yacphar.info

When I was studying my BA in Business, I thought it would be cool to be a management consultant. I could travel around, snooping, determining client problems, recommending solutions, and leaving. The client would do the boring implementation part.

When I became an adjunct/associate professor of English, teaching writing courses, my natural ways of dealing with students emerged, which involved a lot of one-on-one handholding and advising.

I’ve now decided to focus more fully on working with clients, something I’ve done over the years but rarely with much focus. However, I didn’t know the title of my services. Was I coach or a consultant?

After a bit of research, I discovered the following:

For a Coach:

1. A coach helps the client define, plan, and achieve her (or his) goals, whether relating to life goals or project goals.

2. A coach guides the client through all of the processes to achieve that goal, which often involves some or a lot of handholding: daily emails, daily to weekly phone calls, and other close contacts.

3. The coach teaches the client the steps to accomplishing the goal. And the coach has the client actually do the steps while supervised by the coach. Often the client is involved in self-discovery through this relationship. The Coach asks the right questions, prods and encourages the client to see beyond blocks, assumptions, and narrow views to new possibilities.

4. The coach works one-on-one with the client throughout the entire project. Sometimes small group gatherings are useful, but most of the work is one-on-one. The Coach can help with any part of the process but will not do the actual work.

5. A coach might work with a client for months or years, so the relationship is often a long-term one.

For a Consultant:

1. The Consultant is hired to solve a specific problem for the client.

2. The Consultant investigates the problem and determines solutions, sometimes doing the actual work, but often the client will do the work.

3. The consultant works independently, outside of the client’s workflow. When the problem is solved, the Consultant leaves.

Of course, the same person can offer both coaching and consulting services. Clients should know the differences so they can ask for the services they most need at the time. And Coaches and Consultants should know the differences so as not to confuse the clients.

© 2010 Katherine Ploeger

If you are a manufacturing company, implementing lean can help you tighten processes, eliminate waste and steer your bottom lines to robustness. Lean techniques came to the forefront with the enormous success of Toyota’s implementation of the same in the 80s. Since then globally organizations have taken to implementing lean with gusto!

A lean manufacturing adviser can play a crucial role for you. Hiring an expert will steer your way through problems and challenges. However, you must choose your lean consultants wisely. Keep in mind the following factors while selecting your consultants.

• They must be knowledgeable about lean production processes and strategies.

• They must be well versed in lean techniques.

• They must be able to help modify systems and processes that can produce products and services to deliver better value to the customer.

• Any lean professional on board must have years of experience across different industries to identify and handle teething problems and other challenges that may crop up.

• Your lean expert must be a people’s person who can ensure that everyone is amenable to changing what currently prevails including methods of functioning, systems and processes.

• You may also wish to recruit one who can patiently take you through the systems and processes in great detail.

Moreover, a lean manufacturing adviser must preferably have technical expertise about manufacturing. Or if possible there must be a few technical experts on board of the lean consulting firm to guide through technical issues. Creativity and innovation are also of importance in this strategic role.

Lean consultants should not only interact regularly with the top brass of the organization but also with employees at all levels. Training and engaging employees are a very important step in implementing lean. If done well, your lean consultant can guide your employees to better tap their hidden talents and update their skills as well.

Additionally, good lean consultants must also have a good understanding of your suppliers and clients. You need to have all of them working in sync with you to deliver the final goods to your customer with greater value.

There is no doubt then that a good candidate will help you acquire competitive edge and show you how to retain it in the long run. The gist of this is that good lean consultants must be able to adapt lean manufacturing concepts to suit your specific needs because every organization is unique. A lean consultant must be able to not only support you during implementation but be there for any future inputs as well.

One of the world’s foremost authorities on business process consulting, Edgar Schein, identified three primary methods of conducting interventions into businesses or other organizations: the expertise method, the doctor-patient method, and the process consulting method. Each of the three methods have their optimal time and place for use, but if you are looking to establish the long term health of the organization, the best method to use is that of process consulting.

In order to understand why, consider a short summary of the three methods.

The expertise method puts the consultants into the role of the source of all knowledge and from whom all solutions will flow. The client is considered to be in an inferior position, lacking the knowledge and expertise to lead themselves out of the mess they’ve gotten into. While this is superficially attractive, because it seems to take the least amount of time and relies on the person best qualified to make the judgment in the room, it would be rare for the expert consultant to have the contextual knowledge required to be able to effectively diagnose, propose and implement a solution that would solve all of the issues at hand.

The doctor-patient method puts the consultant in the position of having the expert knowledge once again, but includes the patient in the diagnosis phase as a source of information but not the solution. This method relies on the doctor/expert having the knowledge base from which to ask the appropriate questions and then coming to the successful diagnostic conclusion. The client remains in an inferior position of power and authority and must rely on the doctor to prescribe the effective solution.

Both of these previous methods start and end with the client in an inferior knowledge position, needing the consultant to make the decisions and for ongoing health checks to maintain successful operations.

By contrast, the process consulting method relies on a partnership of equals to engage in a joint discovery of the situation in this context in order to gain new insights and potential solutions. The client is the authority for information about the situation and the feasibility of recommended solutions. The client retains the authority for selecting a solution in implementing it. You can think of the consultants and this method as being a chemical catalyst, which enables the chemical reaction to take place to solve the problem or improve the situation. After the intervention in this method, the client is reinforced and improved his knowledge base and decision-making skills, and owns the situation.

While it’s difficult for an expert consultant to adopt the process consulting method, it lends itself to long-term improved health of the client organization by increasing their skill and knowledge base and therefore can be seen as the best solution of the three.

If you’ve been doing research on how to successfully promote your company locally, you may have stumbled across the term local marketing consultant. While it may be difficult to fully understand what these consultants do and how they can help your company, we are going to do our best to explain it for you. Once you fully comprehend what it is exactly that these professionals do, you will be better prepared to decide if hiring one is the right thing for your company.

One of the leading reasons that many companies choose to hire a marketing consultant is because they have the knowledge that many business owners do not. No matter how many years you have been in the business or how much business knowledge you may possess; you may not know everything you need to in order to make your marketing campaign a success. This is where a local marketing consultant comes in. They understand and know what it will take to improve your existing marketing campaign or they can help you design a new one. They have the skills that are necessary to make your marketing efforts successful.

Anyone who has worked on a marketing campaign in the past knows just how time consuming they can be. Hiring a local marketing consultant can help free up valuable time that you may have been spending on your marketing efforts. They have the time that is needed to focus all of their attention on your marketing campaigns. If you hire a marketing consultant, you will no longer feel like there are not enough hours in the day. They will take care of everything that is involved in running a successful campaign, providing you with the free time you need to focus on other areas of your business.

Marketing consultants are also a great way for smaller businesses to save money. Instead of employing a full marketing staff, you will only be required to pay for the services provided by the consultant. Many consultants will only charge based on the job that you hire them to do. This can save you money that you can put to use in other aspects of your business. Marketing consultants can also save you money in that you will not be required to pay for benefits that full time employees may earn. Because they are independent consultants, you are not required to pay the extras that you do for all of your full time employees.

If you are looking for a way to help your company succeed, hiring a local marketing consultant may be the best alternative for your company. They are experienced in what they do, and they will get you the results you are after.

If you are considering hiring a business consulting firm to assist you with various aspects of running, marketing, and developing your business, the early days of contact with a consulting firm will tell you a lot about the type of business they operate. Read on for things to look for.

First Contact

When you first speak with a marketing or business consulting company, their mission should be to learn as much about your business as possible. The rep should have excellent listening skills. You don’t want a cookie-cutter approach to business improvement or marketing; you want someone to understand the complexities of your business so they can make educated recommendations. The firm should be a fairly transparent organisation as well, that’s willing to talk a bit about what they can use to help you reach your goals. They may not reveal all their secrets prior to your signing a contract but they should be able to propose suggestions that you can see merit in.

Contracts

A confidentiality agreement is commonplace. Your company wants to know that your proprietary information is safe. Your consultant will need access to a lot of information and you need to know the info is safe. You will also need to enter into an agreement that protects the consultant in terms of their proprietary secrets for how they help you succeed, their fees and payment schedules, etcetera. Not discussing a contract to protect everyone involved should be considered suspect.

Guarantees

When you deal with a consultant, you need to know what you can expect. Results will vary so specifics might seem difficult but there are parameters and results you should be able to expect when you invest in consulting services. A respectable consulting firm will make specific guarantees about improvements. You need to be comfortable with what you can expect.

Contact

Your business consultant needs to be approachable. You should have regular discussions and / or meetings to talk about progress. When talking initially to a new firm, you should be comfortable in that the person or people working on your campaign will be reasonably accessible.

Measurables

How will you know what your consultant has brought in terms of delivering what has been promised? Ask them how this will be measured. Most often, instead of a specific dollar value (which is something most consultants can’t guarantee) other metrics might be in place to ascertain success. This might be in the form of: website visitors, generated sales leads, new customers, increase in productivity, lower staffing requirements due to process streamlining, and so on.

Your consultancy firm can be a great partner in business. The company you choose can help you be more productive, more profitable, and improve your image with your customers. Finding the right firm to deal with is imperative. Within the first few discussions, it should be fairly apparent whether or not you’ve found the best business consulting firm for your needs.

Handling a business is not as easy as it seems. While there are many entrepreneurs that have the enthusiasm and talent to handle their business they often end up on the wrong side because they are not capable of running their business at optimum efficiency. If you believe that your business is not running smoothly and efficiently you need a lean consultant who has the expertise and experience to help your business function efficiently. A lean business firm is one that understands and implements lean concepts across all levels to make operations more functional. It also involves maximizing productivity and eliminating waste. So, do you need lean consulting experts even when your business is doing well?

Streamline Process – Even when your business is doing well you need lean consulting professionals that can help you to streamline the process within your business. This is really important in the long term because you want to ensure that all the functions and processes in your business are aligned and provide a smooth functionality. Lean consulting professionals analyze and suggest better ways on how you can improve the processes and procedures to maximize the productivity of your business.

Eliminate Wastage – Every business has some flaws and wastages even when the business is doing well. To make it leaner you will need professionals that can guide you and help you identify certain processes that lead to waste. This can help you to improve your delivery process faster and responsive. Similarly, you may also create opportunities for top line enhancement.

Cost Competitive – To improve your business you need to ensure that you lower the cost of production which can help you to improve your profit. With the help of a lean management consultant, you can find ways of how you can make your business cost competitive. The lean consulting professional looks into the processes and procedures and helps you with significant changes that can improve the performance of your business. The consultant also ensures that the processes do not affect the productivity of the employees and makes them feel motivated. The consultant takes into consideration workforce safety.All this also helps in retaining employees because the lean process actually improves the overall work environment by increasing motivation levels and cutting down unwanted processes.

It is important that you hire a 5s lean management consulting professional for your business. The consultant spends plenty of time in your firm to understand your business preferences, limitations, options and budget. The solutions provided often include the betterment of the management and the workforce. These suggestions are remarkable for the growth and progress of your business in the near future.

According to the report of 2007 and 2008, India has turned into a country which is sending a huge number of students to study in abroad every year. The reason for rising craze among students to go to abroad for higher studies is because these are among the top destinations in the world over.

There could be hundreds of reasons why a student would want to study in abroad and we have listed some of the most important reasons here:

-To get a global perspective and widen their horizons. They also get a chance to experience diversified cultures of the world.
-To form a global network of social contacts.
-To improve their communication skills.
-To become self-dependent by developing proficient problem- solving skills.
-To learn most updated technology and explore new concepts and ideas.
-To be an all-rounder, primed for better prospects.
-To be a global citizen.

Due to the above reasons, which are quite significant, a student wants to study abroad and where arises the need of consulting to an overseas education consultant. Let us throw some light on why choose a higher education consultant and what benefits do we get by consulting to them;

Career Counseling: Counseling is of course the first right step when deciding to study overseas. It helps students to take right decision for their bright future. Such type of counseling is given only by the higher education consultant.

Helps direct where and when to go: It is little difficult for a student to decide in which country he/she should go, this is where a consultancy comes to help. A consultant can best help the student by suggesting the best university for a particular course that the students want to pursue. A good consultant helps the student by telling the appropriate time for taking admissions in a particular university.

Admission guidance: A consultancy helps the students by telling them about the options of universities which conduct their preferred course. Not only this, consultant also helps them by telling them the fee structure and total estimated expense of staying in a country and guiding them for the admission procedure.

Safety: When students apply for admission in an university overseas through a consultancy, they get all the safety and security right from getting admissions to visa approval. Whereas if a student applies his or her own, the chance of visa rejection is quite probable.

Financial Estimation: Once the students take help from overseas education consultant, they get a complete idea of what are the documents they require, the total amount to be spent in education and living and how much amount to be shown to the embassy.

Visa assistance: Getting a visa is something wherein a student face much difficulty. A consultant helps the students to collect right documents, while being very careful with documentation. This documentation part can only be done perfectly when get assistance of someone who is experienced and have all the knowledge regarding it. If the student is doing documentation in assistance with consultant, he/she will have 99 percent chance to get the visa.

Accommodation guidance: An overseas education consultant helps in providing accommodation to the students as they have tie ups with the universities. In some cases consultants also provide you the contact details of seniors which they have sent for the last intake.

Job awareness in abroad: A good consultant helps the students not only in getting themselves prepared in performing formalities better during pre-completion of the course but also help them to know what kind of jobs they can do their and earn an attractive amount of money, simultaneously with their studies and after the completion of study.

Today all overseas education consultant agencies have started offering various services in addition to providing guidance and overall information related to studying abroad.