ASSIGNMENT MANAGEMENT

A consulting firm performs work for clients through individual operating assignments. Whatever choices are made and principles adopted as regards the firm’s strategy, quality assurance, staff development or product innovation, the decisions will need to be translated into operational arrangements and intervention methods used in individual client assignments. If not, grand designs will not leave the managing partners’ offices and work with clients will continue as before. Also, individual clients will judge the consulting firm on the basis of particular assignments. Clumsy and hectic assignment management is likely to be interpreted by clients as a sign of organizational incompetence and inefficiency.

This chapter focuses on the managerial and administrative aspects of assignment execution. It therefore supplements Chapters 7 to 11, which describe the stages of the consulting process. To avoid repetition, a number of references to these chapters are made in the text that follows.

31.1 Structuring and scheduling an assignment

Defining an assignment and its management requirements

The scope of an assignment (or engagement, project or case) is usually defined in the proposal to the client and in the contract (sections 7.4 to 7.6). The definition includes the start and the end of the assignment, the objectives, the proposed approach, the work programme, the consultants involved, the resources required, the degree and form of the client’s involvement, the supervisory responsibility and the price to be paid. Checking the completeness and clarity of assignment definitions is an important precondition of effective assignment management. Even questions such as where the data will be processed and reports produced, or who will take care of the consultant’s transport during the assignment, should be clarified. More important, however, are technical and human issues related to the client’s problem and the approach to be taken by the consultants.

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On the basis of this information, the consulting firm will choose how to manage each assignment. Issues on which decisions will be needed include:

●the use of a standard or special management procedure;

●the need to appoint a full-time team leader;

●the type and level of experience of senior consultants or partners charged with supervision and backstopping;

●the desirability and frequency of detailed controls;

●the need to inform and/or involve the client firm’s top management;

●the opportunity to try out or test new approaches and techniques, and the desirability of doing so;

●the importance of the assignment to future business development;

●the lessons that the firm may be able to draw from this assignment.

In making these decisions, the consulting firm should be guided both by its established practices and by an assessment of the profile of the new assignment. Although there are similarities between assignments, no two assignments are exactly the same because the human context and other conditions will always be unique. If the firm has developed a typology of assignments and defined characteristic management requirements of each type, this typology needs to be used cautiously.

Assignment team leaders and supervisors

The key role in managing operating assignments is played by team leaders or project managers. As a rule, a consulting firm would have a group of senior colleagues whose experience and achievement qualify them for this critical position. The function often includes the negotiation and preparation of new assignments: the senior consultant who negotiates the assignment, does the preliminary survey of the client organization, and coordinates the drafting of the proposal submitted to the client, is then charged with managing the assignment. In doing so, the team leader must enjoy full authority and have responsibility for allocating the time of operating staff, scheduling and organizing work, and deciding on the method of work and the nature of the advice given to the client. He or she is the line manager and must be regarded as such by both the consulting firm’s higher management and the members of the team. This is an important principle since the team often consists of consultants with different backgrounds and profiles. In addition, if specialist consultants have to contribute to several assignments during the same period of time, there is not only a problem of scheduling and coordination, but also one deriving from the technical approach, intellectual involvement and commitment to one or other job.

If an assignment is small and involves only one or two operating consultants, a senior consultant is usually appointed as supervisor of several assignments. These supervisory responsibilities include:

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–periodic visits to operating consultants on assignment;

–control and assessment of progress of the assignment;

–technical guidance and support for operating consultants;

–review of important reports and proposals to be submitted to the client;

–liaison with clients over assignment progress and mutual commitments.

It is always necessary to define clearly the working relations with the client, i.e. what matters should be discussed and agreed on with the operating consultants, or with the supervisors. For example, if the assignment does not progress because the client does not spend enough time with the operating consultant, the supervisor should raise the matter with the client. When conclusions drawn from diagnosis, or action proposals, are submitted to the client, the supervisor may come to meetings and support the operating consultant with his or her authority and experience.

Staffing and scheduling assignments

Ideally, a consulting firm would like to see all its consultants moving directly from completed assignments to new ones, without losing a single working day. The starting dates and schedules of assignments are negotiated with clients in order to make this possible. An ethical approach is required, however: if the client is in a difficult situation and needs help quickly, you should never try to convince him or her to wait simply in order to make your work scheduling easier! Also, once you have promised to start, you should stick to your promise.

Before establishing detailed workplans for each assignment, the consulting firm needs to make sure that the consultants selected will be available at the necessary times and for the periods required. This may be yet another piece in the jigsaw puzzle, to be seen in the context of the total picture of operations.

First, the technical profile of the team is matched to the technical profile of the assignment. It is obvious that the choice of professional staff will vary according to the size of the consulting firm. Some large consultancies have developed computerized inventories of staff competencies and skills. Small firms either have to work in more limited fields, or employ versatile and adaptable people. In this context, the problems of a sole practitioner, or a partnership of two or three consultants, are plain to see.

Second, there is the personality factor. The correct matching of the client’s and the consultant’s personalities can make the difference between good and poor assignments. Guidance on the client’s characteristics, in terms of likes and dislikes, habits, interests and general way of life, should have been provided confidentially by the consultant who negotiated the contract (section 7.5). The personalities of the consulting firm’s staff should be known.

The client and the consultant do not necessarily have to have everything in common. There are even advantages sometimes in complementing a client of

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one type by a consultant of another when a modifying influence appears desirable, but the consulting firm should avoid pairing two people who are obviously incompatible. Up to a point, it can be expected that every consultant will adapt to normal and unavoidable differences, and matching people is only a matter of avoiding clashes at the extreme limits of human behaviour.

Third, it is equally important that the team leader and the team members get on well with each other. Consultants do not always see eye to eye in matters of individual preference any more than do other people.

Human relations and the atmosphere within an assignment team will affect work quality and efficiency as much as the technical competence of the operating consultants and the team leader. Professionally managed consulting firms tend to be open-minded and flexible in staffing assignments even if this can lead to inequalities in the workload of individual consultants. Team leaders are asked whom they prefer to have on their teams, or even encouraged to make their own proposals concerning the team composition. The operating consultants’ preference for particular team leaders is also taken into account.

Even if all personal preferences and choices cannot be fully respected, it is important to know about them, and to draw appropriate conclusions for coaching, training and career planning. If team leaders are free to choose the members of their assignment teams, some consultants will always be in higher demand than others. The firm’s managers have to face this and try to control this internal selection process, but some staff members may also have to make an effort “to be in greater demand”.

Quite often the originally proposed team structure may need to be modified. Usually this is due to a time-lag of uncertain length between the submission of the proposal, its acceptance by the client, and the actual start of the assignment.

Various circumstances may affect the scheduling of the actual start and execution of the assignment. If waiting time cannot be avoided, it is necessary to decide who will wait. The consultant may have to choose between two or more clients, deciding which one will be served first (assuming that the others can wait and will agree to do so). Or a major assignment may be scheduled to start in, say, two months, but the designated team leader is available now. Will the client agree to advance the start of the assignment? Should the team leader be assigned to another job? Should he or she be kept waiting? When is this justified and when not? What will the client do if he or she has to wait?

It frequently happens that a current assignment requires more time than originally scheduled, so that there is a risk of delaying a subsequent job promised to another client. It is inconvenient to interrupt a nearly finished job, and the consulting firm would probably try to negotiate a compromise with one or both clients, for example, to start the new assignment gradually, as individual team members become available. These and similar situations require careful consideration and tactful negotiation with the clients concerned. Clients are aware of these problems, and will usually be open to a discussion of mutually convenient arrangements, especially if they are keen to get a particular consultant for their project.

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Lastly, assignment and individual work scheduling should follow a golden rule: never leave any consultant unoccupied! If time-lags between assignments cannot be avoided, the consultant should attend to other activities. The consulting firm should have a backlog of jobs for this situation (training, selfdevelopment, research, visiting former clients, etc.), and should encourage individual consultants to make their own suggestions for productive use of the time that cannot be spent with clients.

Overall assignment plan

The overall assignment plan (section 7.4) covers the whole period of the assignment. It presents the operating team’s main activities against a timetable (in weeks or days). It specifies the starting and finishing points of these activities, the volume of work (consultant-weeks or consultant-days) in every period in the timetable, and points of time for submission of interim and final reports and for progress control of the assignment.

Estimates of time in the overall plan can be made:

–top down, when the consultant knows that he or she has a certain number of work-weeks available and tries to allocate them to the different activities;

–bottom up, when the consultant estimates the time needed for each particular activity and compares the total time thus obtained with the established deadlines and estimates of work-weeks needed for the assignment.

Experience with the time taken for similar activities on previous assignments is useful in any case.

The length of assignments affects planning. A short assignment must obviously be planned in greater detail if it is to be completed on time. A long assignment may tempt the consultants to neglect planning since there is no immediate time-pressure. If allowed to take this line, they may suddenly become aware that half the time has been used, and only one-quarter of the programme accomplished. In long assignments, consultants also tend to lose sight of the ultimate objectives, particularly as the operating team becomes more accepted by the client. A clear plan and its regular control avoid this.

A well-calculated overall assignment plan allows for some contingencies and should have to be altered only when major events disturb normal progress. The plan can be presented as a bar chart, a table with numerical values, a network diagram (for long and complex assignments), or a combination of these.

It is useful to enter the client inputs and activities in the assignment plan in a way that permits separate control of client and consultant inputs.

If the consultancy provides quality assurance under ISO 9001 (see sections 32.2 and 32.3), a quality plan may be a separate section of the assignment plan, or may be appended to it. The plan should be available for assignment monitoring and control both to the consulting organization and to the client.

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