Yogi Berra said “If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.” This certainly applies to consulting engagements. If you don’t begin with a picture of where you want to end up you won’t get what you want (or need).
At the start of every engagement you need to develop a clear set of expectations describing what you think will be different when your consultant is finished. An expectation can be something as simple as you’ll no longer have to deal with a specific personnel issue or something complex like you’ll have a fully functioning Medicaid system. You’ll likely have more than one expectation.
How do you go about figuring out what your expectations are? Use your imagination and pretend it’s 6 months after the consultants have completed their work. Everything is, of course, perfect from your perspective. Now ask yourself “What’s different now than when we started? What changed?”. Write down your answers. These are your initial expectations.
You need to share these expectations with the consultant at the start of the project (note: good consultant’s won’t wait for you to share it – they’ll try and drag your expectations out of you the first time you meet).
Does this mean the consultant will meet all your expectations? Of course not. When you present your expectations good consultants will inject their experience and knowledge into the conversation (that’s the reason you hired them right?). You’ll jointly develop a set of mutual expectations for your project. This is a good thing – it gets both you and the consultant bought into a common set of outcomes for the project. The jointly developed set of expectations should be written down used to regularly assess project progress and ultimately the success of the project.
Projects without a set of shared expectations wander ending up “somewhere else”. The question for you is “do you and your consultant know what will be different when the engagement is done?” If not perhaps it’s time to develop some mutual expectations.
This is part of a series of articles designed to help clients and their consultants have more effective and efficient engagements.