This is the first of what will likely be several posts about life as a consultant. I won’t claim to be an expert, mind you. I don’t have twenty years experience as a consultant. By the way, why is twenty years always the timeframe touted when someone is exalted as having so much experience? Even if they have twenty-two or twenty-five or twenty-eight years in an industry, the usual phrase is “over twenty years.” But I digress.

I have been a consultant in the health insurance IT industry for nearly five years. I won’t claim to be an expert, but I have done it long enough to have picked up some tricks along the way that I’d like to share.

Consultants get a bad rap. Look no further than the way the “two Bobs” are portrayed in the movie Office Space. To some degree the reputation is warranted. I recently read a fantastic description of a consultant:

Someone who will borrow your watch to tell you the time.

Consultants are usually referred to as experts in their fields. Even Mark Twain weighed in when he referred to an expert as “an ordinary fellow from another town.”

The truth is that just like any role in any field, there are consultants who are very good at what they do and others who are not so great.

At a typical company, most employees have a role that is specialized. Trainers train. Documentation specialists write and format documents. Supervisors supervise. 

Consultants sometimes specialize as well. Some like to be project managers or take on managerial roles like the one I have now. But general consulting responsibilities require one to wear multiple hats. You have to analyze and interpret requirements. Perform root cause analysis for issues. Develop and test solutions. You need effective communication skills. You need to be able to present to a group. You need to know how to train people. In other words, you need to be sharp in many areas to be successful as a consultant.

A good consultant can take marching orders, but a consultant also needs the skill of mind reading. Often a client doesn’t know which direction to go. The client may not know how to provide direction for a consultant to help them. In this case, you chart your own path. You do the things that need to be done based on your experience and any direction you can extract.

The Consultant Code is the way that I operate as a successful consultant. I still have plenty more to learn, but what I have learned so far I would like to share.