation disadvantages of process consultation 1.
2. Feedback on focus issues
3. Correct expert advice
4. The effect is good 1. Wrong scheme
2. Lack of real understanding
3. Lack of commitment and responsibility to customers
Depend on customers
5. Reduce customer confidence. The above is the working method of consultation. Every project is different. You should choose the right working method at the right time and place instead of following a fixed method. Next, I want to talk about another classification of consultants, internal consultants and external consultants. External consultants are like people who work in ABCDI (Accenture, Bi Bo, Capgemini, Deloitte, IBM). They sell it to customers at an hourly usage fee of 100 XXXX yuan. These consultants often fly around. If you want to travel for free, this is a good career choice. On the other hand, internal consultant means that enterprises recruit people with consulting ability under their command based on factors such as cost. Internal consultants can be in a unified and independent consulting department or dispersed in various departments of the enterprise. This kind of consultant's work place is relatively stable, suitable for people with families, and the salary is of course relatively low. In the following introduction, the working methods and ability requirements of internal consultants and external consultants will be expounded respectively.