The value of consulting comes primarily into two forms \u2013 reaffirmation or value creation.<\/p>\n
Of the two, reaffirmation is not likely to lead to as great of a value formation since the consultant is re-affirming what you would likely do.\u00a0 However there is significant value as it will likely make you act quicker than if you were not re-affirmed.\u00a0\u00a0 In addition, the re-affirmation value would be more robust if your consultant came from another perspective, but still ended up with the same conclusion.\u00a0\u00a0 Here in lies the value of a\u00a0re-affirmation consultant.\u00a0\u00a0 If your consultant primarily thinks like you do, re-affirming your thoughts should not be a surprise.\u00a0\u00a0 A consultant who has a different thought process and different perspective really adds value, even though the conclusions may be the same.\u00a0\u00a0 This re-affirms the conclusion to be robust not just a chance outcome.\u00a0\u00a0 If you hire consultant for re-affirmation, ask yourself if my consultant is going to color my situation the same as I would, or would he or she be able to add substance\/robustness to my conclusion.<\/p>\n
Value creation from a consultant comes from the consultant being able to take his or her own unique experience and produce something you would not expect to be able to do because of the time frame and\/or plain knowledge of the situation.\u00a0\u00a0 The \u201csuper\u201d consultants will not create an average thought piece that you could get from a government paper and\/or mass media.\u00a0\u00a0 If average is what you need, you would be better off asking your employees and\/or industry associations versus paying a consultant.<\/p>\n
I have been fortunate to be both a person who hired consultants and worked as a consultant.\u00a0 I understand the value of consultants and how one picks a consultant.\u00a0 At AEP I was in charge of the consultants we hired to examine the energy markets. \u00a0 The consultants I have hired included CERA, Wood Mackenzie, PIRA, Energy Ventures Analysis, Hill and Associates, Global Insights, Moody\u2019s,etc\u2026Over the years I saw changes in consulting.\u00a0 There were many consulting companies in the beginning that offered deep insights and different perspectives which challenge my thought process, allowing me to build my knowledge of the markets.\u00a0\u00a0 The fascinating transformation occurred as many of these consultants got larger.\u00a0\u00a0 As one could expect as a consultant firm gets larger, thoughts need to \u201cco-mingle\u201d as corporate heads expect team\/consensus building.<\/p>\n
However what do you expect to get if you build a consensus of many people vs. a vision and thoughts of a few?\u00a0\u00a0 There is some sort of scale at which adding expertise into a consulting firm produces an effect of\u00a0converting knowledge back into information<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 For my consulting experience, I was fortunate to have the experience in a 50 person consulting company Purvin & Gertz.\u00a0\u00a0 We had some very interesting and heated debates on the outlook of the petroleum markets.\u00a0 The process was very personal, but in the end there was no requirement of consensus as accountability could not be washed out in numbers.<\/p>\n I also had the experience to work in a mega consulting company Deloitte Consulting.\u00a0\u00a0 As expected, the outlook in the mega company generally involved more political maneuvering as people tried to climb the corporate ladder.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I saw a dampening of individual thought as corporate mantras would likely lead to greater career success.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not much different than one would expect in any corporate setting regardless of the consulting aspect.\u00a0\u00a0 There will be those individualists who can make a name for themselves and rise above the consensus thoughts, but the odds are against them.\u00a0\u00a0 If you are a number person and\/or just observant you can plainly see; tying ones ideas and thoughts to the corporate mantra will likely\/statistically lead to a -greater career success.\u00a0 Coming back to consulting, if you create a mega corporate consulting company- are you creating a potential to dilute the very in-depth different insights your client requires of you?\u00a0 I am not saying that it is not possible to obtain this from large consulting companies, but it certainly requires a company to be different than most corporate cultures at that point.<\/p>\n Perhaps someday I may once again join the ranks of a mega-consulting company, but it would have to be on the grounds of still being able to offer a unique perspective to my clients, or else what is the reason to consult? \u00a0 The world is well into the Information Age, given the internet revolution.\u00a0 We all have access to mainstream media, government analysis, industry associations, and the futures market.\u00a0\u00a0 There is more data than you can possibly analyze now.\u00a0 Consulting becomes harder as consulting is not just about bringing information anymore since that seems to be ubiquitous, it is about bringing your unique experiences and processes\u00a0to the table and converting that into knowledge for the client.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0At All Energy Consulting that is the very premise of the creation of this consulting group.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to be another information shop \u2013 we \u00a0focus on value-creation and robust re-affirmation through transferring knowledge.<\/p>\n Please do consider the reasons for hiring a consulting company and then consider All Energy Consulting.<\/p>\n Your very thoughtful Energy Consultant,<\/p>\n