Consulting, what does it mean?

I checked the definition of consulting on Merriam Webster. It stated that, consulting: providing professional or expert advice (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consulting). And, expert is defined as: having, involving, or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expert).

To be honest, it is a huge fields, to my view. There are so many expertise in this world in different degrees, influenced by so many factors. Even in one particular expertise, we might find varieties of specialties. Therefore, if you had a certain education or training, and you are good at what you do that can help others, basically you can deliver your services as a consultant.

However, there are so many factors to consider in consulting works. Life unfortunately is not that simple. In real life, there are shadows in different dimensions in consulting works. It is started with whom you get the contract. You need check the person or company first. Every step is a risk. Think about all of the consequences. The person or company with whom you are making the contract, might has shadow person (company).

The next thing to consider is the scope of the work. Or, in simple word, what your client ask you to do because they told you that they have problem in particular field to solve. Again, unfortunately, there are so many shadows in this area. It happens mostly in Business Consulting. Try to specify best in the scope and work it along on the way to stay on the contract, or generate new additional contract for other scope.

The most important thing in consulting work is communications. The mission of a consultant is to help a person or organization in what internally not available or not capable to do a particular work. The work of consulting would be project based. Nowadays, there many great agile project management tools that allow us to communicate and stay update with the progress of the project and have all in one place. It doesn’t matter wherever you are on the earth! What a great way of communication.

The world is changing so fast. Technology, standards, regulations, customer, employees, organizations, etc. is also changing, rapidly. Consulting works have to keep up with the changes as well. This means, if we want to keep up with the profession as a consultant, we need to keep up with the fast changes of information and skills in our particular consulting services. There are so many resources available for free online nowadays. What a great way of keeping up with the change!

Another important things in consulting are being open, networking, and creative. Every consultant is unique! As well a client, either as a person or organization, is unique and special. Try to work it out in all differences, in a unique way 🙂

Guiding to Solution!

I wrote before, that there are actually many shadows in consulting. We might not really know with whom we are working with, and/ or we might not really know what is actually the clients want us to solve, as no clear scope. Mostly, once we start to help our clients, we see more and more problems that they are facing. The world is very complex, as it consists of so many different things. As well a person or an organization, is complex. The complexity is increased as the size of an organization, or even more in multinational organizations.

Consulting would only work if the consultant and the client work together. What a consultant learn through trainings/ educations or experience, that make the consultant an expert, might be different (mostly different) from the case of the clients. Consultant may use his/ her expertise using methods, tools, information given by the clients. However, there are so many factors internal/ external environment, known/ not known that might influence in the cases. There are so many ambiguities.

A mission of a consultant is to help person or organization in solving one’s problem using the expertise through an intensive communications, together, stepwise in positive direction in different themes, according to the scope of contract given by the client. This is the mission of 2theclue, Guiding to Solutions!