Why the irresistible consultants focus first on people, then on solutions

The skills that matter the most in consulting

Consulting is a people business.

Now, before you downgrade this whole post to just another platitude-filled piece of crap you can find anywhere on the internet, hear me out.

Consulting is a people business.

You will teach people.

You will report to people.

You will work with people.

You will argue with people.

You will buy and sell from and to people.

You will co-design new concepts with people.

You will share and explore ideas with people.

You will receive feedback from people.

You will give feedback to people.

You will collaborate with people.

You will reconcile with people.

You will learn from people.

Consulting at its core is about positively influencing the key decision makers (ie, other people) in an organization to drive change. The technical skills are secondary to the ability to connect with these people, win them over through empathy and reason, and inspire a shared sense of purpose.

See what I mean?

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Just about anything you will do in your consulting profession will have to do with people, one way or the other.

Everything around the work that you do with people might be different from consultant to consultant, and might even change over time for each of us.

For example, you might move industry of focus.

Your interests will be different over time.

Technology will change and progress.

20 years ago, I used to operate a solo business helping SMEs running their IT operations.

15 years ago, I used to work as a systems integrator for large organizations dealing with their finance systems.

10 years ago I was a specialist in core financial services business and technology re-engineering.

5 years ago I built a management consulting practice for a tech giant starting from scratch.

A lot changed over the course of 20 years.

The only constant? Having to handle, and work with, people to achieve some professional objective.

As innovator and architect Buckminster Fuller highlighted:

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”

Likewise, the industries, technologies, and techniques consultants apply will inevitably change in unpredictable ways over the arc of a career.

However, by focusing on timeless truths of what makes people, teams and organizations tick, consultants build transferable skills to evolve alongside shifting environments.

Seek first to understand the people, and the technical problems and solutions will come into focus.

The skills that matter most

At the start of my career, I focused entirely on getting good at whatever I was doing at that point in time.

I wanted to become an expert in the subject that I was handling.

I wanted to know everything in and around the topic.

If you had a problem in your SAP finance system, then you could safely come to me, and in 99 out of 100 situations I would give you a solution in a very short time.

I was an expert at the “current thing” I was working on.

At some point in my career, I realized that, if I wanted to make the step and become more than just the great guy who fixes things, I had to expand my competence from technology and business to human interactions.

I understood that the way we relate to people becomes more important than how good we are at a particular technology, at drawing data on charts, at manipulating Excel, or at coming up with new operating models.

The most brilliant solution will flounder without genuine understanding of, and connection with, the people impacted.

Famed physicist Daniel Goleman, who popularized the idea of emotional intelligence (EQ), noted EQ alone can be twice as important as purely cognitive capabilities (IQ) in determining outstanding job performance and leadership excellence.

The irresistible consultant, focused on forging strong ties and understanding unspoken needs, earns permission to drive change in a way the tactical expert never can.

Consulting is a people business, after all.

I realized, for example, that learning and practicing persuasion, negotiations, conflict management, effective communication, was going to pay dividends for far longer than learning the next trick on SAP or the next business framework.

The former are “appreciating skills”, the latter depreciate with time.

What people normally call “soft skills” are all but soft. They are as hard as rock; in fact they are typically harder (to learn and to put into practice) than what people commonly refer to as hard skills.

If you don’t believe me, just think of your colleague who is a whiz at whatever he does but can’t handle a conversation if his life depended on it, and can’t explain his job in normal English even if you pay him to do it.

I bet you didn’t have to think for too long at this one!

Standard answer to that colleague…

Appreciating skills are those whose value compounds over time, because they are the foundations upon which you build your career and your life. Everything around can and will change, but your appreciating skills will allow you to pivot smoothly to whatever scenarios your life is transitioning into.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett attributes almost all of his success to having strong communication and people skills, rather than any innate technical genius.

As he says:

“I’m not the smartest guy in the world by any measure... But I can assemble people who are smarter than myself and work well with them.”

The wisdom to recognize individual limitations and bring together complementary minds lies at the heart of consulting excellence.

Master communicators distinguish themselves by exceptional listening rather than just talking. Tuning into subtle verbal and nonverbal cues proves more decisive than isolated expertise.

Cultivating relationship talents and intuition separates the true thought leaders from the mere doers.

Improving your transferable meta-skills

I learned to find joy in the process of becoming better at all those transferable meta-skills I call “appreciating skills”.

I learned to love learning and practicing how to improve my communication, how to improve my writing and my speaking, how to become a more effective negotiator (for myself and the firms I worked for), how to enhance my quick learning abilities (so that I can easily pivot as everything around me changes).

I see my day-to-day consulting work as an opportunity to practice and get better.

I discovered my intrinsic motivation:

consistently improving at my “appreciating skills” while staying relevant in the value I provide to my team and clients as everything changes around us.

As you climb the proverbial ladder and you grow as a professional and as an individual, you will likely gain a newfound interest in leaving a legacy behind you.

You will find it worthwhile teaching other people what you learned.

You will feel almost obliged to show them where they can get to and what they can achieve if they manage to channel their motivation towards the few things that count.

80/20, Pareto rule: not everything is equally important and certainly not everything is equally urgent.

As inventor Charles Kettering wrote:

“The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”

Irresistible consultants crave fluidity, turning uncharted waters into playing fields for personal and collective advancement. When external forces shift, values and mindsets matter more.

An intrinsic drive towards self-betterment and service allows us to perpetually riding new waves instead of being swept away. The lifelong learners shape future generations, compounding their contributions essentially without any limit.

That’s why I’m still in this business and I’m clocking the second decade as a management consultant:

• I find joy in my learning journey

• I find pride in educating new generations of consultants

• I find happiness in sharing the few things I have figured out along the way

• I find it intellectually stimulating debating with young folks around subjects they are passionate about.

And I keep learning from them as much as they keep learning from me.