Management consulting

37.6 Learning options available to sole practitioners

To survive and progress in their field, sole consulting practitioners need to continuously improve their competence. Human capital is the sole practitioner’s most precious resource. However, a sole practitioner lacks the knowledge base, training resources, support and interaction with colleagues available in larger consultancies. Conversely, he or she enjoys more freedom and flexibility in choosing clients, moving to new fields of intervention, choosing what and when to learn, and deciding about his or her own future.

There are forces that discourage sole practitioners from spending time and money on self-development. Paradoxically, success and high earnings from current business are the most dangerous enemies. A consultant who is in great demand will be tempted to think that he or she has no reason to worry about future earnings.

Other consultants complain that they lack time for self-development, are too tired after a heavy working week, cannot concentrate on studying in hotel rooms, or must use every free moment to look for new business. These reasons sound quite realistic and understandable. Yet they cannot justify the lack of selfdevelopment in any profession.

If you are a sole practitioner, the following principal options are available to you.

Self-assessment

From time to time, or periodically and regularly if you find it easier (but at least once a year), take a short pause, sit back and think about your career path:

●Have you defined your life and professional goals?

●Are you getting closer to your goals?

●Are clients fully satisfied with your work?

●Are you satisfied with what you have been doing for your clients?

●What have you learned and applied since the last self-assessment?

●Do you feel tired, burned out and out of date?

●Have you once more continued to do the same without any perspective and further learning?

When assessing motivation for learning and self-development, it is essential to be honest. Ambitious professional goals and a strong will to learn go hand in hand:

●Are you motivated enough to work hard for your personal development and professional future?

●Do you want to be one of the best experts in your field or are you merely looking for regular income and survival in the business?

820

Training and development of consultants

Networking

In the absence of the professional environment and resources of a large firm, a single practitioner can draw a lot of benefit from networking with other professionals who have similar concerns.

Informal contacts with other consultants and managers are the simplest form of networking. Association work comes next. Associations are a useful source of contacts, information and learning opportunities. An active participant in an association can suggest and help to start new association activities and recommend topics as themes for meetings, committees and workshops.

Business alliances with other independent professionals can be helpful not only for finding new work and delivering projects that exceed the possibilities of one consultant, but also for exchanging experience and learning from others.

There is no networking without reciprocity: while you want to learn from others, they are keen to learn from you. They will give if you give.

Looking for technically challenging assignments

Learning is encouraged and facilitated if the consultant keeps looking for assignments that are not a mere repetition of work done many times before. This, of course, is more easily said than done if new business is scarce. Yet it is an objective that can be pursued as a matter of deliberate personal choice.

Formal training opportunities

Short seminars and workshops are useful forums where sole practitioners can update and widen their knowledge of management and business topics or consulting approaches. Careful selection is required in order to avoid losing time and money in training events that, because of their purpose and quality, are not suited for consultants. Training opportunities are available from some consulting institutes and associations, which also help consultants to select suitable courses elsewhere. For example, the United Kingdom Institute of Management Consultancy publishes a list of approved training providers and courses suitable for consultants at various points of their careers. Both providers and courses are approved and listed if they meet set criteria of relevance and quality.10

Preparing for certification

In a number of countries, professional institutes provide voluntary certification of management consultants (see section 6.4). Preparing oneself for certification may be a good opportunity for studying new literature on consulting and reading about topics not usually handled in everyday work, or participating in a course specially designed to prepare consultants for certification.

821

Management consulting

1E. M. Shays: “Learning must be a life-long job for consultants”, in Journal of Management Consulting (Milwaukee, WI), Vol. 1, No. 2, 1983.

2A number of university courses addressed to consultants or graduate students in the United States and other countries have been based on this guide. It is also useful to refer to materials produced by consultants’ associations and institutes. In 1989, the Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF) in the United States published Professional profile of management consultants: A body of expertise, skills and attributes, and Management consulting: A model course. This model course is intended for university programmes in consulting, but provides useful guidance for other consultant training courses. The International Council of Management Consulting Institutes (ICMCI) has compiled a Common body of knowledge for management consultants (see www.icmci.com, visited on 4 Apr. 2002).

3R. E. Boyatzis: The competent manager: A model for effective performance (New York, Wiley, 1982), and M. Kubr and J. Prokopenko: Diagnosing management training and development needs: Concepts and techniques, Management Development Series No. 27 (Geneva, ILO, 1989).

4Boyatzis, op. cit., pp. 28–29.

5The term “knowledge” is used here in a narrower sense than in knowledge management (cf. Chapters 1 and 19).

6See G. M. Bellman: Getting things done when you are not in charge (San Francisco, CA, Berrett-Koehler, 1992).

7See www.icmci.com.

8Useful suggestions on leading and coaching professional workers are in P. J. McKenna and G. J. Riskin: Herding cats: A handbook for managing partners and practice group leaders

(Edmonton, The Institute for Best Management Practices, 1995).

9See also R. Dawson: Developing knowledge-based client relationships: The future of professional services (Boston, MA, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2000), Ch. 10.

10See www.imc.co.uk, visited on 4 Apr. 2002.

822