Hiring Consultants Part 2: How to Get What You Paid For

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This is part three of our series on how to get great value from your consultants - and how to figure out how much to pay them. See parts one and three.

Hiring Consultants Part 1: The Secret of How To Get the BEST Value

Hiring Consultants Part 3: 7 Quick Questions BEFORE you Engage That Consultant

In part one we talked about getting good value from your consultants, by paying them according to the amount of change they achieved, NOT, the amount of time they work with you.  So - how do you determine the amount of change that comes about as a result of a workshop or seminar?

The best way would be a long-range study, but this is not always possible.  But there is a way out - here’s a substitute method that was kindly lent to me by Anthony Grant, the head of coaching psychology at Sydney University.

A Quick Way to Determine Likely Change

Participants are asked to estimate how much more confident they feel in dealing with an issue (for which the workshop was held), and how much closer they feel to solving it.  You do this by asking these questions before the workshop, and immediately after.  At one of my recent workshops (on resilience), I got these sorts of results:

  1. Before the workshops participants had been grappling with some issues for between three and (almost) 5 years.
  2. The improvement in dealing with the issue range from 20% to 100%.
  3. The number of insights gained was between three and 20, with an average of between 10 insights.
  4. The number of action steps participants were planning to take was between three and 20, with an average of between 10.

 Ask your consultant how they plan to measure the results of their work with you (and are they willing to tie some of their pay to the outcomes)?  They should at least be thinking about it. 

Need an even quicker way to do it?  You might not always have the luxury to go through this process so how do you choose the right consultant?  In part three we’ll outline seven quick questions you can ask.

Need a great consultant or some help to engage a great consultant?  Got an issue around organisational change, innovation, or resilience?  Give Cris a call - he’s helped many organisations and staff, in exactly your position, to develop high impact change programs: info@crispopp.com or (+ 61) 0438 545 607.