As you know, I'm an independent consultant. Though I never hesitated to go into consulting, I did know coming in that some consultant's have a bad rap. They have a bad rap, not because they don't sometimes help, but because sometimes they don't tell you anything you don't already know. That's fine if you want them to come in and review your operation, and they don't find anything wrong. But if they find something wrong, you don't want them to just tell you things are wrong; you're looking for solutions, especially if they do happen to tell you something you already know.

I had a previous history with consultants. The first time I came into contact with a consultant was back in 1990. This consultant came in to do a full review of my department, as well as many other departments in the hospital. When it was time for our meeting with the CFO, he pulled out this list of 61 issues that he had "discovered", and needed to bring to our attention. As we went through the report, which I'd seen beforehand, it turned out that I already knew about 60 of them. The problem was that I only had so many people to try to address everything, so I decided to concentrate on the biggest bang for my buck first, then we'd go back and touch upon those other items here and there.

Because I'd seen this list, I'd also seen the list of recommendations. For almost every single issue, there was only one recommendation, the same recommendation over and over: "you should move people to address these issues." What kind of recommendation is that? It's a bad one, that's what it is. That's not a recommendation at all; you just told me something I already knew I needed to do, and didn't have the resources to do. It's okay that you found issues I already knew about; it's not fine that you couldn't offer even one true recommendation, or give me a break in the report by acknowledging how I didn't have enough people to do it all. Now that would have been a great recommendation, saying that I needed at least 5 or 6 more employees. I may not have gotten it, but I could have used the support anyway.

Yesterday I was reading another blog where the writer was saying that anyone with a business blog who's not generating a significant amount of income from that blog is pretty much wasting their time, and needs to evaluate why they're not getting business from their blog. This is a business blog, and in the five years I've been writing on it, I've never gotten a single call for business, or sold a single product from it, though I have had some people sign up for my newsletter from it. However, when I started this blog, I had two other things in mind rather than getting direct business from it, though I hoped it might help. One thing is that I wanted to have consistent content coming from my site, because that would help make my website more relevant online. Two, I wanted to show that I not only had some expertise in my field, but that I had range as far as the types of services I could provide.

I decided to write these specific points on this other blog in the comments section. He wrote back and said I needed to take time to figure out why I wasn't generating business from my blog. Once again, I got that "you just told me something I already knew" mindset, because, trust me, over the years I have wondered about that. So I wrote back and said that I had given it a lot of thought over the years, but just saying to give it more thought wasn't really a legitimate recommendation. He wrote one more time saying he thought it was a valid recommendation, and that I should be generating business from my blog.

I'm sorry, but that kind of advice isn't advice at all. Maybe the first line, if you're really going to try to help someone, or even if you're a consultant, could be "have you given any thought as to why this isn't working?" If the answer is no, then it's a legitimate statement, because everyone should be taking time to figure out why things don't work. However, if the answer is "yes", then it's time to break things down some, maybe ask some probing questions, or, if you have the expertise, start throwing out some options and seeing if anything takes hold.

Actually, I understand the mindset after being in the game this long. There are two things about most consultants that you will never get from me. The first is that many consultants don't want to be seen as someone who may not know the answer to something at the time. I remember telling someone on a consulting assignment that I didn't know something, but that I'd check on it and get back to her. She said it was the first time she'd ever had a consultant say they didn't know something, and thus didn't give her an incorrect answer. The second thing is that some consultants are afraid to tell you something for fear it might be the wrong thing, and then they'll look bad. To me, that's why you don't give advice or recommendations on things you don't know. You take some time to research it so you can give the proper answer, and then you get back to people. No one expects consultants, or anyone else, to immediately know every answer in the world. Well, they may, but in the end everyone recognizes that we're all human, that we all tend to sometimes forget things we really know, and that we all just want to get things right.

I will make this promise, something I rarely do, make promises that is. I promise that anyone who hires me as a consultant or executive coach or website designer or website marketing specialist or home budgeting analyst or writer or,... well, anything,... I won't lie to you, I won't give you advice you can't use, and if I need time to research it I'll tell you that also. That's both a business and personal guarantee.

Now, how's that for selling? Business, people, please! 🙂