Management Consulting

This is a growing topic in the world today where many businesses find themselves struggling in one or more areas of the business .

Many people who are taking the leap end up being their own boss, but having less time and less independence.  From feedback of many years of running business networking forums the most common phrases are more like “I don’t have any time.” or “My wife quit her job to do accounts.” or “Instead of dealing with a manager, I now find myself answering to a few big clients.  I can’t wait until business picks up so I can give these clients to someone else.”  Of course these comments are more likely with small businesses, but surprisingly many small businesses struggle to make the transition from small to medium size, and also medium to large.

Is management consulting the answer?

Many people who think that since they are such good plumbers or bookkeepers, that they can work for themselves.  Unfortunately many of these people find very quickly that they lack expertise in other areas needed to run a business effectively.  Thankfully often government sponsors some initiatives to support small business in the form of free seminars of everything from record keeping, tax advice, and networking. But many of them are very limited in what they cover and provide no follow up.

International consulting

When consulting for a high quality hotel in a developing country who was new to international standards, more experience was gained again.  This needed a totally different approach.  The service including everything from a policies and procedures manual to training staff on all levels such as the teams in food and beverage, housekeeping, front office and maintenance. It also needed to be done in two languages as the level of English language was very low and many concepts were foreign. From most of these experiences,  jumping two levels of learning is too difficult and cannot be sustained. So you have to first train the staff in their own language, or at least have reference manuals in the mother tongue so conversion to English language can be introduced to please the international guests.

It is important to be aware there are different types of Management Consultants

Even the word consultant applies to so many roles. It’s hard for most people to find a way through the consultant jungle. External consulting can be from occasional visits or even as a longer term management role.  For example, one time as the Business Development Manager for a business centre in a local shopping centre tasks involved both handling day-to-day management of the business including managing staff and reviewing all aspects and developing a plan to proceed.  The clients were often local real estate agents with others having their own small businesses in the area, and some were individuals coming in for one off services.  In this case the need for management or business development consulting included all systems – financial, marketing, sales, and training.  The owner’s purpose in hiring a business development manager or management consultant was to streamline systems, reduce costs and increase sales to ascertain if the business could become viable, then the decision would be made to train a manager or sell the business. Here it was very advantageous to bring in an external person which could look at this operation with “fresh” eyes.