Hiring a consultant can be a smart investment. It can also be an unnecessary expense.
The difference often comes down to how well you understand what you are trying to accomplish before you bring someone in.
Maybe something isn’t working and you need to figure out why. Maybe you want to improve an existing process, build something new, enter a new market, expand your business, or determine where to go next.
In each case, there is value in taking a step back and consulting yourself first.
1. Define What You Want to Accomplish
If you don’t know what you want to improve, change, investigate, build, expand, or understand—or you don’t know the question you want answered—outside consultation will likely be a waste of time and money.
Often, the objective is straightforward:
- “I want this built.”
- “I want this added.”
- “I need this process changed.”
- “I want to enter this market.”
- “I want to expand.”
- “I need to understand why this is happening.”
- “I want to know whether this opportunity makes sense.”
When the objective isn’t clear, however, you may not need a traditional consultant yet.
An expert can perform a focused outside assessment to help define the question, evaluate the situation, and provide an unbiased opinion. That can be a much smaller investment than hiring someone to manage an entire consulting engagement—and it can prevent you from spending money in the wrong direction.
2. Separate Symptoms From Causes
Once you know what you are trying to accomplish, take a closer look at what is driving the situation.
A company experiencing declining productivity might assume it needs more employees. The real issue could be an inefficient process, inadequate training, outdated technology, or poor communication.
Opportunities deserve the same scrutiny.
A company looking to grow might assume it needs to enter a new market. After examining the situation, it might discover that its best opportunity is actually to expand an existing service, reach a different customer segment, or improve its current offering.
You know your business better than an outside consultant does. If you have the expertise and resources to investigate what is happening, use them.
Just don’t stop at the first explanation.
3. Take a Holistic View
It is easy to evaluate an initiative from the perspective of the department responsible for it.
That can be a mistake.
A new technology implementation may look like an IT project, but it can affect training, staffing, security, processes, reporting, customers, and costs.
Entering a new market can affect marketing and sales, but it may also change operations, staffing, technology, legal requirements, supply chains, customer support, and financial needs.
Before moving forward, look across the organization and ask what else will be affected.
The more significant the change, the more important that broader view becomes.
4. Collaborate and Promote Visibility
Don’t make a major decision in isolation when the people affected by it can contribute useful information.
Bring the right people into the discussion. Talk to the employees who use the process. Talk to the people who support the system. Talk to the people who interact with the customer.
They may know things that aren’t visible in reports or documentation.
Collaboration also makes change easier to implement. People are more likely to support a decision when they understand the reasoning behind it and have had an opportunity to contribute.
And sometimes collaboration reveals that the expertise you thought you needed to hire already exists somewhere inside your organization.
5. Focus on Value
A solution isn’t automatically valuable because it is new, sophisticated, expensive, or technologically impressive.
What will it actually accomplish?
Consider the potential impact on:
- Revenue
- Cost
- Efficiency
- Customer experience
- Employee experience
- Quality
- Risk
- Reliability
- Growth
- Strategic capability
Then consider what it will take to achieve that value.
A $100,000 investment that produces $500,000 in measurable value may be an excellent decision. A $10,000 investment that produces $2,000 in value is not.
The same thinking applies to opportunities. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done.
Focus on Value.
6. Look Honestly at Your Resources
Your organization may have the expertise to do something internally but not the capacity.
Consider more than whether someone knows how to do the work.
Do you have:
- The necessary expertise?
- Enough people?
- Enough time?
- The required technology or tools?
- The budget?
- Experience with similar work?
A project that could be completed internally may still make more sense with outside assistance if your employees would have to spend six months doing it while neglecting higher-priority responsibilities.
DIY isn’t automatically cheaper if it pulls valuable resources away from the rest of the business.
7. Consider the Cost of Being Wrong
Every decision carries some level of risk.
For a relatively minor decision, learning through trial and error may be perfectly reasonable.
For a major initiative, the consequences can be much greater.
Consider what could happen if you make the wrong decision about:
- A major technology investment
- A market expansion
- A new business strategy
- A significant process change
- Security
- Compliance
- A large operational investment
If the cost of a mistake is substantial, paying for specialized expertise may be considerably cheaper than learning the hard way.
8. Recognize When You Need Expertise You Don’t Have
Your team doesn’t need to know everything.
Sometimes you reach a point where the knowledge available internally isn’t enough to move forward confidently.
A consultant can bring experience that would take years for an internal team to develop, particularly when the situation involves a specialized discipline, a major organizational change, or an unfamiliar market.
An outside expert may also recognize patterns your organization cannot see because everyone inside it is too close to the situation.
That’s not a weakness in your team.
It’s one of the reasons outside expertise exists.
9. Buy Only the Help You Need
Consulting doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
You might need an expert to:
- Assess your current situation
- Define an opportunity
- Answer a specific question
- Validate your approach
- Develop a strategy
- Evaluate a market
- Facilitate a workshop
- Design a solution
- Implement a solution
- Train your employees
- Review work your team has already completed
Be clear about which of these you actually need.
If an independent assessment will answer the question, don’t buy a six-month engagement.
If your organization needs specialized expertise to implement a major initiative, don’t spend months trying to develop that expertise internally just to avoid hiring a consultant.
The best consulting engagement is the one that provides the value you need without paying for services you don’t.
10. Make the Decision
After working through the questions above, you should have a better idea of which path makes sense.
Do it yourself when you understand the objective, have the necessary expertise and resources, and the risks are manageable.
Have an expert assess it when you aren’t sure what question to ask, what direction to take, or whether your assumptions are correct.
Get some consulting help—or have the consultant do it for you when you need specialized expertise, additional capacity, an independent perspective, or help navigating a significant initiative.
These aren’t permanent decisions. You can start internally, bring in an expert for an assessment, and then decide whether additional consulting is warranted.
You can also hire a consultant for one specific part of an initiative while keeping the rest of the work in-house.
Not Sure Which Option Is Right for You?
That’s exactly why we offer a free introductory consulting session.
You don’t need to know exactly what kind of consultant you need before talking to us. During the session, we’ll ask questions about your business, what you want to accomplish, the challenges or opportunities you’re facing, and the parameters you’re working within.
Even if you never hire us, those questions can help you think through your situation more clearly.
Once we understand what you’re trying to accomplish, we can help you consider your options:
1. Do it yourself.
You may already have everything you need. We’ll tell you that.
2. Have us assess it.
If you need an independent, unbiased look at the situation before deciding what to do, an assessment may be the right next step.
3. Get some consulting help—or have us do it for you.
Maybe you need an expert for a portion of the work. Maybe you need someone to guide your team. Or maybe you want us to take the lead and do the work. Either way, your input remains essential because you know your business better than we do.
There is no reason to pay for more consulting than you need.
Start with a conversation. We’ll help you figure out what makes the most sense.