158 ◾ Odyssey—The Business of Consulting
ago—determining your ceiling as a consultant? One Odyssey candidate told
us, “My mom and dad programmed me for hard work, not smart work. I
find myself measuring success from the hours I put in, whether they gener-
ate value or not.”
Expectations about yourself represent one of the most powerful
manifestations of this principle. Certain fundamental expectations are
essentialto successful consulting competency. These essentials include
high levels of self-confidence, self-responsibility, self-respect, and
self-actualization.
Key influencers, such as teachers and supervisors, can have a lifelong,
profound effect on the scope of your self-fulfilling prophesies as a consul-
tant—if you let them. We tend to build expectations around what the boss
expects us to do. If we are not careful, we let the client become our new
boss, and this limits the relationship to this mode of interaction. For mutual
benefit, the client–consultant relationship needs to be a peer-level relation-
ship based on mutual respect and trust.
An organization’s expectations may center on productivity, a psycho-
logical or cultural buy-in, and a sense of loyalty to the objectives of the
organization. However, the expectations between client and consultant are
not always clear. When implicit or explicit expectations are broken, there
is inevitably a ripple effect of adverse consequences. Whenever different
departments, teams, or people from different disciplines interface, you can
expect conflicting expectations.
Meeting and exceeding expectations has been the customer service
mantra for more than a decade. Delivering outstanding customer care can
only happen if deep-seated cultural principles are present in the organiza-
tion. Loudly proclaiming, in promotional or marketing campaigns, that “we
are the best” and “the customer is king” can have a boomerang effect if
the expectations of customer and company are mismatched. This is fallow
ground for the consultant, who can assist in the embedding of values and
customer service delivery practices.
“Under promise and overdeliver” is a powerful way of managing client
expectations. For example, if you promise to deliver a proposal by Friday
and do so on Monday, your client will be disappointed. If you deliver it on
Thursday, you have risen in their estimation.
Consultants often feel the pressure to promise and get caught up in
urgency mode, although, in fact, rapid delivery may not be necessary.
Consulting propositions are rarely life-or-death scenarios and, in fact, often
benefit from gestation time.