I can’t say I’m a sports fan–actually, I don’t follow sports much at all except for the annual Super Bowl game…and of course, that’s to see the halftime show, commercials and eat unlimited chips. But, as I’ve been thinking about the top mistakes clients make when hiring consultants, I can’t help but look to football for an analogy. (Side note: While football is not my jam, I am obsessed with Colin Kaepernick…and use him in my example here).

If you hire consultants or may be considering hiring a consultant, this post is for you. Let’s say you are the head of a football team and you want to win the season. You are not looking to get through without embarrassment; You want to ensure that your team becomes synonymous with excellent football.  

You have stellar, committed players. You have a world-class field. You have great coaches.

Problem is: You have not yet achieved your vision of excellence. You have not yet had an impeccable season with full team engagement, full fan participation, full focus on the big win–embodying excellence in this sport.

So, how do you do it? 

Of course, you call in a team of top notch advisors whose collective experience is waaaaay beyond your years. With the team of advisors, you craft a strategy and then you trust them to help you move the team forward to accomplish your goal. That’ll require ongoing work: practices, meetings, some out-of-the-box thinking and approaches. But YOU ARE GAME because this means the world to you. And together, you make this happen.

When looking at this scenario that’s outside our sector, it seems so clear. So obvious. Yet, when you come back to our education-youth development-nonprofit reality, the use of advisors and consultants becomes much more convoluted, and much less effective. Why? Well, here are the top 3 mistakes I see over and over again when it comes to hiring consultants:

1. Restricting your access to expert consultants from the start.  If you had the choice between hiring Colin Kaepernick, LLC or Acme Football Consultants Incorporated, who would you choose? Who would help you achieve your vision? 

Many clients–especially public agencies–put forth rigorous requests for proposals in the name of “transparency” or even “equity”. The problem here is that only the large consulting  institutions have the capacity and funding to stop everything and ask their grant writer to assemble all the pieces of the proposal by the ridiculous deadline. 

Those same large consulting firms have high administrative costs that support their name recognition.  But, it’s likely, if you award them the work, you’ll be assigned a junior level consultant. Someone who is a worker bee, but not a high level, experienced strategic advisor. 

Meanwhile, the expertise you need and want is more likely with free agents (like Colin Kaepernick <3).– independent consultants who have their own LLC or boutique consulting firm.  These people do not have the resources or administrative backbone to churn out lengthy proposals with no assurance of remuneration. However, if you were to hire them, you’d get PhD level advising that would help you really move the needle toward your goal.

2. Hiring consultants to produce non-solution solutions. If your sponsors said the way for your team to reach excellence is to sell more popcorn in the stands, would you hire Colin Kaepernick to start popping?

Often, funders weigh in heavily with their own opinions about what will help organizations achieve their goals.  It’s very common for a funder to say something like: We’ll give you $50,000 to write this curriculum or train these people or distribute this information. Organizations then hire a consultant to create these deliverables.  The problem is: the deliverables very rarely make a dent toward the bigger goal. So, you keep your funder happy, you have a pretty product at the end, but it’s not something your organization needed or wanted…and it doesn’t really move you to where you need to go.

One of my favorite examples from our sector is the prescriptive curriculum. I can’t tell you how many times over the years we’ve been hired to write a curriculum only to find out that the team doesn’t need or want a curriculum, but are hungry for ongoing professional learning, support and community.

When clients hire consultants to provide a “non-solution solution”, it is a sheer waste of investment–your financial investment and your consultants’ blood, sweat and tears. Not to mention a waste of talent on how they could have actually helped you.

The opportunity here is to push back on funders and explicitly say what you need. Don’t follow the funder, set the strategy and ask for support. Your consultants can help you do that.

3) Keeping your best consultants benched. If you could win the season by tapping into deep expertise, would you really keep your top team members…Colin… on the bench?

If you’ve been in the field for awhile, doing this important work, you know some excellent consultants.  They are founders of nonprofit organizations, movers and shakers in their areas of expertise and have chosen–for whatever reasons–to become consultants.  Whether independent, part of a small or large firm, the consultant community is the connective tissue within the youth development ecosystem. 

Think about it: They have seen or experienced the inner workings of so many, varied organizations. The stories they could tell! The lessons they can help you skip! The solutions they can generate! Consultants who are truly committed to the mission of young people’s health, success and happiness are insanely resourceful at ensuring your work can help achieve that mission.  

But what do we see happen? Time and again, organizational leaders create a “bench” or list of consultants they *could* draw upon.   While these stellar players are on your team, YOU SHOULD TALK TO THEM! This is a commonly missed opportunity. When you are grappling with a shift, a staff exodus, a new program model, a sustainability strategy, a partnership initiative…whatever you are dealing with, you should be bringing together your thought partners for some outside perspectives.  

Yes, you will pay them for that advising. But think about it. You have a set of consultants who

1) you have vetted

2) you trust

3) care about you, your people, your organization

4) may have more historical knowledge of your programming than many of your current leaders

5) have perspective from broader contexts than your organization…

If you are really, truly committed to the success of young people, families and communities…wouldn’t you be in dialogue with your trusted set of thought partners, your top-level advisors?

Wouldn’t you be able to find a small budget for a quarterly advisory-solution generating meeting? Or a six week intensive coaching session? Wouldn’t you want to maximize the expertise of the people within your “fold” who could *actually* help you, your team, your organization blast forward?

If you were the NFL, you would. 

And while you may not have access to the budget of the NFL, you do have access to the salary line of staff who have left. You do have a slim margin available for advising. You do have access to a board who wants to fast track this mission and would likely find some cash to help you really do that.

As the leader of a consulting firm, all I can say is: we truly are here to help you achieve your mission because we believe that every young person should be the center of their own learning and their own lives.  Ready to get started with your own journey toward greatness? Schedule a time here.  ❤️