To a business consultant, very few things could be more important than effective communications skills. A consultant is hired, generally as part of a larger firm, to examine a company's operations and assist management in making a variety of different business decisions. While consultants try to produce data-driven, effective results, the fact of the matter is that they are usually considerably younger and less experienced than the management that they are consulting for. While a fresh set of eyes is often needed on a case, and consulting firms offer invaluable insight, it is easy for a long-time CEO to simply dismiss their ideas as the uneducated musings of relative children. Only a powerful command of rhetoric can convince them otherwise.
In such cases, what you say can be very much less important than how you say it. You must quickly build up powerful ethos, and swivel into striking logos to help impress upon the minds of the management team that not only are you intelligent and capable, but your ideas can change their company for the better. You must have relevant content, good ideas that really will make a difference, but it won't do you any good if they won't listen to you in the first place.
I used to want to be a lawyer, but my roommate brought me to the business strategy club, where we do amateur consulting, and I was hooked. Now, I'm thrilled to one day be a business consultant.
I'm very interested to hear more about your field in your presentation. The father of one of my friends is a business consultant. She told me that most of the time, the companies don't really follow his advice. I'd love to hear an estimate, if you have one, of how frequently companies really do what people advise them and how we could increase this figure in the business consulting world.
ReplyDeleteIn many ways the roles of an attorney and a business consultant are quite similar. Both give advice to people who are considered their "superiors", both have to say hard things that people don't want to hear, and both rely almost exclusively on effective communicative and rhetorical skills. I think your analysis of rhetoric in business consulting is spot on.
ReplyDeleteOne of my good friends is an organizational behavior guru and a business consultant for several Fortune 500 companies. Just like you mentioned, he told me once that how he presented was always more important than what he presented.
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