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jointly establish whether the assignment can be qualified as a success, a failure, or something in between.

Second, the consultant’s withdrawal terminates the consultant–client relationship. The atmosphere and the way in which this relationship is discontinued will influence the client’s motivation to pursue the project, and his or her attitude to possible future use of the same consulting organization. Here, too, the assignment should not be terminated with uncertain and mixed feelings. Ideally, there should be satisfaction on both sides about the relations that existed during the assignment. The client should be convinced that he has had a good consultant, to whom he would gladly turn again. The consultant should feel that he has been trusted and respected, and that working again for the same client would be another stimulating experience. The relationship has a financial dimension, too: both parties should feel that a proper price was paid for the professional service provided.

Professional consultants attach great importance to the way in which they terminate assignments. The last impressions are very significant, and an excellent performance at the end of an assignment leaves the door open for future work. Repeat business is important to management consultants, and is available only to those whose performance remains flawless until the very end of every assignment.

11.1 Time for withdrawal

To choose the right moment for withdrawal is often difficult, but a wrong decision can spoil a good relationship and jeopardize the success of the project.

Planning for withdrawal

Some assignments may be terminated too early, for example if:

●the consultant’s work on the project could not be completed;

●the client overestimated his or her capability to finish the project without having been sufficiently trained for it;

●the client’s budget does not permit the job to be finished;

●the consultant is in a hurry to start another assignment.

Instances of assignments that finish later than necessary are also frequent. This may happen if:

●the consultant embarks on a technically difficult project without making sure that the client is properly trained to take it over;

●the job is vaguely defined, and new problems are discovered in the course of the assignment;

●the consultant tries to stay longer than necessary.

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To avoid these situations, the question of timely withdrawal should be discussed at the beginning of the consulting process, when the consultant presents the whole assignment cycle to the client. The consulting contract should define when and under what circumstances the assignment will end. As already mentioned, the choices are numerous. The assignment may end after the diagnostic phase, after action planning, at some stage during implementation, or when implementation is completed and agreed results achieved.

It may be difficult at the time of signing the contract to determine the right moment for withdrawal. At such an early stage it is often impossible to foresee how implementation will progress, how deeply the client’s staff will be involved, and what new relations and problems will emerge or be discovered during the assignment.

That is why it is recommended that the assignment plan is reviewed at critical points during the assignment; at each review questions should be raised as to how much longer the consultant should stay, and what remains to be done before the assignment can be terminated.

Gradual withdrawal

In many situations, gradual withdrawal may be the best arrangement from both the client’s and the consultant’s point of view (see section 10.1).

Watching for withdrawal signals

Withdrawal signals, as some consultants call them, show that the client would like to terminate the assignment. They can be very overt, or indirect and hidden. The client may start being less frequently available to meet the consultant, or may indicate in some other way that enough time has been spent on the project. It is essential to be alert to these signals. This does not necessarily mean that the consultant should immediately pack up and leave if he or she has valid professional reasons for pursuing the work, but the point should be discussed frankly with the client.

Never stay longer than necessary!

If the client is convinced that he can proceed alone, the consultant should never insist on staying longer even if he does not share his client’s opinion. After all, he who pays the piper calls the tune, and it is the client who is paying the consultant.

Staying longer than necessary is unprofessional and damaging to the consultant’s image. Unfortunately, as one practitioner has put it, “some consulting outfits are like a fungus that gets inside the client and keeps finding new areas not in the original agreement and stays on and on, sucking the blood out until someone pulls the plug and says ‘enough’. Their advice is superb, but it just gets to be too much.”1

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11.2 Evaluation

Evaluation is a most important part of the termination phase in any consulting process. Without evaluation, it is impossible to assess whether the assignment has met its objectives and whether the results obtained justify the resources used. Neither the client nor the consultant can draw lessons from the assignment if there is no evaluation.

Yet many assignments are never evaluated, or their evaluation is superficial and of marginal interest. This is because of difficulties inherent in the evaluation of change in organizations and human systems. The number of factors affecting such systems is considerable and it may be difficult to isolate factors that change following a consulting intervention. For example, if the purpose of the assignment was to increase output, it cannot be taken for granted that a higher output achieved by the end of the assignment is due only to the intervention of the consultant. It may be that the increase is partly or completely due to other factors. In addition, some changes are difficult to identify, measure, describe and assess.

Evaluation can be the most delicate part of the consultant–client relationship and it may be more comfortable to avoid it, in particular if the client is not happy with the consultant’s performance and if it is unlikely that they would collaborate again. Financial reasons also play their role: even the simplest evaluation exercise will cost time and money, and the client may prefer to save this money, since it is not being used to develop something new.

Who should evaluate?

As with the whole consulting process, effective evaluation requires collaboration. Both the client and the consultant need to know whether the assignment has achieved its objectives and can be qualified as a success story.

The client has, of course, certain specific interests and viewpoints. He is evaluating not only the assignment but also the consultant and his performance. If the client is concerned to perform better next time, he will also make a selfevaluation, assessing his own technical and managerial performance in cooperating with the consultant, monitoring the progress of the assignment and making use of the advice received. In the same way, the consultant should evaluate his own and the client’s performance.

How much of this will be a joint exercise and what information will be shared is a matter of confidence and judgement. In an assignment that has been a true collaborative effort, evaluation is usually open and constructive. Yet no one can force the client and the consultant to share all the conclusions from their evaluations.

In certain cases, evaluation by an independent third party may be a requirement of the bank or agency that provided funds for the assignment. Independent evaluation may be the best way of preventing conflict and litigation when the client and the consultant cannot agree on the quantity and quality of results achieved and if fee payments are related to results.

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Evaluation will focus on two basic aspects of the assignment: the benefits to the client and the consulting process.

Evaluating the benefits to the client

The reasons for evaluating the benefits of the assignment are self-evident. The benefits define the change achieved, a change that must be seen as an improvement, as a new value added to the client’s business. Basically, the benefits are evaluated by comparing the situations before and after the assignment. This is only possible if the evaluation was foreseen in designing the assignment, i.e. in defining the results to be achieved and the criteria for measuring and assessing them.

Evaluation will seek answers to the following questions:

–Has the assignment achieved its purpose?

–What specific results and benefits to the client have been achieved?

–What expected results could not be achieved?

–Has the assignment achieved some unexpected and supplementary results?

In typical management consulting assignments there are six kinds of benefit or result:

●new capabilities;

●new systems;

●new relationships;

●new opportunities;

●new behaviour;

●new performance.

New capabilities. These are the new skills acquired by the client: they may be diagnostic and other problem-solving skills, communication skills, changemanagement skills, or technical or managerial skills in the particular areas affected by the assignment (e.g. new ways of raising finance for the business). New client capabilities in serving customers are particularly important (e.g. ability to deliver new products and services or to meet quality standards in new countries). New capabilities also include qualities such as the client’s increased ability to take action, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, ability to innovate, and sensitivity to environmental issues. In a nutshell, the consultant should have transferred knowledge to the client and the client should have become a more competent and more independent decision-maker.

New systems. Many assignments help to introduce changes in specific systems, such as for information management, marketing, production and quality management, personnel recruitment and appraisal, and preventive maintenance. These systems can be considered as assignment outcomes if they are, or are likely to become, operational.

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New relationships. The assignment may have helped to establish new business and other relationships essential to the future of the client’s business, such as new strategic alliances, subcontracting arrangements, consortia for implementing construction projects, or agreements on benchmarking.

New opportunities. These may concern various aspects of the client’s business. The consultancy may have identified potential new markets, cheaper sources of raw materials, new technologies to be explored, land and buildings to be acquired, and so on.

New behaviour. Changed behaviour is a term applied mainly to interpersonal relations (e.g. between managers and their subordinates, or between cooperating teams from two different departments). However, it also embraces individual behaviour in work situations (e.g. whether or not a worker uses a safety device, how sales personnel treat customers, or whether a general manager stops postponing unpleasant decisions).

New performance. New performance is achieved if changes in the five areas mentioned above produce improvements in economic, financial, social or other indicators used to measure performance. These changes can be observed at individual (workstation), unit (workshop, team, group, plant, department), or organizational (enterprise, agency, ministry) level.

Better performance is an overriding goal and should be used for evaluating outcome and showing benefits whenever possible. Consulting that improves capabilities without aiming at improved performance could be an academic exercise, and a luxury from the financial point of view. It does happen, however, that changed performance cannot be used to assess results (e.g. new capabilities have been developed and opportunities identified, but the client has to postpone the application of measures that will bring about superior performance). Also, under certain circumstances, the client’s improved business and managerial capabilities can be regarded as more important and of longer duration than immediate improvements in economic and financial performance.

Short-term and long-term benefits

In some assignments it may be necessary to distinguish and compare the shortterm and long-term benefits. Impressive short-term results may ignore the future prospects and needs of the business and may be achieved to the detriment of the client’s longer-term interests. Conversely, modest or no shortterm results may be justified if the assignment has focused on longer-term benefits. The future prospects of the client’s business, and long-term results, should be always kept in mind, even if the assignment has pursued short-term benefits above all.

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Evaluating the consulting process

The evaluation of the consulting process is based on the assumption that the effectiveness of the process strongly influences the results of the assignment. This concerns assignments aimed at behavioural changes above all: if new sorts of behaviour and processes are to become established in the client organization (result), the consultant must choose and propose to the client a consulting style and intervention method (process) that can produce the desired outcome. For example, it is unlikely that a real change in the client’s problem-solving capabilities will be achieved by the consultant giving a lecture or distributing a technical note on problem-solving and decision-making.

The consultant–client relationship and the intervention method develop during the assignment. Different methods can be used, and the process can be more or less collaborative and participative, and more or less effective. The evaluation should reveal this. The principal dimensions of the consulting process to be evaluated are as follows.

The design of the assignment (the contract). It is useful to begin by examining the start of the relationship. The questions to be raised include the following:

●How and by whom was the need for the consultancy established?

●How was the consultant chosen? What criteria and procedures were used?

●Was the purpose of the consultancy clear? Was it unduly narrow or vague?

●Was the design of the assignment clear, realistic and appropriate with regard to the client’s needs and particular conditions?

●Did the original definition of purposes, objectives, results and inputs provide a good framework and guidance for the assignment plan? Were the objectives sufficiently demanding but not impossibly so? Was the definition of expected results clear, detailed and precise?

●Was the consulting style properly defined, discussed and understood? Were people briefed at the outset about their roles and responsibilities?

The quantity and quality of inputs. In addition to assessing the original definition of required inputs in the assignment plan, evaluation should examine the inputs that were provided by the consultant and the client. The main questions are:

●Did the consultant provide a team of the required size, structure and competence?

●Did the client provide the resources (human and other) needed for the assignment?

The consulting mode (style) used. The consultant and the client should assess in retrospect the events that took place and the relationship that existed during the assignment. They may ask in particular:

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●What was the nature of the consultant–client relationship? Was there an atmosphere of mutual trust, understanding, respect and support?

●Was the right consulting style used? Was it adapted to the client’s capabilities and preferences, and adjusted to the task at hand?

●Was every opportunity taken to increase the client’s involvement in the assignment?

●Was proper attention paid to the learning dimension of the assignment? What was done to transfer knowledge and know-how to the client?

●Did the consultant scrupulously observe all ethical and behavioural norms of the profession?

The management of the assignment by the consultant and the client.

Gaps and errors in the original assignment plan can be corrected and modifications required by changed conditions can be made if the assignment is aptly managed by both partners. An evaluation should address the following questions:

●Was the necessary flexibility built into the original design of the assignment?

●How did the consulting firm manage and support the assignment? How did it react to complaints and suggestions coming from the client?

●How did the client control and monitor the assignment?

●Did the consultant and the client respect the timetable?

●Was there an interim reporting and evaluation at key points in the assignment? What action was taken on the basis of it?

Evaluation tools

Priority should be given to collecting and examining hard data that permit quantitative assessment. In addition, identifying and examining opinions is important, particularly for evaluating the consultant–client relationship and the consulting style. Classical techniques are used, including interviews, observations, questionnaires and discussions at meetings (see Chapter 8).

A frank discussion between the client and the consultant is essential. Step by step, the discussion should review what happened in the client’s and in the consultant’s opinion, as well as the causes underlying particular attitudes and behaviours, achievements and errors.

The evaluation should be summarized in a short report, which may be part of the final assignment report, or may be presented separately (e.g. if the evaluation of results takes place several months after the completion of the assignment).

When to evaluate

There is a case for an evaluation as the assignment is coming to an end. Some benefits to the client may already be identifiable and it is possible to evaluate

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the consulting process in retrospect. The end-of-assignment evaluation is certainly the most important one. But it should not be the only one. Delaying evaluation until the end of implementation may mean that it is too late to suggest any improvements in the assignment, and any suggestions will be of interest only for future assignments. That is why interim evaluations should be foreseen at the end of the diagnostic and the action-planning phases. They should be treated as a normal part of the joint control and monitoring of the assignment by the consultant and the client. If necessary (e.g. in long and complex assignments), even within diagnosis, action planning and implementation, there may be a need for several evaluation exercises to review progress and interim results and, possibly, to adjust the assignment plan and the work methods used.

On the other hand, it is often impossible to complete evaluation right away at the end of the assignment. If measurable results cannot be identified immediately, or if the projected performance cannot be achieved until some time later, there is a case for follow-up evaluation.

Independent evaluation by the consultant

Clients will have their own policies and practices for evaluating the use of consulting and other professional services. A client may even choose not to evaluate a completed assignment. To a consultant, assignment evaluation is one of the basic tools for managing quality, controlling and developing staff, and building excellent relations with existing clients. Evaluation of completed assignments is a part of the consultant’s knowledge management. As a matter of principle, a consultant should evaluate every assignment for his or her own benefit, even if the client has decided not to evaluate.

The questions to be asked are not very different from those mentioned above, although the focus may be slightly modified. The consultant will stress self-evaluation, looking specifically at areas where the consulting firm has experienced problems and seeks to make improvements.

It is difficult to be objective and unbiased in self-evaluation. Some consulting firms therefore seek feedback from clients, using various datagathering and evaluation instruments. Questionnaires submitted to clients are the preferred instrument. The questions should invite the client to be frank about every aspect of the relationship and the work performed, including the competence and attitude of the consulting staff, their flexibility, behaviour, creativity, availability, helpfulness and other qualities that make the difference between mediocre and excellent assignments.2 If the client takes the trouble to answer, the consultant should in turn provide feedback to thank the client and tell him or her what action will be taken on the answers and suggestions.

Other frequently used instruments include interviews, discussions with senior personnel in the client firm, follow-up visits, study of the client’s internal evaluation reports (if made available to the consultant), and similar.

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