T10: Consulting Skills for Data Professionals

As every data professional knows, the toughest part of the job is engaging the business: understanding their requirements, winning their support, and meeting their expectations.

These are consulting skills – and even if you’re “only” providing services within your own organization, you’re a consultant – like it or not! And many of the techniques that the best external consultants use are equally relevant to you. In this workshop, Graeme will share principles, techniques and tips learned from 20 years of building and managing a successful consultancy.

He’ll show you how to:

• Gain a deeper understanding of business needs and priorities
• Define high-value projects and gain business buy-in
• Negotiate and manage expectations
• Deal with problems – and difficult people
• Build effective long-term relationships

This is a heavily interactive workshop, with time set aside for discussion of case studies and issues raised by attendees. We should add that external consultants, particularly those working independently, have also found Graeme’s consulting skills workshops valuable!

The workshop took the "Men's Health Magazine" motto - "heaps of useful stuff" as its theme, and covered topics ranging from managing expectations to negotiation, dealing with difficult people, writing reports, ethics, personal presentation, selling, and, in an extended exercise, the expectations that come with the title "consultant".

Some key points:

• Consulting is about managing expectations - work hard to get them agreed up-front
• Create a detailed project plan early in the assignment and use it to replace the original statement of expectations
• Get a personal support network in place - a life-line technically and personally
• Negotation is about sharing information and creating win-win outcomes (even if the other guy doesn't subscribe to this theory!)
• Take a systems dynamics approach to people problems - you can change situations but not personalities
• Ethical breaches can have disastrous consequences - and few people make them consciously
• Resolve differences in the "back room" not in front of the client
• Start the report early and get ongoing feedback
• Develop a follow-up plan early and stay in touch after the project is finished - even if it hasn't gone well.

Graeme gave great advice on what Managers really want (from his article What Managers Want):

• Managers don't want to hear prophets of doom.
• Managers don't want to hear about infrastructure because infrastructure implies ongoing capitol costs.
• Managers want loyal teams
• Managers want professional advice (expressed in an unbiased manner).

He also identified a deadly sin for consultants:

• Failing to ask for help