Going to the dark side: Should you consider becoming a consultant?

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It is the time of yr when you might be contemplating main life and profession modifications, and maybe consulting is in your radar. Here is what that you must know earlier than making the transfer.

Happy business colleagues in modern office using tablet — Picture: nd3000, Getty Photos/iStockphoto

Because the previous saying implies, most of us can not help however sometimes surprise if the grass actually is greener on the opposite facet. I’ve spoken with numerous colleagues within the consulting world which have entertained–and typically moved ahead with–dreams of attempting their arms in an business function; simply as I’ve had related chats with business colleagues and purchasers which have thought of making a transfer into consulting. Each are noble pursuits, and each usually are not with out their flaws and distinctive advantages. When you’re a expertise chief that is interested by a transfer to the “darkish facet” and attempting consulting, right here are some things to bear in mind as you think about such a transfer.

SEE: 24 suggestions for delivering dangerous information (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Prepare for routine uncertainty

If there’s one factor I discover that makes or breaks a profitable advisor, it is a capability to thrive in an unsure setting. Some individuals suppose I am joking once I inform them I don’t know the place I will be bodily working, what firm I will be working with, and what I will be attempting to perform weeks from now, nevertheless it’s completely true. For some individuals, that is an exciting proposition and really totally different from a predictable function the place they will map out their future with relative certainty months, and even years out. Consulting supplies a novel alternative to shortly achieve wildly various experiences throughout industries, geographies, and applied sciences, and in addition creates a chance to reinvent your profession frequently as you purchase new experiences and shortly develop new abilities.

The draw back to this unpredictability is what drives many individuals to go away the career. It is tough to plan all the pieces from household occasions to routine physician visits when you possibly can actually be anyplace on the planet, in some instances with a day’s discover (or much less). The joy of the unknown can shortly change into a daunting instability and a way that you don’t have any management over your future.

SEE: The right way to discover work-life steadiness as a advisor: 7 suggestions (TechRepublic)

Assess your skill to self-market

Whether or not you are in a large international consulting agency or hanging out a shingle as a sole proprietor, one of many tougher points of consulting is that you simply now must closely market a definite product–you. You have to continually be updating your colleagues in addition to current and new purchasers about your capabilities, choices, and how one can assist them advance their agenda. Some discover these advertising and marketing actions distasteful, however they’re vital to success within the subject, and nearly with out fail, the advisor who markets him- or herself effectively will get the shopper name versus the superb implementer who fails to market in any respect.

Decide your willingness to tackle a number of jobs

One other facet of the consulting world that catches new entrants unawares is the varied variety of roles that one has to tackle. In an business job, you probably must handle employees, run a portfolio of initiatives, and maybe take part in some extracurricular roles like neighborhood outreach or companion relationship work. In consulting, you’ll be able to add formal teaching and mentoring jobs, inside choices, product improvement, and main inside initiatives to that roster. On the extra energetic consulting corporations, there might be an all-you-can-eat buffet of alternatives and roles accessible, to the purpose that it turns into a little bit of an artwork to determine which to pursue and which to cross up. Even in a one-person store you will have to know accounting and finance, advertising and marketing and gross sales, and–as I used to joke with my wife–perhaps even play the function of janitor now and again.

You even have a proper client-facing function at a number of initiatives, and a proper function inside your agency. Just like the uncertainty of the enterprise, this may be invigorating or wildly irritating.

Put together to change into an “influencer” moderately than a “commander”

Each job requires a level of affect along with formal management buildings, however that is much more acute in consulting, the place you don’t have any direct accountability on your purchasers’ decision-making. When you can definitely affect the formal disciplinary course of as much as firing somebody from your individual firm’s employees, you will lack that skill for the shopper group.

Sometimes you will have shopper employees that underperform and even friends and stakeholders that vary from barely competent to actively attempting to sabotage your work. You will lack the power to take direct motion in most of those instances, and moderately want to perform your aims by means of affect or deft organizational maneuvering. The silver lining to that is that you will probably be transferring on from that shopper sooner or later and not must take care of the dysfunction.

When you can thrive in such a setting, there are few careers that present the breadth of alternative and pleasure of consulting. In some ways, it is like with the ability to change jobs each few months and expertise a brand new set of individuals and challenges, all whereas sustaining the consistency of 1 employer. Simply just be sure you’re tempering no matter rosy visions you’ve of a consulting profession with the fact that it is a uniquely unsure subject with its personal set of challenges.