A professional consultant is called for many reasons. You are a change agent and help businesses safely hop onto the next escalator while challenging beliefs.
There are a lot of pros out there about doing project-based work and walking out with a star on your forehead for solving intricate problems and the best part: doing an excellent job. But environments have their dynamics and at times you are picked to do a dirty job, like handling a controversial project with a few team members skeptical of your approach. As you create driving methodologies, you may indirectly showcase those who are not contributing to the interest and goals of the business. Then there are a few job losses. For a Human Resource or Labour consultant and the likes, this is part and parcel, but as an investment banker or engineer, this is not expected. But it happens.
Another thing is that there may be resistance as you map out a plan that everyone must align to, for your set purpose to be complete. This may come from employees and even stakeholders but you have to back-up ideas in the most unbiased way as a highly skilled individual.
Rest assured that you are there to assist in lifting a company and moving it forward. It’s important to understand how drastic of a transition you are handling because your timing may be sensitive. But you can do the dirty job and keeping your hands clean.
Seven points to note
- 1. Know the processes of a business and if incidents beyond you occur, hand it over to their relevant person.
- 2. You are greatly a support, so do not lose sight of what you are mandated to do.
- 3. Ensure that in the beginning you are clear of season the business is in and that everyone understands why you are there and how it all serves a bigger purpose.
- 4. Build good relationship regardless and drop knowledge to the novice or those willing to learn, one day they can translate that into skills and you will be remembered.
- 5. Complete the task at hand. It is mainly your project that you will be measured on.
- 6. Look at the tough circumstances as another opening to a new perspective. That then becomes a reference when you venture into tougher situations. To resolve, you will know what works and what doesn’t.
- 7. When you champion this, there’s a high probability that you are setting yourself up for a repeat service. Stay focused.
As a leader, would you choose Uber or Kodak?
Many realities test the leadership of organisations, like how flexible are you to change. A once was innovative business can easily become "traditional" with archaic approaches, like Kodak. It takes operating in a vacuum and ignoring the reshaping of businesses.
But the leader who understands that business must be part of society and realise trends, knows how to guide it into the modern world. The leader embraces new things and gives the business a chance to evolve. In this evolution, you need to pause and get the organisation behaving differently - behaving like a start-up and opening doors to flexible millennials who make up the largest percentage of the workforce and choose to do things differently (61% of millennials work outside the office) - like Uber.
The most remarkable leap is opening up doors to a freelance consultant, acquired through a hiring engine - an advanced platform that pairs you with exactly what you are looking for. These innovators (freelance consultants) close loops in businesses, help in cost-cutting, streamlining and press the refresh button with their new insight. Besides the attractive cost implications of hiring an independent consultant, they truly help with the bottom line and are belted with the best skills as people who walk in numerous organisations and industries.
As an innovative hub with a list of this calibre, here at LinkdPro we would like to know, which leader are you: would jump inside an Uber or rather be stuck with Kodak? You choose.