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Are you a consultant? But what is your specialty? Are you in front of your computer all day long?
You know, there are more and more jobs where computer has become a central tool, and you might not escape it either. And being a consultant can take many different forms, depending on your field, the customer, and your expertise.
Ok ok, but what are you doing?
What you must understand is that, as consultants, we are called by a customer to help him solve problems he is encountering. And for each type of problem, you have a different type of consultant. A bit like when you have back pain, you don’t go to the same doctor as when you have vision problems, or when you have a stomach ache.
It still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing… What are you a specialist in? A dentist or an oncologist?
My specialty is helping companies to organize themselves better, to better coordinate their teams and better manage their activities.
It doesn’t mean much to me… what kind of doctor would you be?
Good question, I would say a mix between rheumatologist and neurologist. The companies that I support do not have a well-identified pathology. I am not appointed following an accident where she lost mobility. In general, it is rather that with time, they lose little by little in fluidity, in reactivity. There comes a moment when they realize that they cannot move any more, or that it requires too much effort: they are no longer efficient.
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We then step in to put oil into the cogs, sometimes reorganize the cogs, and ensure that information flows well between the muscles and the brain. Both from the brain to the muscle to ensure that the arm is going in the direction requested by the brain, at the right pace and without too much latency. And from the body to the brain, so that it has a good understanding about what is going on in the body, and can more quickly detect potential problems.
But rheumatologists are more for old people, right? Are you actually the old business doctor?
I had never seen it from that angle, but you could say yes. Companies have a much longer lifespan than humans, and the oldest companies can still be very bright and dynamic. We often say “age is a state of mind” and for companies I think it is even more true.
So your job is to identify what is a little rusty in companies and then give them a new lease of life?
It’s exactly that! Moreover, in our toolbox, we are inspired by a lot of younger companies such as Spotify or Google. They have developed more efficient management and piloting methods than older companies. At the same time, they started from nothing, so they were able to grow with these innovative practices. And this is the main difficulty for older companies: how to transform to adopt these innovative practices.
Ok I’m starting to understand, but what is your daily job?
In general, we are commissioned by the brain, or by the part of the brain responsible for hands mobility for example…
Don’t you want to stop with your analogy with the human body?
As you prefer, let’s get into my daily life. It is often the information systems department that assigns us to improve the efficiency of its operating model, review the alignment of its departments with its businesses, or overhaul its management model, as well as the associated governance. The goal is to make them more agile, that’s kind of the buzz word at the moment.
Hmmm… I didn’t understand anything except the word agile!
It is both the most important word and the least important. This is the most important because behind this word, you will find plenty of principles that we try to apply every day:
- Simplicity
- Collaboration
- Reduction of inefficiencies
- Adaptation to change
- Transparency
- Importance of feedback
- Continuous improvement
But at the same time the term itself does not have much interest, some will call it lean without knowing the difference. Others will tell you that companies have followed these principles for decades, and sometimes they will be right.
So with the toolbox I mentioned just before, these principles and the experience of my previous missions, I support department managers and team managers to make their organization more efficient, efficient, agile, innovative …
But where did you learn all this? At university?
Not at all. Well, I may not have carefully followed everything from all the courses that I should have taken… More seriously, it remains quite innovative practices, and universities and schools are often not the best placed to teach them. So it was when I joined my consulting firm that I discovered these new concepts, internally with other consultants, or in the field with customers.
Afterwards I also spend a lot of time reading articles and books on these subjects to be more relevant in front of my client. And you must start to realize it now, business rheumatologist is a very broad subject! It can range from issues around management and leadership, to the division of teams and departments, through methods of synchronizing these teamsand departments, defining objectives,monitoring financial, governance, not to mention all the more technical aspects of development and deploymentof applications. So there is always something to learn, it’s a bottomless pit, that’s what makes it interesting to me.
But how can you help a business? The people in charge certainly have more experience than you, why would they listen to you?
Very good point! When I started I was asking myself the same question. I will again use the analogy with the human body. If I take the example of a 30-year-old person, it’s been 30 years since she has lived and directed her body every day as she sees fit, according to her will and constraints. She is thus the person who knows herself best and who knows best what she wants to do. But don’t you think the gastrologist knows better than this person how her stomach works? and that he is better placed than this person to take care of his stomach?
It’s the same principle with companies. There is no doubt that an information systems director knows his job better than I do and in which direction he wishes to go. But on specific points such as “how to adopt this innovative practice”, I will be more skilled than him, quite simply because I specialized in these questions.
So if I understand correctly, your job is, based on your experience, to identify how to make companies or parts of companies more innovative in the way they work?
We could sum it up like that, yes. So the main part of my work is to understand the specificities of the company, its problems. Then according to management team’s strategies, describe how they could better organize themselves, and if necessary help the teams transform.
And so to answer your question about what I do, it is often:
- describing how the company operates today
- identifying with the client a new mode of operation that would make sense for him
- describing it with precision so that he can visualize what this means in concrete terms and what he could gain from it
- defining a plan that would allow these new practices to be put in place
- and finally implementing them
This is also why if I intervene throughout the cycle from the identification of current issues to their resolution, missions can be quite long. But at the same time you can create real relationships with your customer. You get to the bottom of subjects and do not just “make PowerPoint”. You see the whole company/department transform.
It’s super interesting! And when you talk about agile practices or new organizational models, could you give me some examples?
Glad to hear you say that the consulting is interesting! For the examples of agile practices or organizational models, I will tell you more about them next time, it’s a little more technical.
Ok no problem, all I have to do now is to wish your clients good luck for their transformations?
Yes, customers sometimes go through difficult times when they have to make significant efforts to transform the way they operate. At the same time, when you are in rehabilitation with a rheumatologist or a physiotherapist, if it doesn’t hurt you a little, you’re not making progress, right?
