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.

My boss who is an SVP at my consulting company was onsite this week. He took us out to dinner on Monday. He had a stern rebuke for one of the consultants on the project who decided not to join the team without providing him an explanation. Bad move.

My boss met with the CEO of the client yesterday, and I texted him and asked how it went. He replied that the CEO heard great things about our resources and the work that’s been done. I replied with a gif of the A-Team logo.

While most of the consultants on this project are top shelf, there are a few who dog it. That’s my way of saying they are not “A players.” There’s Mr. No Show For Dinner, who has other challenges with work performance. There’s also Mr. Doze Off in a Meeting. Yes, I witnessed that with my own eyes yesterday. That consultant was at the team dinner with the rest of us the night before and was drinking copious amounts of alcohol. 

If I were a full-time manager at a company and one of my direct reports was falling asleep in a meeting, I would have to address the issue immediately. My situation is different because I’m a consultant like the rest of my colleagues. I’m in a manager role, but it’s not the same as a manager at the company. Still, I have to address unprofessionalism when it leads to poor performance and when it makes us all look bad.

I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he has a medical issue he’s dealing with. When someone is otherwise an exemplary worker, it is easier to give him the benefit of the doubt. When I get reports that he’s playing on his phone all day, taking long lunches, and see that his assigned work is not being completed promptly and accurately, that makes it tougher to let things slide.