Gill South: Quest for guidance has many companies groping in the dark

Gill South.

As the world economy improves, some companies are in good shape, ready for a new stage of growth, but just don't have the expertise or capacity to get to the next level. This is when management teams should be looking to bring in an expert consultant - or a number of experts - to guide them.

And in this market there is a large pool of experts to draw from. But make your search with care, says Andy Collyer, a partner at business advisers Bishop Collyer Leadbetter. Collyer is writing a book, The Battlefield Guide for Consultants, in response to the plethora of new consultants produced by the recession. Organisations must have some third-party validation before hiring an outside expert, he says.

Some consultants do not have the appropriate background to do what they are selling. "Management consulting, in particular, I feel is an issue," he says. "There are new entrants in the market because of circumstance rather than making an astute business decision. They just can't find comparable replacement employment.

"The problem is, it's a different world and not one that suits everyone. The killer issue is that you have to drop a few dress sizes, so to speak, and engage in the medium-sized business sector which expects to get more generalist skills on most occasions, to maximise its bang for its buck," says Collyer. And many have come out of a "siloed" environment which has restricted their exposure to the full range of management skills, he adds.

Selling expertise is a great responsibility, says Collyer. "It's more about understanding the whole game and the rules."

Simon O'Shaughnessy is a consultant with his own company, Carista, and chairman of an Auckland peer group and support organisation for CEOs and top managers called The Executive Connection (TEC). He recently set up a consultancy collective, Get Muscle, on LinkedIn, where companies can go for advice from a range of 15 business experts. "I think what you should aim for is a breadth of experience - but they have still got to have an open mind," says O'Shaughnessy.

He doesn't believe one person can fix all your problems. Consultants in New Zealand tend to cling on to their clients and want to do everything for them, but this is not ideal, says the Briton. Consultants should be like paratroopers, he says. "They drop in, give people equipment, liberate them and get out - and the group is left empowered."

One size does not fit all, stresses O'Shaughnessy. Two organisations came to him recently wanting facilitators for their management retreats; after looking at them he decided one company needed a semi-academic facilitator, the other needed a creative one with good business sense.

The business mentor thinks current management teams have a great need for external help. "People are seeing things they have never seen before. These are people who are incredibly competent, saying to me: 'I've got this in front of me - a change situation - and I don't know what to do."'

There's a lack of trust and a lack of competence among the consultancy industry, says O'Shaughnessy. He met a consultant who charges $10,000 for three sessions to help an organisation get a mission statement. "That's why there's a lack of trust!" says the TEC chairman.

Storelink, a third party sales and merchandising business, recently sought help to develop its core business strategy, align its people strategy and run staff development. The senior management team has brought in some outside human resources expertise to develop their people assets - HR outsourcing specialist Clarian Human Resources. Brendon Korner, general manager at Storelink, says: "We are a company of 307 employees and contractors, but we don't have an HR department. We had never had a proper strategy workshop or put HR procedures in place."

With Clarian, the company is paying 70 per cent of what it would cost to have someone on site, says Korner. Clarian's senior HR consultant Dawn McLean works in the Albany head office two half days a week and is on call, as is the Clarian team, for the rest of the time.

With the diverse capabilities of the Clarian HR team, Storelink has put the basics in place, is supporting managers as they develop themselves and their teams, and is looking at ways to increase staff engagement and ultimately the bottom line.

Previously, there were no measures for staff performance or set criteria on how staff should do their jobs, and the recruitment process was outdated too.

Once a month, Storelink's senior management team comes together from all around New Zealand for professional individual and group coaching, run by McLean. The team has also recently completed a management development programme together where they worked on team and individual development.

Clarian managing director Clare Parkes says the company is advising five or six companies of varying sizes along similar lines. "Our experience over the last two or three years is that companies don't have the fundamentals," she says.

Her senior HR consultant Dawn McLean says the HR consulting firm is helping Storelink take the next step up.

"We have supported them to prepare for their next growth phase. We've enabled them to be in a state of readiness," she says.

It is still common in New Zealand to find the most capable technical person promoted to manager, yet no one has taught them to manage. They are still expected to do the technical side of the job, as well as managing - and a large proportion prefer the technical part.

Businesses are finding that they have not got the skills or the capability in the management team for anything from resource allocation to developing a culture in the organisation, says McLean.

A particularly dangerous gap has been in managing staff performance. "Managers don't want to have the courageous conversations, to challenge or give feedback to someone of a negative nature. They prefer to ignore it or hope it will go away but it drives productivity down," she says.

Gill South is an Auckland freelance writer