High-Impact Consulting: How Clients and Consultants Can Work Together to Achieve Extraordinary Results

by Robert H. Schaffer

In this new and revised edition of the landmark book High-Impact Consulting, Robert H. Schaffer reveals how senior managers unwittingly collude with their consultants to perpetuate the great waste inherent in "the five fatal flaws of conventional consulting." Drawing on his own work with companies-- Motorola, Rio Tinto, IBM, General Reinsurance Corporation, The World Bank, and other successful organizations-- Schaffer offers a field-tested approach to working with consultants that has proven to get results. He identifies the key elements of an effective project design?particularly that project objectives are defined in terms of client results rather than just consultant deliverables. The process enables clients to be certain that the work is carried out in ways that ensure success.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published February 15, 2002

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schaffer puts his finger on a painful problem that has hurt businesses and their consultants since both got together: there’s a big difference between diagnosing the problem and doing something about it. He identifies five fatal flaws of conventional consulting, including defining the project in the consultant’s terms, ignoring client readiness, going to grandiose, too hands-off, and too much work by the consultants themselves. Instead, you need to define the project in terms of client results, you need to realistically assess the client’s capability, you need to tackle manageable bites, develop a working partnership, and get the client to do most of the work.

He’s absolutely right. And it’s hard to do. I imagine it’s why McKinsey only offers advice – it’s much safer that way.

The book is an interesting cautionary tale for public speakers who advocate change. They need to remember Schaffer’s five points, and create a speech that talks about the issues in the audience’s terms, you need to meet the audience’s level of ability to handle change, you need to break it down into digestible bits, especially because speeches are such inefficient ways to absorb information, you need to get to know your audience, and you need to turn the audience loose on the problem rather than doing all the work for them.

[Frank Thun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good ideas how to define a project