Do not trust consultants! Too often consultancy is about out-sourcing responsibilities that used to be done in-house. The argument goes, don’t employ someone as it will be cheaper to pay a consultant. Such an approach breeds dependency on external support and can hollow out an organisation. I’m sure consultants of this type can take advantage of organisations, charging thousands of pounds for work that should be done in-house.
This is unfortunate because consultancy can offer far more than simply substituting for staff you cannot afford. So, here is why you should consider taking on a consultant:
- They bring skills to your organisation you otherwise lack. If you have a one-off problem or issue, such as developing or reviewing your web presence, it may be you don’t need to employ a permanent member of staff.
- Consultants can train your existing staff
- They can increase your turnover, outputs or support.
- They can help you see things in a new light and come up with new ideas or solutions to intractable problems.
Broadly there are two types of consultant:
Expert Consultants
The expert consultant augments the skills in your team. Sometimes they have skills specific to consultancy, they understand you need help with a particular problem and you want to be able to manage the problem into the future. However, they don’t necessarily do this. Some simply do something for you and then leave.
Web design is a good example. As an expert consultant your designer offers skills you lack and uses them to design a website for you. But if their expertise is entirely in coding they are not likely to be good designers. Real design demands some understanding of the needs of the client organisation. The web designer who can do this uses consultancy skills.
You may think I’m being unfair but in the community and voluntary sector, groups often take on a consultant to design their website, who simply supplies the expertise for a small fee or even as a volunteer. I suppose this can work and would like to hear from you if it has worked for you, especially if it has worked at little or no cost.
However, an expert consultant may not be what you need.
Non-Directive Consultants
The alternative is non-directive consultancy. Unlike the expert consultant they may bring no specialist knowledge to the table. Now you are the expert! The role of the non-directive consultant is to boost your thinking, to challenge you to think about your tasks and issues in new ways.
For a web designer non-directive skills can be valuable, especially where the client organisation wants to run its own website. Coding the site is only part of what needs to be done, the clients’ organisation will need to review its practices to accommodate supporting their website. Diagnosing and resolving the issues preventing your organisation from developing and maintaining your website is as essential to the success of the website as the technical stuff, sometimes more so.
Most web designers fall somewhere between these two approaches. If they are successful they need to be an expert in the technical stuff but also able to guide and support their client organisation. I am going to make the case in future posts for non-directive consultancy as an essential part of web design.
Why not share your experiences of consultancy? It can be effective but often fails to support the client organisation and so fails to provide sustainable solutions. Examples of successes and failures would be interesting. (They don’t have to be examples of web design!)
