Working with Consultants How to Become a More Effective Client and Maximize the Value from Consulting Projects

If you work in an organization of any size, you probably run into consultants on a regular basis. In the last decade or so, the consulting industry has become more diverse, more sophisticated and more pervasive to the point where, like it or not, consultants are now integral to how most organizations work. Despite improvements in consultant selection processes and in the management of consulting projects, the ways in which most client organizations work with consultants have not kept pace with these developments. The results are waste, frustration and loss of value. In many organizations, this is significant enough to warrant a change in approach. To make this change succeed, you need to build your organization's capability to work with consultants in an integrated way, developing the attitudes, the mental models, the knowledge and the behaviours that enable you not only to apply consulting resources appropriately, but to maximise your organization's ability to assimilate and benefit from the work consultants do. This book will help you do this.