Friday, November 19, 2010

Transition of a Practitioner to a Management Consultant. How to make it smooth?

I've recently made transition from an Internal Consultant to a full fledged Organizational Transformation (Change Management) Consultant. I've learnt a lot of valuable lessons from the last 60 days of my journey. Sharing a few here.... Please feel to add from your own (if any):

1. Understand the 'Framework' your new organization is using. Every consulting firm will be using their own proprietary 'Framework' or 'Model' or 'the way things are done here'. It is extremely important to know this thoroughly and start talking that language.

2. Forget that you were an achiever in the past. In Marshall Goldsmith's words, "What got you here, won't get you there". Think that you are starting afresh! List down the new skills you may have to learn in the new place to succeed.

3. Draw / Visualize the new market landscape. Talk to as many people as you can and try to understand the new market that you are in. Who are the players (Competitors)? What do they offer? How different are you? etc

4. Understand the internal organization dynamics (read - Politics) - Who could be your sponsor? Who could sabotage your efforts? Who could get 'Inspired' by your ideas (they are so inspired and take your ideas as their own - mind you... they are not 'Stealing' ;-) _

5. Be assertive. You've to balance between an aggressive 'prove myself' mode and a submissive 'I'm just a beginner' mindset. You do certainly bring some value and thats the reason they've hired you. So be grounded and speak assertively.

If you've done such transition, please share your lessons...

2 comments:

Vinay said...

Hi Bhaskar

Nice post. Not sure I agree with the politics part though. If you run the race well enough and fast enough, there is no politics at all.

Vinay

MVS said...

Hi Bhasker

Nice to see the learnings after having retraced your path for the last 60days.
Being rigid on mindset can be detrimental to the growth and speed with which one can catch up with the demands with the new assignment.

All the BEST.

Murthy