Consulting
Consulting is funny. It is a business of relations, margins, and timing. It is fickle, often misused and misunderstood. The greatest and worst people I have experienced do it, and there is a giant range of ability. Many come from failed business, some are charlatans, many are super creative, passionate, sharp experts. Consulting can be a valuable business tool if used correctly. Like any tool, you need to choose the right one for the job, and know what the job is. There is a lot to it, and as a working safety consultant I can help you understand the landscape, let you know what to look for, and set you up to make the most of this resource.
Let’s start with a story.
I used to guide trips in the grand canyon. Mostly rowing rafts for kayak support trips later in the season. On 21 day trips, you need to filter water periodically to fill up drinking water supplies. This includes hauling water jugs and a commercial battery powered filtration system to one of the many creeks and streams entering the Colorado River. Filtering is slow, and filling jug after jug takes a long time. Often we filled up at a popular hiking spot where other groups were getting out and walking by. Inevitably they would ask what we were doing. The exchanges became so repetitive we would see if we could only answer in a few generic phrases as a game to pass the time and break the repetition. Yes, guides mess with tourists for fun. So we would restrict ourselves to ‘Hard telling, not knowing’, ‘What are you gonna do?’, ‘Well there you go’, ‘Ain’t that the truth’, ‘You’re telling me’, ‘How about that’, ‘It is what it is’, and my favorite - ‘It takes all kinds’ and so on.
First, it is amazing how much you can say without saying anything. It is remarkable how little some people expect, how rarely some listen with intent, and how easily some people settle for less than real connection. People are also polite, decent, and awesome and often we would break routine and get to know them as you go deep down in one of the most beautiful places on this earth.
This exercise born from boredom has real insight into the consultant relationship. It is a space awash in noise and rhetoric, false promises and exaggerated claims. It is a place full of quasi-science, terminology, and lots of colorful graphs and charts based on dubious substance. All this effort and posturing to pitch you the new idea, the cheat code, the secret method, the insider angle. Like most sales, it is largely nonsense. At the same time consulting can be an excellent tool that lends real expertise and insight into operational and risk management needs for business. A good consultant can define issues and develop plans and resources that illuminate risks and challenges in ways unseen internally and provide creative problem solving that can be crucial for working through crises, preparing for upcoming issues, enabling a collaborative process, and facilitating systems and processes to sync in newly productive ways.
Since both can be true, how do you know where and when to trust a consultant, when it is useful and when it isn’t? I have hired many in my career, and now get hired by clients - so here are some considerations about navigating consulting opportunities - why we do it, what we are looking for, what to avoid, and how to make it work best - so you are able to choose the best tool at the right time.
Reasons Businesses Consider Consultants
Second Opinions - buying confidence. Leaders stress about problems and decisions and often want an objective sounding board to prove out strategic planning and hedge risk.
Capacity. Often you need additional support and staff for projects, and consultants can focus where other staff can’t.
Specific Expertise. You may need specific experience and ability, credentials and certifications that are not on staff and crucial to the current project.
Due Diligence. It is often smart to cover your bases, find outside third party feedback, and check your organizational bias and systems against an additional benchmark.
Mandate. Post-incident, insurance, legal judgements, or other compliance needs may force you to hire out to meet standards.
Confirmation bias. Leaders love bringing in consultants to offer a “second opinion” or sometimes just to make them feel less afraid of making the decision. Even if a CEO is convinced their strategy is the right strategy, having their plan confirmed and endorsed by an outside consultant is a smart political maneuver that puts distance between themselves and any suspicion by the board of directors that what they propose is best for the CEO’s career and not the shareholders best interests.
Scapegoats. Sometimes a consultant can be used as a political tool, for better or worse, to lift or tank a project or to divert weight and scrutiny to a third party. While there are both dysfunctional and productive reasons for this, consultants do allow for an organization to deal with controversial or challenging issues without disrupting staff hierarchy and allowing the consultant to bear the weight of the challenging topics.
Speed. A specialist can streamline process and projects and get you there faster.
Crisis. Sometimes an all hands on deck approach is needed to manage emergencies, disasters, and brand and reputational threats where roping in high quality advice from many sources is the best way to navigate organizational challenges.
Consulting Red Flags
Beware cheesy slogans, pushy pitches, grand promises. If someone comes off trying too hard, there is a reason - and not a good one.
Beware buying into a full-blown pre-made system. If you need to use and buy only their materials, and if you need to start a multi-step process and earn certificates through them, watch out. If you need to subscribe to a whole packaged universe, leveled access or join a ‘movement’ - don’t. Ask: is it good for you, or good for them? This service needs to support you, and work toward improving your operations, not theirs.
They use AI to optimize your enterprise risk. Gag first, then walk away. AI can be a useful tool in specific situations, and mostly it is a veneer that adds little to no value and steals your ability to build organizational awareness and competency. In the future this may be different, but not today. Where AI is a good fit, those industries are already well invested. AI is only as good as the inputs, is often broken and incorrect, has inconsistent citations, draws from often suspect source material, and needs detailed proofreading. Sometimes it is helpful, often it creates more work. AI isn’t the goal - your operations are. If AI are add-ons to make this easier/faster/better looking, great. If this is an exercise to dig into working with AI agents for the sake of it, pass.
Beware of templates. Most templates suck. While there are a few instances where they can make sense as a starting point - almost always they are lazy, generic, and limited. They won’t really speak to your needs, and you will have to do a lot of work to change and convert them to look and feel and integrate into your processes. Bland, watered-down ‘universal’ resources will fail you. Like most shortcuts, they end up being longer.
Beware overly complex resources, super splashy marketing, slick presentations jam-packed with technical jargon and new terminology. Beware a consultant that says something in a long, difficult manner when a simple description will serve.
Beware of Guarantees. Anyone telling you they have all the answers - doesn’t. If they promise they will deliver the world, they won’t.
Beware risk registers. Risk registers are a bad fit for most. They will add more work, burden, and complexity than they solve, and actually hide hazards and risk. They are largely outdated constructs of old thinking, and while there are a few business types they still fit, if you are reading this, you are not likely one of them.
Beware big teams. This is often done to impress and justify giant fees. Hire the team you need and nothing you don’t.
Beware too much ‘professional’ language - new terms, acronyms, even equations. The smartest people I know speak plainly, and adjust their approach to the particular audience. If they come off trying to impress you, especially by throwing out lots of terminology and hyperbolic phrases, often they are compensating for a lack of ability and experience. Find someone who makes sense, and speaks your business language as you do.
Beware crazy pricing. A good consultant is highly valuable and worth the cost - but it doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg, or more than the program itself.
Beware the catastrophizing of otherwise regular risk. Don’t let them scare you or your board into an over-involved and costly doom-loop of endless services. A consultant may adjust your risk perception up or down - but it should be a sober, rational, evidence-based take that is relevant to your operating context.
Beware of buying ONLY their books, resources, tools. No one has the monopoly on good ideas, and a smart advisor will pull from everywhere. Keeping you within their universe likely preserves the notion they are the only expert in the world you can count on, and that you can’t do this on your own. You can.
Things to Look For in Consultants
Simple, easily understood ingredients that sound practical and relevant. In the end - it is your program, your choices, your risk. A good consultant doesn’t smother you with complexity - they offer process and expertise so you can have a system and framework to follow on your terms, for your needs.
A partner. Consultant shouldn’t do it for you - they should do it with you. Afterall, when they are gone, can you make it work?
A focused proposal, with a realistic scope of work and clear expectations.
The right kind of expertise. There are lots of smart people with killer credentials - but are they right for you? Make sure their background speaks to your needs today. This doesn’t mean they have to come from the same industry - often sourcing outside the lines is smart to create fresh perspectives - but make sure they are good at what you are trying to accomplish. This seems simple - but is something businesses often get wrong: hiring a capable person, who is a bad fit for the project.
Someone that can relate to your space, community, culture. There are times when a different , contrasting voice is helpful, but more often finding someone that can fit in and work easily within your organizational ranks will gain better access, build trust faster, and produce better results.
Someone willing to tell you things you do not want to hear. A consultant’s job should not be pleasing you to gain comfort toward more work and confirm what you think you already know - but to honestly assess and advise. This is one of the best qualities of a consultant relationship - when done right, you get to learn and gain awareness, which leads to improved systems and programs.
Treat hunting for consultants like food shopping - the less ingredients the better. A bad consultant is like junk food - seems appealing and appetizing at first, but leaves you hollow and less healthy and will just lead to more problems. You want clean food, simple ingredients, practical, doable resources and tools that fit your organization and match your mission. Mostly, these tools should be able to scale and empower you to master your own organizational risk self sufficiently.
Are consultants worth it? It depends - in many cases they are misused, overpriced, and poorly chosen. If your goals are undefined and your process sloppy - your outcome will be of little value. If you have clear needs and a deliberate path, then consultants can be a great asset and deliver high quality tools/resources/guidance quickly and affordably.
Consultants can offer specific benefits
🔷 Present new perspectives
🔷 Add additional staff and operational capacity
🔷 Offer definitive and specialized expertise
🔷 Cut through staff hierarchies and working relationships
🔷 Be heard and recognized differently throughout an organization
🔷 Challenge your organization to take on new ideas and strategies
🔷 Deliver projects efficiently and affordably
🔷 Energize people and programs
Consultants are usually only as good as you select them, establish clear expectations and match your intentional goals. Like any resource, if carefully and intentionally developed they can be great tools. If you take your time, choose purposefully, and are honest about your needs and challenges you can find great experts to overcome challenges and enhance your business. After all, ‘it takes all kinds…’
By Todd Duncan, Owner/Principal Consultant, SeaBear Safety Solutions