15 Things Consultants Add That You Should Be Doing On Your Own

There is a bit of a misconception in the Lean community about the value that consultants bring to the table in terms of helping with specific projects. The consensus view is that consultants provide expertise and knowledge to their clients. This is true, but they provide a great deal more than that.

The problem is that those extras that they are providing are generally things that people can, and should, be doing on their own. The list below includes many of these things that hiring an outsider provides that a business, even one with limited continuous improvement expertise, can do without getting help.

(Note that this list focuses on larger, cross-functional projects. You should still be making lots of little improvements every day.)

1. URGENCY

Continuous improvement is far too often a back burner activity. It is done when all of the production work is complete. Unfortunately, as most of you know, production work is never done. Even when something is on the calendar, as the date creeps closer, it is simple matter to push it back. Having a consultant on the calendar makes it much harder and costlier to change.

You can replicate this to a degree internally. If you create a continuous improvement calendar, and assign resources, the truth is that it will be just a piece of paper. But if you require top level approval to change the calendar, it becomes more difficult to do so. Eventually, you want to get rid of any kind of bureaucratic administrative work such as this, but in the short term, it sends a message that it is not OK to miss planned dates.

2. PRIORITIZATION

Companies have a lot of improvement ideas. They often, though, skip the step of prioritization and get too many things on their plate. Then they spread resources out among multiple projects, delaying results for all of them. This also dilutes the talent on the teams. When a company brings a consultant in, they tend to assign their best and brightest to the project and send it to the front of the line with the most resources. Obviously, they will select the most important projects to get this attention.

A coordinated calendar can help, but again, there may be limited benefit if it is just a piece of paper. If, however, it is owned by a value stream manager, there is more emphasis on what is good for the whole team. Prioritization is, by definition, unequal, and can create bad feelings. Hard decisions require strong leadership.

3. FOCUS

Prioritization addresses what to do first. Focus is more about what NOT to do. Companies get long lists of ideas, and start chasing squirrels. They get easily distracted and run around trying to do every little project that attracts their attention. Unfortunately, those projects often have low return on investment. Consultants give leaders a reason to say no in a way that they otherwise might not.

Be realistic about what projects have a chance. Make a list and limit how long it can be, or assign points to projects and cut off the list that don’t have enough. Make sure that points are not unlimited, or everything will be deemed important. The key is to say no to the things that have the lowest bang for the buck.

4. ATTENTION

There is a well-known phenomenon called the ‘Hawthorne Effect‘ in which teams and people perform better when they know they are being observed. Consultants tend to generate that response in people. It is further amplified, not because they care about what the consultant thinks, but because team members know that the company leadership will pay attention to what the consultant is doing.

If a leader paid the same attention to a team without a consultant, the impact would be similar. I worked with two different companies that used Shingijutsu consultants, rather pricey Japanese consultants with links to the early days of Toyota’s Lean efforts. Both companies did daily leaders meetings and an end-of-the-week report out regardless of whether there was a consultant. Which do you suppose had better attendance? Bottom line is that people perform better when they know it matters enough to leaders to show up. Of all the factors on this list, this is by far the easiest. Leaders…go to project meetings, especially the end of the week report out.

5. QUESTIONS/DATA COLLECTION

When a leader is going to write a big check, she asks more questions. These questions often have unknowns associated with them. When it is an internal project, we often rush blindly into it. When there is a consultant coming, we tend to get answers before we commit.

Project planning processes and checklist go a long way towards preventing this problem. Make a data collection gate where preliminary information must be collected prior to moving forward.

6. GOAL SETTING

Closely related to questions is goal setting. Think of a project to improve on time delivery. Failing to ask questions means that we might not know what the current rate is, or where the problems are. But even once we know those things, we often do projects without setting clear goals that we will hold ourselves to. When a consultant comes in, goals are a big deal. Companies want to get more back than they paid, so they evaluate how effective the consultant was in making change.

This seems relatively simple—set goals before a project, right? Well, there is more to it than that. You have to make sure that the goals are SMART, and that they don’t change when there is an obstacle that pops up. I recommend posting goals and progress for projects. Make sure that any changes are apparent, with an explanation. If it is OK to simply change a number, it masks that goals are not real.

7. RIGOR

It is hard to find a person even remotely interested in continuous improvement who does not see the value of following a process on the factory floor. When you ask those same people to create a project team to solve a problem, any semblance of a process often goes out the window. A consultant, on the other hand, likely has a process that that they ask you to follow in both planning for a project and in actually doing the work.

Put a process in place for improvement projects that require a team. You should be doing quick little daily improvements on the fly, but as the project gets bigger, a process prevents waste.

8. DISCUSSION/COORDINATION

When teams do projects, they often leap into action on their own. They don’t communicate what they want to do to the rest of the organization. As a result, they often duplicate effort, or work at odds with each other. When a consultant is used, companies generally talk about what is going to happen more, and as a result, more people get involved in the conversation.

This is a relatively easy item to fix. Make sure that project plans and schedules are posted. Also, include a review of the plan in operations reviews (monthly meetings).

9. RESOURCE PLANNING (TOOLS/EQUIPMENT)

Many projects fail because teams scramble for the materials and tools that they need. They often end up trying a less effective alternative when they give up scrounging for the needed materials. Consultants generally have a good understanding of what might be needed and can direct a team to have certain materials on hand and the necessary tools available.

If you want to be a company that focuses on continuous improvement, you need to commit to it. That means creating project spaces stocked with tools and materials. Do it once, and you’ll have it for all future projects.

10. UNITY OF EFFORT

Companies often act as a collection of many little organizations. When you bring a consultant in, they may work with several teams at once. It is not a big leap to get them working together, often to the point of having complementary projects or shared training.

Good planning calendars and strong processes lead to teams sharing effort. In many cases, just talking about problems openly and regularly drives this cooperation. Monthly operations reviews and continuous improvement steering committees are both good forums for this coordination.

11. STAFFING FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

When I worked as an internal consultant or as a manger running a project, I have frequently had team members pulled off my team at the last minute. As an external consultant, it is very uncommon for a manager to come into a project and take a person out for an extended duration, and even more rare for a person to be pulled from the project team altogether, especially after they were involved in the planning.

This long term answer is that project time must be factored into the staffing equation. If leaders treat it as extra work, their teams will not see CI as a priority. There needs to be some capacity to work on projects built into the headcount. I even recommend that a resource team is created to have people to support projects and backfill for employees that are on teams.

12. CREDIBILITY

As a consultant, I am expected to know stuff. For most projects, especially those early in a team’s development, the information I give is pretty fundamental. Many of the people on the teams I coach are already pretty well-versed in Lean. I saw the same thing when I was an employee at a company working with external consultants. They tried not to flood us with high level concepts until we got the basics down, so we had a lot of people who already knew what the consultants were advocating. Sometimes, though, it takes hearing it from an outsider to believe it.

There is the old adage, “familiarity breeds contempt.” This applies here. If you are doing something revolutionary or making a major overhaul, it makes sense to bring in a consultant. But if you are spreading a proven concept to a new work area, you’ll need to get a track record of success to build internal credibility. That means numerous projects with a concerted effort to create internal expertise. If you want to be a strong company with a continuous improvement culture, you’ve absolutely got to develop internal Lean talent.

13. ROADMAP

There is a term called ‘kamikaze kaizen‘ or ‘drive-by kaizen‘ that basically means that the project is unconnected to anything relevant. Any consultant worth using will ask about the big picture. They’ll want to know why this project is important and how it fits into the big picture. In effect, they want to see where this project fits into the roadmap to get you where you want to go.

Over and over, I tell people to start their continuous improvement efforts with policy deployment. The reason people don’t use a roadmap in planning is more often than not, because one does not exist. Get one.

14. FOLLOW-UP

Backsliding is one of the greater risks of projects. A team comes in and makes some changes, but leaves a few key things unfinished. If the get done, things would get better, but interim steps become permanent very quickly, especially if there is no follow-up. Consultants, at least the good ones, check in to make sure those follow-up activities are being worked on.

There is no secret sauce here. Leaders just need to mark follow-up dates on their calendar and then actually go out and ask about status. They also need to be firm about not letting dates slide. Follow-up is useless if due dates are optional.

15. LEADER INVOLVEMENT

People tend to be starved for leadership. They may go days or weeks without seeing a boss above their direct supervisor. Consultants show up or they don’t get paid. Bosses, on the other hand, are conspicuously absent far too often.

Again, no big secret on how to fix this. Leaders need to show up. If there is a kick-off event, show up. During the project, show up unannounced. At leaders’ meetings, show up. At report outs, show up. Obviously, that is not all there is to it, but showing up is the first step.

As a consultant, there is absolutely value I can provide in creating a culture, helping avoid mistakes, charting a path, and getting people started on doing independent projects. If you are considering hiring a consultant, or are already using one regularly, look over this list and think about why you are bringing that person in. If you need help because you don’t know how to do something, that’s a good reason to get help. If you have tried something a few times and haven’t solved the problem, that’s a good reason to get help rather than just beating your head against something. If you have a big risk of failure and want a second opinion, again, by all means, call for help.

But if the issue is that you are passing the things in the list along to a consultant, you are going to have an uphill battle at creating a continuous improvement culture.