Consultant or Coach ?

You know your business is not running at it’s maximum efficiency. You have a high need to turn this around, and after reading a bunch of articles, taking to people you trust, you know you need help but don’t know exactly what kind.

The people you know and trust that have helped you along the way are great but over time have developed their own opinions on your company or business endeavor and are no longer providing the break through ideas you are looking for, or they are and because of your close relationship you may not always listen.

You are considering outside help , but your running a Small / Medium sized business (SMB) and can’t afford to call Accenture or McKinsey & Company.

There are basically two schools of thought one being a Coach and the other being a Consultant.

Consultants need to understand your business in detail to perform in-depth analyses, diagnose operational problems or issues, building operational plans to correct the deficiencies and help management implement the changes acting as a catalyst for change.

On the other side there are Coaches. Companies sometime hire coaches for executives that are underperforming in one or more areas. Coaches provide guidance, support accountability and encouragement for executives, leaders, and or managers. Coaches may perform research to understand how the company operates but leads the owner to

Coaches require you to do you own discovery, find answers to the questions and set their own direction for success. They do this by having regular meeting and holding you accountable, offering encouragement, and facilitating changes that should produce positive changes in the business.

What I find lacking in coaching is:
• the sharing of personal business experiences like a mentor would do
• providing advice and/or alte
atives to business operations like a consultants would do
• provide training to raise the business knowledge like a trainer would do
• avoidance of the kind of personal issues that often put a business owner in analysis paralysis leaving these issue for a therapist or like coach.

Blending the Coach and the Consultant gives the owner of an SMB the best return on their investment. They can benefit from a detailed analysis of their operation so they know what is broke and alte
ative from an experienced operator on ways to fix it. They can then benefit from the coach in terms of accountability and guidance.

Additionally in a model where the consultant and coach skills are combined the business can also benefit from having a mentor, trainer as well as coach and consultant that is interested not only the stark realities of the business but the personality that is driving the business with all the personal attributes, strengths and weakness that everyone of us deal with day in and day out..

The business will further benefit from the coach helping the owner stay focused on their business working on the business and not in the business.

Whether you business needs assistance with sales, marketing, manufacturing, team building, customer support, services, assessment of employee skills, team building, accountability starts with linking business metrics to company and individual performance.

When it comes to selecting a consultant don't settle for pure business consultant and don't settle for a pure coach. Do your diligence and find the right company with the right mix of consultant/coach that has the industry knowledge similar to yours.

A word of caution. Of they dozens upon dozens of operational diligence I have done one of the common threads of why the company is in distress is that they are stuck in a specific business paradigm. The owners and managers tend to hire people who are only like themselves and agree with them thus perpetuating the same paradigm.

An example is a product company hires sales people that sell hardware very well. However, as the customer base has evolved their businesses, they are now in need of turn key solution not just products. Your sales people and even your sales managers believe they can make the transformation, but selling solutions requires a different selling style starting from the basic qualification process. Your Sales Managers are only comfortable with hiring product sales people. They questions they ask in an interview are all product sales questions. They themselves don't know how to find the best solutions sales people.

The direction of your company is no different. You know your company can be should be doing better and want some help. It stand to reason the person your are comfortable with will be just like you. however don't hire that person or company. Look for some level of divergent thinking maybe as must as 70%, in this way you can get fresh ideas and a new perspective on how to view your business.

For success you should be hiring and mentoring managers/leaders based on their core skills and not subject matter expertise. You can teach people the business, the subject matter, but you don't have the time to teach someone skills like how to deal with ambiguity or critical thinking.

Large companies like GE tend to hire skilled people and move their managers around the company into different assignments giving them a larger picture of the total operation. They can do this because the people have solid core skills and learn the subject matter quickly.

In contrast Companies that find themselves floundering all are stuck in a specific business paradigm. They are doing the same thing they did years ago but its not working. Why ? They failed to recognize the business didn't evolve, they customer base changed and they didn't.

Another reason companies fail is that they do not recognize how exte
al changes that effect the Go To Market strategy of their company. An example: I can't believe people still advertise in the Phone Book. 89% of all consumers in the US begin a purchase using the internet for research, yet most SMB don't utilize the internet to its full extent. And trust me the internet is a lot cheaper then the phone book when it comes to marketing dollars and ROI.

You business must be focused but flexible over time. When you find your self not doing as well as you can consider getting help from a Consultant/Coach to get an unbiased analysis of your business, a operations plan to fix the deficiencies and a business partner to keep you accountable for making the necessary changes.