Getting the Best out of Internal Consultants

Such volatility adds to role overload, underload, ambiguity and conflict that go with internal consulting jobs often due to the political turbulence their work creates.  Consequently, many consultants feel under great pressure from such stressors.  Compounded by the effort needed to get support for their ideas when constrained by  political resistance and the need to mobilize power for their positions.

Essential to effective performance is consultant credibility with key executives. Such credibility rests on their ability to manage the impression they create.  This is not easy and for the faint hearted. Many consultants, under pressure, withdraw into their expertise and regress interpersonally.  Both these reactions to stress reduce the consultant’s ability to generate support for his proposals.

Generating credibility rests on the consultants ability to identify and anticipate executive role drivers.  These role drivers refer not only to the executive’s values, expectations and reference groups but also their political and career interests which could be impacted by specialists’ proposals.  Credits can be built up by attending to projects, which relate particularly to executive drivers especially project benefits can be quantified financially.  These credits may then be “cashed” on projects where the benefits are not easily quantified.  Finally, it highlights the significance of consultants forming multiplex relationships with key executives.  Developing these relationships impacts consultant’s ability to identify executive role drivers and accurately pick up on changes in their credibility.

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I.T. is a case in point.   Organizations are increasingly insist on cost effectiveness from such consultant groups.  Consultants are often asked to charge for their services in the company.  Forced to operate in this service market place, consultants become increasingly aware that their credibility is dependent not only on their technical skills, but also as an expert communicator and internal politician.

(Based on an article by Andrew M. Pettigrew)

 Low Consultant Credibility Issues

Consultant credibility is often assessed by their ability to influence executive clients.  Low credibility consultants find that executives block their ideas.  Andrew Pettigrew‘s research back in the 70’s indicated executives use the following defensive tactics to block consultants’ reports. See how many apply to today:

 Straight Rejection

Coming from a powerful, self-assured executive, this is clearly the simplest way to deal with a consultant.  The consultant and his report are dismissed without further consideration.

 “Bottom Drawer It”

This is a more subtle variant of straight rejection.  The executive reads the report and then words the extravagantly worded email praising the consultant’s technical ability.  Meanwhile, the report ends up in an archived file and forgotten.  Of course, The naive could see this type of praise as a reward for their  efforts.  Thus, if and when the executive requires real help they may find the consultants level of motivation is not impaired.

 Mobilizing Political Support

Here the executive decides the best way to defend his interests is to mobilize support against the consultant.  If the threat from the consultant’s proposals is sufficiently great, the executive may call in favors with colleagues.  In this way the consultant can be outmanoeuvered and politically isolated.

The remaining defence mechanisms represent interpersonal delaying tactics.

The “Nitty-Gritty” tactic

The “nitty-gritty” tactic, when used with care, can be a great source of frustration to the consultant.  The executive’s aim is to concentrate on raising nitty-gritty objections to the consultant’s report.  Considerable attention is paid statistical accruracy, repetitious comments or slight inconsistencies in argument.

The Emotional Tactic

Here the executive relies on emotional argument to rid himself of the consultant.  For example “It’s taken me seven years to build this department.  You can’t do this to me.  Besides, they are my people.  What about them?  What’s their future.”

This line of defence is unlikely to impress the consultant.  He may feel if this is all the manager has to say, “I might as well press on with the project.”  To the determined consultant, emotionality is no substitute for rationality.

 “But in the future …”

Many consultants complain they have great difficulty relating to executives because they  insist on interpreting all plans in terms of past disasters or present circumstances.  This is the major reason why the “But in the future” tactic usually catches the consultant by surprise.  The executive may argue  “These data and conclusions are fine for today’s conditions — even for the next year or two — but what in the future …?  All these statistics will be no good to us if circumstances change and I know they’re likely to!”

The Invisible Man Tactic

This perhaps is the most extreme form of executive defensiveness is when they avoid all contact.  Appointments are arranged but the consultant arrives to hear “I’m terribly sorry, he’s just been called upstairs for an important meeting’.

 “Further investigation is required …”

This is the classic delaying tactic.  The consultant is sent away to collect more information ostensibly because the original terms of reference weren’t understood or because the consultant’s report raised such interesting and novel implications that these had to be followed up.

 The Scapegoat

If the manager really doesn’t want to be moved he may look for a scapegoat to act as the constraining force on the consultant’s ideas.  “The head office people wouldn’t wear it” or “the unions would bring the place to a halt” are possible executive responses that are difficult for the consultant to cope with.

 Deflection

The final interpersonal delaying tactic used by executives is to attempt to deflect the consultant’s attention away from the central points in his report.  Here the executive objective is to direct the discussion towards areas where he has sufficient detailed knowledge to contradict the specialist’s brief.

It should not be assumed from the preceding discussion that there is no such thing as a “solid objection” to a consultant’s report.  Not all executive responses are contrived and defensive.  Invariably consultant’s are either faced with the prospect of incorporating the “solid objection” at the last moment or retiring to “lick their wounds”.

Consultant’s Reactive Behavior

Faced with these defensive ploys many consultants compound the original difficulty by their own reactive behaviour.  The distinction between reactive and proactive behaviour in this context is an important one.  Reactive behaviour is defined as the ill-considered response to the surface behaviour of the other party.  Proactive behaviour requires some attempt to diagnose and anticipate the reasons for the responses of the other party and to base one’s own behaviour on that diagnosis.

Typical consultant reactions faced with executive attempts to block their ideas include:

• withdrawing interpersonally from the executive
• withdrawing mentally by retreating into technical language
• restating logical arguments
• reacting emtionally

Such reactive behaviour confirms the executive’s worst fears.  The executive can interpret the consultant withdrawal into techn0-speak as a mask to cover the consultant’s incompetence. Then, if the executive demonstrates more technical competence, they can then feel even more threatened and retreat further into professional jargon.  If the consultant then reacts aggressively, the executive receives confirmation about their arrogance.  In this way:

“one party’s defensive behaviour becomes a source of threat to the other and the cycle of conflict and misunderstanding is likely to continue”

 Diagnosizing the Problem

The difficulties between consultants and executives cannot be attributed just to incompatible personalities, faulty communications and difference in values and attitudes.  These tend to be symptoms. Deeper structural issues are at work.  These relate to:

• Organizational Design
• Conflicts of interest
• Role problems of specialists and internal politics

Ineffective consultant influence attempts may be caused by two interdependent factors.  First the way consultants’ roles tend to evolve and the stresses this creates for them and, second, the political activity raised by specialists’ proposals and their reluctance often to take a proactive involvement in those political activities.

 Consultant Role Problems

Research by Robert L. Kahn, University of Michigan [1] has indicated that some roles have built-in stress. These stresses are:

• role overload
• role underload
• role conflict
• role ambiguity.

Technical consultants experience all four.  They talk of having little control over the volume of work coming to them, of large peaks and valleys in the flow of work and of being unable to predict such work fluctuations.  Flipping from an overload to an underload situation in this way can be extremely discomforting.

The other two job stressors, role conflict and role ambiguity, tend to emerge from the boundary spanning nature of the consultant’s role.  Most consultant spend a great deal of their time operating across the boundaries of their own department, and this places them in a situation where they have to manage competing and sometimes ambiguous demands from these various departments.

OR Team Example

One operations research (OR) team was in classic role conflict. The OR team had been set up within the Research and Development Laboratory.  The OR manager said there were terrible communication problems between his group and the scientists. Essentially, the OR team had incompatibility built into the role.  They were expected to help the scientists analyze their results and to police the laboratory by implementing a control system, which would monitor the time and other resources scientists used.

There was also the problem of the gap between what the OR man wanted to do and what his organization expected of him.  The OR man wanted to concentrate his energies on the research side of his job title, while the organization pressured hi to put due emphasis on the operations side of his job title.  Managers tended to demand solutions to problems, which were operable and quick, while the OR man sought long-term, interesting projects where the most advanced techniques could be applied.

Technical consultants and consultants also have to cope with role ambiguities.  These relate particularly to the terms of reference and information given by managers, tot heir uncertainties about company general policy and its relationship to the projects they work on and the scope of their own responsibilities and authority.  These factors tend to make specialists feel they are in an organization, but not part of it.  As one specialist dejectedly put it:

 You tend to be regarded as an outsider — the affluent society’s appendage to the system.  People think we are luxuries rather than essentials.

The build up of stress from overload, underload, conflict and ambiguity, together with expressed uncertainty about their credibility creates momentum to the defensive-threatening cycle.  Increased rigidity, aggression, interpersonal and cognitive withdrawal are familiar coping responses to stress.  The misjudgement and misconceptions arising from these responses have a major impact on the influence consultants can exert on executives.

The Politics of Changing

Politics and change are natural bed-fellows. As consultants initiate many changes, their activities are bound up with the politics of change.  The possibilities of major structural changes have political consequences.  Innovations threaten parts of the working community.  In these ways existing distributions of power and status are endangered and new political action is released.

Consultant-executive relationships take place in the context of organizational life where political activity is pervasive and real.  Consultants who demand structural change, affect the current power balance and involve both consulltant and executive in politics.  In such situations, consultants have to be competent to understand the political processes in their organization and how their projects relate to and impact those processes.

Pettigrew’s diagnosis of the consultant-executive relationship highlighted two main causes:

•  Consultant role problems that creates reactive behaviour patterns born of increased stress, and
•  The political activity released by consultant recommended innovations.

So, how do consultants go about influencing executives?  To answer this one, we need to know the potential power resources specialists possess and tactically how they might go about using them.

Consultant Power Components

Power is generated, maintained and lost in the context of relationships with others.  Most people have power limited by their formal position and allocated resources. Controlling resources though may not be enough; there is also the issue of the skillful use of resources.

For the consultant the problem is moving through possessing, controlling and tactically exploiting their power resources.  Some consultants lack awareness of theire potential power resources.  Others can neither effectively control nor tactically use them.  But what are some of these potential specialist power resources and how and why might they be used?

Pettigrew [2] indicated five potential power resources:

•  Expertise
•  Control over information
•  Political access and sensitivity
• Credibility and group support by his colleagues and related consultant groups.

Control over information, political access and sensitivity are essential but not the only competencies of consultant power.

The following looks at some of the processes, which contribute to high consultant stature.

Credibility

Credibility is a critical power resource for the consultant and serves to link three elements of the power process. Mobilizing power rests on understanding three things:

• Power aspirants and their potential power resources
• Interpersonal activity or other communication that will influence
• Recipients who are influencable

Consultants do not merely advise; they persuade, negotiate and mobilize power.  These abilities rests on identifying and accessing the organization’s power base. Then they need to use their credibility to negotiate and persuade within the power base often through their client relationships.

“Credibility is defined as the process of developing positive feelings in the perception of relevant others”

Developing credibility is like Goffman [3] calls impression management:

“When an individual enters the presence of others, he will want to discover the facts of the situation.  Were he to possess this information, he could know, and make allowances for, what will come to happen and he could give the others present as much of their due as is consistent with his enlightened self-interest.”

But what does “the facts of the situation” mean.  Pettigrew interprets this as

“the process of accruing the facts of the situation means identifying executive role drivers.

Before defining role drivers, let’s look at an example of what occurs when role drivers are not exposed. Edward T. Hall [4] quotes an example from a diplomatic setting:

An American mission in Greece deadlocked with Greek officials.  Their efforts to negotiate met resistance and suspicion… later they found out two unsuspected reasons for the stalemate.  First, Americans priding themselves on being outspoken and forthright which the Greeks regarded as a liability and lacked finesse which they deplored … second, when the Americans arranged meetings, they tried to limit meeting length and to push for agreements on general principles then delegate the drafting of details to subcommittees.  The Greeks regarded this practice as a device to pull the wool over their eyes. … The result of this misunderstanding was unproductive meetings with each side deploring the other’s behaviour.

Hall’s example of misunderstanding shows that if people are to influence each other, they must be identify the other party’s perspective and behaviour.  Role drivers recognizes that executives and consultants have varying needs, expectations and affiliations.  They also relate to others with differing sets of political interest.  For consultants, they need uncover and anticipate what is driving an executive which is an important component of building their credibility.

Clearly this is based on a good relationship between executive and consultant if they are going to identify such drivers.  Consultants who become preoccupied with their own expertise, or withdraws interpersonally and only see their executive client when a specific issue is at hand won’t find out an executive’s frame of reference, and present arguments that relate to those drivers.

Consultants have more influence with executives if they have multiplex rather than uniplex relationships.  Think of it like this. All interactions are composed of exchange components .  These are basic elements of interaction.  These include work related components like: coaching, acting as a sounding board, job assistance, cash assistance and task-related interactions as distinct from social related components.  Social components include, might be spending coffee or lunch periods together and a range of faith, community or sporting based contact.  A Multiplex Realtionship exists when there is more than one exchange compenent.  Multiplex relationships are “stronger” than those which are uniplex.  Generally speaking consultants can exert greater influence over executives when multiplexitiy exists.

In the early stages of the consultant-executive relationship generating credibility tactics includes demonstrating competence in one role driver area.  This ss “the low-key approach”.  The specialist takes on small jobs related to an executives’ needs and whose successful outcome can be priced.  This way, the consultant builds credits with politically significant others that can be used later to generate support for proejcts whose value is not so easily measured.

Alongside the consultant’s ability to generate credibility , must be the ability to guage when their credibility changes.  Power derived from credibility is dynamic.  Political timing, therefore, becomes important.  The time and the way a proposal is presented can have a crucial impact on the support it receives.  Mobilizing power depends on making moves at a time when resources can enforce their intent.  Conversely, low-credibility consultants do not make demands on a political system which threatens them.

Competence involved more than technical skills.  Competent advisers know the executive’s problem and addresses it rather shoe-horning it to “fit” into a technique.  This is key difference between an adviser’s competence and an expert’s incompetence.

Executive’s Role for Getting the Best out of Internal Consultants

Let’s now look how executives categorize and accept or reject consultant advice (Rosenblum’s [5]).  When executives are faced with increasingly complex and specialized problems they reduce uncertainty by judging consultants personally as a way of evaluating information.  In short, executives relied on those consultants who they felt were competent and empathetic.

Rosenblum’s study showed that executives assessed consultant credibility along certain dimensions, namely the adviser’s:

• Track record as a reliable source of information and advice
• Objectivity and trustworthiness.
• Ability to give multiple solutions to problems
• Personal empathy
• Collaborative problem-solving style
• Common educational, social and business experiences

Inadequate consultant-executive relationships rests firmly at the door of the executive.  Part of this responsibility lies at the interpersonal level.  One way to transform competent experts into competent advisers is involving them in general management decision-making.  This means describing their problems in their widest possible context.  The consultant then has a much better context and understanding of the executive’s drivers withing which to present their own logic.

Senior executives also need be aware of consultant-executive relationships when changing organizational structure.  Differentiation factors like differences in time horizon, different degrees of reliance on formal authority as a control device and task versus interpersonal orientation at work.

Summary

Overload, underload, ambiguity and conflict go with an internal consultant’s job due to the political trubulence their work creates.  Consequently, many consultants feel under great pressure from such stressors.  This is compounded by the effort needed to get support for their ideas when constrained by  political resistance and the need to mobilize power for their positions.

Essential to effective performance is consultant credibility with key figures in their political network.  Such credibility rests on their ability to manage the impression they create.  This is not easy and for the faint hearted. Many consultants withdraw into their expertise and regress interpersonally.  Both these reactions to stress reduce the consultant’s ability to generate support for his proposals.

Generating credibility rests on the consultants ability to identify and anticipate executive role drivers.  These role drivers refer not only to the executive’s values, expectancations and reference groups but also political and career interests and how they might be affected by any specialist’s proposals.  Credits can be built up by attending to projects, which relate particularly to executive drivers especially project benefits can be quantified financially.  These credits may then be “cashed” on projects where the benefits are not easily quantified.  Finally, this analysis highlighted the significance of consultants to form multiplex relationships with key figures in their political network.  Developing these relationships impacts consultant’s capacity to identify executive role drivers and accurately assess changes in their credibility.

References

1. R. L. Kahn, D. M. Wolfe, R. P. Quinn, J. d. Snoek and R. A. Rosenthal, Organizational Stress, Wiley, New York, 1964.
2. A. M. Pettigrew, “Stress and power in the internal consultant-client relationship.” Paper presented to the European Pro-activity Services Research Conference, Italy, May 1972.
3. E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1969, p. 220.
4. E. T. Hall, The Silent Language, (11^th printing).  Fawcett, new York, 1968, pp. 10 – 11.
5. J. W. Rosenblum, “General managers and technical advisors,” unpublished DBA thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, 1972.
6. P. R. Lawrenec and J. W. Lorsch, Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, Division of Research, Boston, Mass., 1967; P. R. Lawrence and J. Wl. Lorsch, Developing Organizations: Diagnosis and Action, Addison Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1969.