The question every consultant should be able to answer

Being an extraordinarily sad person, I spent part of my vacation reading Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.

I normally give self-help books a wide berth, but Vanderkam is a journalist, more interested in interviewing people who squeeze a lot out of their week (all 168 hours of it) than in providing career counselling. One of the points she makes early on is that we would all use our time better if we were clear about what we’re really good at, what we can do better than those around us. Making our time productive and fulfilling depends on maximising the amount of waking / working time we spend doing this rather than doing stuff we’re not particularly good at.

Corporations have known this for a long time, of course, and the idea of outsourcing your non-core activities at a personal level is perhaps just a convoluted way to describe delegation. What intrigued me more was Vanderkam’s discussion about how hard we find it to articulate what we’re really good at. This is because she doesn’t couch competence in terms of traditional subjects (“I’m a better engineer than you.”) but at a more fundamental level which can apply both at work and at home (“I’m really good at putting things together in interesting ways, whether that’s as an engineer or as a parent playing with my children”).

That brings me to consulting. If I was a client I’d be tempted to ask the consultants I work with what their core competence is. I suspect the answer would be along the traditional lines (“I’m more of an expert in this subject than you are”) and that’s fine as far as it goes. But I’d like to understand it at a more profound level: what is it that they are better at than I am? Their response would be important in two ways. First, it would be a helpful check on what they’re doing and how they’re adding value. If their role is to analyse data, but they claim that clear communication is what they’re best at, then perhaps I don’t have the right consultant for the job. Second and more importantly, I suspect some wouldn’t be able to answer the question – and that really would be a damning indictment. The whole idea of consulting is predicated on core competences – that it’s hugely inefficient for organisations to have every skill and capability always available in their organisation – so why would I want to work with a consultant who can’t tell me what that is.