“So Nathan, tell me what you do for a living?”
“Well, I’m a consultant.”
“A consultant? But what do you actually do?”
This is a typical conversation whenever I meet anyone new – and not just me, but for most folks in my profession. I don’t know why, but it’s always been a little tricky to explain what, in fact, I do for a living. “I solve problems,” or “I help people clarify what they want,” or “I build management solutions” are typical responses. A past employer taught us to say, “I help clients move from issue to outcome, with pace, certainty and strategic agility.”
The truth is that I help management understand their needs and then help build solutions to meet those needs. Since my specialty is organizational and talent development, the types of needs I address are usually related to the people and leadership side of organizations. My colleagues in other specialties do the same thing, but with finance, marketing, customers, supply chains, technology or countless other areas.
Whether you are officially a “consultant” or are a specialist, program manager, project manager or just plain responsible for some type of organizational change, I’d like to introduce you to a basic consulting methodology.
You walk down the hallway at work and just as you are about to greet a co-worker, he instead stares at the floor as he passes by. Later on, you realize in a meeting that a “random” co-worker you smile at each day actually provides your most important reports. So you finally break the ice and introduce yourself. Then at a promotion reception in your honor, an old co-worker congratulates you but you can’t for the life of you remember his name. You fumble for a cliché nickname, leaving both of you embarrassed.
