This is a great question. It seems like all one should need is the “right” managers, “right” mindset and “right” technologists for “internal” evaluations to be sufficient. Even suggesting that a consultant should be hired to assist in evaluating technology often is viewed as an affront to the managers and technologists already in place. It is as if to say they are not capable of doing an adequate job due to a lack of skills or objectivity. This hesitancy does not stop with middle and top management. Even owners and investors seem hesitant to hire consultants for fear of alienating their managers or being embarrassed to learn that things are not going as swimmingly well as hoped. So why ever hire a consultant? After all, aren’t you going to get “no news” or “very bad news” at a high cost to the organization?
First of all, it may come as a shock to many owners, but the truth of the matter is that few managers or even technologists are good at problem evaluation and problem solving. As silly as it sounds, they tend to be good at “managing” and that is way different from “creating.” They are good at turning existing knobs within “reasonable” limits. They are experts at “simplex” techniques for optimizing around existing boundaries (see Simplex Algorithm to get a general idea on this). They can make incremental changes. They can make minor “tweaks”, observe results and plan for the next step in seeking optimization. They can work their way toward a local maxima, but if that is not sufficient for success, they are generally lost. They usually cannot make a leap to new conditions that are well outside of existing boundary conditions.
Some of this is caused by the mindset of managers and technologists and some of it is caused by the “culture of organization.” In some cases they often don’t have a wide enough background to think “outside the box.” They are experts on what is “inside the box” and have a predisposition to stay with the familiar. They often have almost no knowledge of anything beyond a relatively narrow world. In some cases, they are “trapped” in the “box” by organizational culture. No organization really rewards the maverick or the big risk taker. For all the talk about the innovative organization, there are very few innovations that occur in mature organizations. For more on this take a look at The Innovator’s Dilemma, by Clayton Christensen.
Organizations reproduce themselves mostly by cloning with an occasional grafting here or there. Almost every organization that tries to rapidly “mutate” dies. Hence, organizations rarely create anything new and different. They just cannot. If something new and different is needed, it will generally not come from within. It usually takes an external influence to even get serious efforts at innovation and solving of significant problems. This is where the external consultant can bring in new ways of thinking that might otherwise have never been considered.
A second surprise that few owners realize is that most managers and technologies are quite poor at statistically based evaluation. Some of this may be prejudice and even self-service, but that is the exception and not the rule. It has been my experience that business, engineering and even scientific graduates (even at doctoral levels) rarely grasp statistics in any useful and practical way. I’m not sure why that is, but the paucity of real understanding has been a great surprise to me. I can only conclude that practical statistical thinking is not something that comes naturally to most folks (hence the popularity of casinos and lotteries). I think it takes years of experience to get a level of comfort with uncertainty that can lead to practical thinking about it. Even more unfortunate is the general inability of the statistically savvy to communicate effectively with those who don’t understand statistics. It is often very hard for the internal “statistician” to carry the day in the face of an overwhelming “desire to believe.” Here the external consultant can bring in the objectivity of good statistical evaluation and take on a role of educating and explaining. That is a difficult role for internal resources.
There is a final surprise that owners need to consider. It is unlikely that their organization has the necessary resources to solve all or even most of their most difficult problems. This has gotten worse in recent years and will continue for years to come. Organizations are under tremendous pressure to throw overboard “extra” resources. The days of finding the perfect resource lying idle within the organization are long gone and unlikely to return anytime soon. At the same time, the size and quality of the pool of external consulting resources has grown dramatically and continues to grow. It is no longer necessary or even reasonable to try to make project managers or process engineers into statisticians, scientists, accountants and patent attorneys. There are real experts available these days at reasonable rates.
Could every organization and every project benefit from an outside consultant? Probably not. Nevertheless, those projects that seem to defy resolution or have reached a critical “dead end” are candidates for external help. There are probably many more projects of this type than internal management would like to admit. Furthermore, there are probably some organizations that need significant help in thinking more openly and critically about all of their projects. A significant overhaul of the organization might be in order. Owners/sponsors need to take the initiative and seriously “encourage” management to not wait too long before getting outside help.
There is one final point that owners/sponsors need to consider when engaging an “expert” consultant. Owners/sponsors need to realize that there will be some resistance. It is important that they do not dismiss this resistance as simply irrational fears. It would be disingenuous of owners/sponsors to dismiss the idea that something might really be lacking and the existing managers and technologists could end up being somewhat embarrassed. Of course, the owner/sponsor hopes that the solution is something obvious, simple and inexpensive to fix. If that turns out to be the case, everything will soon be back on track and the embarrassment forgotten shortly after the consultant leaves. If the solution is difficult and hardly obvious, the existing team will have ample opportunity to contribute to the solution and display their skills in implementing and optimizing new approaches. In most cases owners/sponsors working together with consultants who are sensitive to the human resource factors can mitigate the resistance and maximize the benefit to the organization.
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