What is Consulting?

April 29, 2008

“Good Morning”

“Do you have a need for Contract Programmers?”

Here at LUCRUM, Chuck has done a great job at filtering our email solicitations. However, I still get the one above from some guy named Patrick Harris….it reminds me of how LUCRUM is positioned in the market as a consulting firm providing business and technology solutions.

There’s a real difference between “contract programmer” and “consultant.” The industry often mingles the definitions together and customers tend to negotiate for consulting services using “contract programmer” pricing.

LUCRUM has had a rich history of hiring IT professionals that thrive on “consulting” using their technology skills. With that statement, let’s ask ourselves “what is a consultant?” Consulting is bringing expertise of one’s experiences into a firm on a project or fee basis. One of the ironies of consulting is that the goal of the consultant must be to make him or herself obsolete.” All of us have been in the position of being frustrated (either as an internal or external consultant or even as a perm-placement worker) by management’s careful efforts to defeat any and all attempts on our part to transfer the knowledge we had to at least one (other) person in the organization. This puzzles me because I learned early on in my career that it is far more probable that a company will retain “intuitive knowledge” about their system/applications/data/whatever if more than one person has that knowledge.

To provide our technology expertise is simply not enough in today’s global economy. The disparity between India (and other Asian-based services) and the US will continue to have companies use “contract programmers” that are truly just “coders” and not consultants.

Why do I bring this up? It’s our livelihood! I also know that our mantra has been “85% social and 15% technical.” My ratio is skewed purposely to emphasize the requirement to “over-communicate” on every part of our daily assignment. The technology works; it doesn’t work if people are not communicating. As consultants, it’s up to us to take the lead responsibility with the customer on communications. That’s our largest challenge. You’ll see LUCRUM’s focus to grow our capabilities in this area with Customer Alignment Sessions, leveraging Whole Brain Organizational Development processes internally and with our customers, and a new larger emphasis on the consultant, and in developing unique professional skills. Jodie Heflin, as our Delivery Leader, has the proven track record of Customer-oriented 85/15 skills. It’s her goal to get all of our firm up to a higher level of capability; to “think” as a part of our customer’s business in addition to our technology capabilities.

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