Business consultants and their challenges - Originally published at http://kamyarshah.com/business-consultants-and-their-challenges/

1. Business Consultants and Their Challenges:
If you take a minute and look at some of the articles about business management, you couldn’t
be blamed for concluding that business consultants and management consultants have earned
themselves a less than stellar reputation.
Many conclude that business consultants have no future in small business for a variety of
reasons including track record, cost, as well as viability. All these conclusions could be
sufficiently justified based on all the past/current information.
Yet they are not 100% accurate: business consulting as a discipline as well as business
consultants as experts have never been more important and vital to the success of small
business. Let’s have a look at the why and how.
Why?
The answer to the why is rather simple: choices. Take a step back and think about what has
happened over the last few years: a rise in available tools and services have created a great
deal of competition creating a vast marketplace with immense choices in virtually every
subcategory of business products and services.
How?
Now that we have so many choices in selecting our vendors and service providers, the real
question is: how do we choose the right one? Does SMB have the experience or the human
capital to make those decisions? Of course, some SMB will fare better than others but the
majority are unlikely to have internal HR capacities/ HR capital to make the most out of those
choices.
Business Consultants to the Rescue
Deploying advisors of any kind has been a time-tested method, and there is no difference in this
case. Business Consultants much like any other special advisors have to be selected carefully
and purposefully. Yet, more importantly, selection should be a deliberate step in addressing the
internal deficiencies of the organization.
Selection should start with analyzing the business needs/internal deficits. Optimally the
selection should be based on the conscious and deliberate understanding that no organization
has all the needed expertise “in-house”. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case: most of the time
SMB leadership resorts to deploying external advisors and consultants either out of fear or
several trial and error situations that have gone horribly wrong.
Now What?

2. Once the consulting entity has been selected the core mission begins. The steps that follow
may vary a great deal and are not the subject of this writing; however the challenges in
achieving the end results are.
Traditionally speaking, organizational leadership is the deciding factor in success and failure. All
things being equal, the success of a business consultant will greatly depend on the backing of
the senior leadership. It is fair to assume that the biggest challenge will be the organizational
culture that will inherently resist changes. Hence it is the job of the senior leadership to provide
a conducive environment for success. Steps to achieve success could include vocal and strong
public support, immediate actions based on the consultant recommendations as well as
“transfer of trust”. Such steps will pave the way to a smoother and more effective environment
that will lead to success.
In turn, the consultants have their own challenges that could influence the final outcome. Some
of those challenges include aligning vendors and third parties, managing the emotional impact
of change as well expectation management. All of those could fall under the umbrella term of
“change management”.
Many times one or more factors that are mentioned above can and will stray away from the
original plans and create dynamic situations that can chip away from success. Hence, it is vital
to dynamically and consistently adapt both planning and execution to maximize the potential
outcome.
Ultimately, the deployment and end results of special advisors/business consultants are
multidimensional and progressive in nature. The true route to success will inherently have to
include uncomfortable variables that will challenge organizational synergy as well as internal
dynamics. Those will all have limited but lasting impact that will shape the final outcome.