Hired Guns: Maximizing When and How to Engage Consultants

Catalog description

Businesses often engage consultants for their expert opinions and advice at different junctures in the business cycle; ensuring how this process is managed and adds value is a critical leadership skill. Students in this course analyze the different roles and responsibilities of internal and external consultants and evaluate how and when to engage and manage them. In addition, students will review a series of salient techniques and practices typically used by consulting firms and individual consultants to effectively manage their work and generate actionable insights. Topics include: diagnosing business issues; identifying challenges with organizational culture; managing the ethics and tradeoffs in consulting assignments; evaluating how a consultant’s qualifications are presented and vetted; structuring an engagement and joint scope of work; managing client communications and reactions to consultants around key interactions, e.g. collecting data/discovery, accessing and assessing resources, monitoring progress and scope changes, reporting results, achieving engagement closure, and re-contracting.