Management consulting is actually a job of teaching people to fish, that is to say, management consultants should not only provide solutions for the customers they serve, but also help them form good ideas most of the time. When the consultant leaves the project, when new problems arise, customers can solve them themselves.
So what is the consulting procedure of management consultants? The author unveiled this mysterious veil with his own consulting work record.
Define the problem:
A similar situation often occurs among many customers I have contacted. Visitors flock to the company, and it seems that there are many problems to be solved. When the consultant asked the visitor to describe the problem clearly, the customer suddenly found that he didn't know what was wrong with his business. On the surface, it seems that there are problems in sales, finance or other links, but in fact, those are only superficial problems, and the deep-seated reasons behind the problems cannot be found. As a result, the problem remains unsolved. At this time, it is necessary for consultants to conduct in-depth communication within the enterprise and clarify the problems that the enterprise to serve or the enterprise to serve really needs to solve. When defining a problem, it must be based on facts, that is, it cannot be imagined out of thin air. This is also the first step in the negotiation process. In the field of management consulting, we call it "management diagnosis". Only by finding the cause can we prescribe the right medicine.
Problem structuring:
After defining the problem of the enterprise to be served, it is necessary to structure the problem. Simply put, structuring is to find out the cause of the problem. For example, when the customer's marketing system has problems, it seems that the customer's sales are declining year by year. When the consultant defines the customer as a problem with the marketing system, it is necessary to understand the reasons that interfere with the function of the marketing system, such as whether the organizational setting is reasonable. Whether the human resources are sufficient, whether the employment mechanism is humanized, whether the product line needs to be adjusted, the influence of product quality on sales, whether the structure of the marketing system is network or linear, whether the existing customer resources are in line with the company's current positioning and so on. In short, consultants should have the ability to think systematically, find the most critical problem among many sub-problems, and then solve other problems.
Report presentation stage:
Generally speaking, after structuring the problem, the consultant in charge of the project will call all the members of the project team and provide three reports to the customer on the basis of repeated argumentation: diagnosis report, strategic planning report and strategic implementation report. At this time, the consulting project team has been working in the client enterprise for nearly three months. After submitting the report, both parties should make clear the next cooperation matters. At present, there are two types of consulting companies. One is to submit only the relevant documents of customers, and the consulting company is not responsible for assisting in the implementation. The other is that consulting companies send project teams to service enterprises to provide in-depth guidance to enterprises. The management consulting company I work for belongs to the latter, that is, I spend at least 7 days a month in the client's enterprise to provide in-depth guidance for the client's management team. The author thinks that domestic enterprises are more suitable for this service model. If you want to enter the enterprise for internal counseling, then you should do the following work.
Establish a collaborative team
In fact, the operation of enterprises is mainly people-oriented. Without a good team, everything is impossible. An excellent team does not necessarily require everyone to be an elite, but everyone in the team should have a good attitude and excellent quality. Avoid the same talent structure and optimize the structure, but don't repeat it. In team building, it is very important to establish team spirit. Without the confidence to win, it is difficult to win the battle. At the same time, it is necessary to design a benign employment mechanism for the team, so as to make the best use of people and materials, and promote the team to have a benign circulation system. Too much brain drain, or keeping talents from flowing, is not desirable. It is beneficial to the development of the enterprise to ensure that outstanding talents constantly find new positions in the team and at the same time, constantly replenish fresh blood. Only the growth and development of the organization will drive the development of the enterprise. Enterprises only need to provide a new platform for talents. First-class enterprises are operating institutions, and second-rate enterprises are operating talents. At the same time, enterprises should pay attention to assimilating and cultivating their own talents with their own corporate culture on the basis of ensuring the stability of the core management team. Only when the grafted talents are integrated into their own corporate culture will they be beneficial to the enterprise. In other words, the next step for an enterprise to establish a learning organization is to clarify its mission.
Define the corporate mission:
The purpose of defining the enterprise mission is to let the team members know the development direction of the enterprise and know how to realize the mission. Simply put, the company's development strategy can make the core management team clear and know the ways and means to achieve this goal. Only with the same goal can we be in an invincible position. Consultants should let the core management team of enterprises understand through training or high-level meetings that enterprises should establish a good professional outlook and only when things are done right can they make money. Making money just for the sake of making money will have no result. At the same time, it is necessary to make clear where the core competitiveness of enterprises lies. The core competitiveness of enterprises cannot be copied, otherwise it will not be core competitiveness. Even if the core competitiveness is weak now, we should clearly know where the enterprise should cultivate its core competitiveness. After grasping the macro development direction of the enterprise, the next step is to straighten out every link and ensure the smooth progress of the project. A negotiation project without results is meaningless to both parties.
Layered implementation:
At this stage, it is necessary to let all levels of the enterprise, even all employees of the enterprise, understand the changes of the company and the changes that will be experienced in the future through various forms and methods, which is more conducive to the formation of new values of the enterprise and smoother management. This stage is also the hardest stage for the consulting team, because the quality of employees is uneven. At this stage, the consultant must know which song to sing in that mountain and give different forms of counseling to people of different structural levels. Don't let the grass-roots managers of the enterprise feel that the strategy and business philosophy are too far away from them to understand, and don't let the top management of the enterprise feel that the form is excellent. They can also set up a company tomorrow. How to implement it depends on the consultant.
Establish an incentive system:
After the adjustment of the above steps, the enterprise has found a new idea and is developing vigorously, so the next step is to re-establish the internal incentive system, that is, to build a new profit distribution system. When enterprises show new signs of development, people are more concerned about the development of enterprises and gain new profit growth points. So how much does this new profit have to do with themselves? This is a problem of human nature, and it can't be ignored. People can face adversity. When sharing happiness, we must know whether what we get is fair or not. This is human nature, and no one should avoid it. If the incentive system is not redesigned, it will inevitably affect the further development of enterprises.
After the adjustment of the above steps, a consulting project has come to an end. At this time, the consultant should make a new inventory of the project from the perspective of sizing up the situation, stop and look at it, and take a step back, which is also the principle of spiral rise.
In the description of the above consultation and diagnosis process, the author only expounds the macro thinking and management thought of the enterprise. As for the micro-operation of enterprises, such as business process reengineering (ERP) or resource reengineering (BPR), it is also an important part of consultation, but limited to the topics discussed in this paper, the author will not repeat them here.
If we continue to serve the enterprise, a new round of diagnosis and treatment procedures will begin again, but this time it is not the reincarnation of the problem, but transcending the past and heading for another peak!