I’ve plied my trade as a Family Business Solutionist for many years – acting as a best practice adviser, mediator, and strategic problem-solver. Generally, and despite the complexity and unpredictability baked into the sector, most things have worked out pretty well, for everyone.
BUT, when consulting engagements last longer than expected, and morph along the way, I sense crossing a line that separates initial tasks from what really needs doing.
Engagement Letters anticipate diversions, but they don’t resolve the disconnect, because this is not just about doing more hours of work. The nature of the work has fundamentally changed. Client and adviser mindsets need to be in sync and adapted to the new reality, but our thinking is anchored in traditional consulting tasks and relationships, and in the past engagement.
In effect, we’re trapped in conventional “Adviser-Land” – where technical solutions rule. And that’s not where the best stuff happens.
Developing high levels of trust and confidence during initial consulting engagements gives clients confidence I can help them address other significant (non-technical) needs. They’re now seeking “Significant Advice” – in the form of empathic wisdom and practical guidance, rather than technical solutions. I’m wanted for my skills as a Sounding Board, rather than as an expert.
Why does this make me feel like a goose? For failing, for many years, to appreciate that “Advisers ain’t Advisers” – in ways that really matter. Let me explain:
Most advisory engagements are designed (and priced) to deliver defined outcomes, by performing specific tasks, over a defined timeframe, using expert skills, for a calculable fee.
Once you prove yourself competent and trustworthy, you find yourself valued more for your knowledge of the client, and your demonstrated wisdom, experience, and judgement, than for technical knowledge, or skills, which are a more freely available commodity. Of course, you’ll probably have to keep using most of them anyway, perhaps in highly innovative combinations.
You develop an intimate working relationship with the business leader – closer than anything they’ve enjoyed with other staff or advisers for a long time. You become more mentor than adviser – helping them to grow and modernise the business; change culture: upgrade HR functions; establish independent governance structures and systems; and facilitate succession and leadership transition (to name a few). You lighten their load by sharing it – intellectually, emotionally, and practically.
And here comes the goose: My epiphany – that I’m really no longer acting as an Adviser (or consultant); I’ve become an Advisory Board (even if it’s a Board of One – let’s call it a “Sounding Board”). This is now a fundamentally different engagement, where I’m required to deliver “Significant Advice”, rather than technical solutions, or completed tasks.
There’s gold in this goose!
Reset for the New Paradigm
Avoid underachieving, underbilling, and feeling like a goose. Change your mindset for the engagement.
Establish different expectations, anticipate deeper relationship dynamics, and demand more appropriate fee arrangements, because you’re now working on a higher level where you should expect a substantially greater return on effort.
The nature, style, quality, depth, and value of your services have turned you into an Advisory Board (or at least a Sounding Board).
