3 pitfalls of using in-house Change professionals instead of Change consultants

I’m super passionate about growing the Change Management profession and increasing the size of the pie in terms of roles and opportunities. But sometimes business leaders and change leaders rely on just using in-house Change resources and overlook the power, potential, and possibility of using independent Change Management consultants in key strategic ways for better influence and follow-through. Here’s 3 pitfalls of using in-house Change professionals instead of external independent consultants and what you can do about it:

Pitfall #1: Not leveraging independent Change consultants as a neutral, objective expert

Sometimes you might have someone very senior in the project or business who’s resistant to the change (ironically, sometimes even the Sponsor!). Often, consultants have more clout just because they're an external, unbiased third party. The consultant can deliver the hard truths and keep your position safe. Other times, your current Change resources may not have specific industry expertise and that’s adding to the resistance. For example, take a particular industry like Telecommunications and the business isn’t listening to you. You might be like, “Cool. I'm going to bring in a consultant who does have Telecommunications experience who can tell you what's happening in the rest of the Telecommunications world and show that we are actually behind everybody else. And that if we want to compete with all of our competitors in Telecommunications, we need to actually be progressing this change.” 

Pitfall #2: Only offering in-house Change Management capability

Many Change practices offer in-house change capability to business leaders and projects, which can be a cost-effective way to improve Change Management maturity and readiness in the organisation. But sometimes it can look more desirable to a leader or team member if you have an external independent consultant delivering capability than an internal team member. It can feel more valuable, and that you are really offering something next-level. As an independent consultant myself, I’ve developed bespoke change leadership trainings for my clients that have provided completely new value to any internal leadership course. Potentially your employee can get a credential or a certificate on completion which has real industry and market value. On my CV, for example, in addition to external courses I’ve completed, I've included all the internally-led courses I've done, even if the internal Learning and Development team or Change team was leading us through it. But I don’t put these internal courses on my LinkedIn because internal trainings often don’t have as much weight, sway or legitimacy as industry-expert facilitated courses. My LinkedIn Licenses & Certifications section is filled only with my external courses. When your external consultant is also a training provider, they can come in and deliver training with high perceived value. For example, my Leading Successful Change (LSC) program has a group corporate package option where I deliver LSC live with extra support and resources. Each of the client’s employees who completes LSC walks out with a credential they can add to LinkedIn and their CV, which makes the training more valuable to them than if it was just an internally-led capability build.

Pitfall #3: Trying to run and/or participate in workshops solo

At other times as a business or change leader,  you might want to run a workshop and you desperately need an extra pair of hands - or you want to actually participate in the workshop (in particular, Future State Workshops, Governance Workshops, or Post Implementation Reviews). It can be really handy to have a consultant run it. Or maybe it's a really different type of workshop that you don't have experience in. Or again, a type of workshop where the business or the project are very resistant. You might be like, “Let's bring a consultant in?” because sometimes if you're not getting traction up the line, just having that extra person, that external voice and presence and expertise can be really valuable. And you might be thinking - but how do you fund the consultant if the person who’s holding the purse strings is already resistant? Independent consultants like me do charge a lot, but when you look at the grand scheme of things, overall it’s less because of the way we work. I often don't come and work for a company for six months as a consultant. I'll come in and do a piece - I'll do an outcome. I might deliver a workshop and give them the output from the workshop, and then I might check in with them a couple of times. Or I might sit on a couple of project meetings, but I don't sit on all the project meetings. Independent consultants are often not as expensive as a lot of people think. So you could negotiate with your Sponsor, get the quote for how much it's going to cost, and go “Hey, for only this amount of money we can have a consultant come and run our workshop for us.” If you can’t draw on transformation or project budget, you could go to Operations to try and get some budget (or vice versa). Many companies - both large corporates and mid-sized organisations - have the budget. They may say they don’t because they’re wasting millions on the wrong technology solution or keeping poor performing staff members employed. They often have a few grand to get expert support for a change, especially during times of economic downturn when adding more FTE may not be viable.

If you'd like to learn more about becoming a trusted change advisor with influence and impact, come along to my free Change Advisor Bootcamp. It’s on Wednesday 28 May and I’ll be sharing my expert consulting secrets to get a seat at the table, build strong relationships, and lead complex change to success.

>> Register here for my free Change Advisor Bootcamp

Lata xx