How to Achieve Quick Success in a New Long-Term Consulting Project

Understanding a new company structure is critical as a consultant. Especially with certain types of consulting projects involved in revamping or making the structure more efficient.

Essentially a company will have one of 8 organizational structures:

Hierarchical

This is the old-school structure where there is a clearly defined hierarchy within the organization with each employee holding a specific rank/level within the organization.

Functional

The functional structure is the most common one that organizations adopt. There are different groups depending on what the team members do within the organization. Those working on the computers are in the IT department, those working with finance are in the accounting department and so forth.

Matrix

This structure has nothing to do with red or blue pills. It has team members reporting to levels horizontally and vertically. Team members also form part of many teams and departments depending on their responsibilities within the organization and certain projects.

Flat

The flat form is very apparent with start-ups. It’s a structure that doesn’t have so many management levels over staff members. More often than not, there is absolutely no middle management.

Product

This one is very similar to the Functional structure with the only difference being that team members are divided into groups based on a specific product and not their specific function within the organization.

Customer

The customer structure is not very common. Here organizations prefer to divide team members into groups based on certain target audiences.

Geographic

This is fairly common when it comes to bigger organizations operating across multiple locations. It just makes sense to divide team members into specific geographic regions.

Network

This one has been on the rise the last few years and just sky-rocketed during the global pandemic. Here an organization can have on-site as well as remote team members from all across the world. The focus is more on collaboration to complete certain management consulting projects than corporate and administrative red tape.

As the saying goes; “find your tribe” Company culture is one of the biggest factors when it comes to job satisfaction as well as employee turnover. Company culture will also play a major part in having success in consulting roles, irrespective of the types of consulting projects. Establishing the culture of your new company is not as difficult as you might think:

Vision & Values

What are the organization's vision and values? Has it been clearly defined or does that form part of your management consulting projects?

Feeling Valued

This is completely different from company values. Do employees feel valued? Do they feel heard when it comes to ideas and decisions within the organization? Are there opportunities for employees to learn new skills?

Defining Success in consulting

Success means different things to different people, so what’s the company’s definition of success? Is it only monetary? Positive customer feedback? Team spirit?

Feeling Appreciated

Are team members feeling appreciated? Does the organization have incentive structures in place to reward good work and loyalty? Are promotions given to hard-working employees?

Health & Wellness

It’s only been in recent years that businesses started placing more focus on their employee’s general well-being. A healthy body and mind work much more efficiently and need much less leave. How does the company take care of their team’s health and wellness? Or is this also part of one of your management consulting projects?

Ensure that you don’t take any shortcuts and that each phase gets the attention it deserves. Success in consulting comes from diligently keeping to all the required steps:

Initiation

Initiation usually makes up the first step in any of the management consulting projects. It is about getting a concept approved.

Planning

This is not only doing the research to start and complete the project, but how to start and complete the project. During this phase you’ll need to create a detailed roadmap for the entire project.

Execution

This phase involves taking action. For obvious reasons, this phase is usually the one that takes the longest and costs the most.

Controlling & Monitoring

This phase goes hand-in-hand with the previous phase. The project constantly needs to be monitored so that it keeps to the planned time schedule and so that any adjustments needed can be implemented.

Closing

At this stage the project officially ends. This phase is probably more important in terms of future projects. What did you learn from this project? What can be improved next time around or also for other types of consulting projects? And, of course, don’t forget to celebrate your successes!

For more helpful tips, advice and other resources on how to reach success in consulting, check out our academy here.