1First Things First: Why Consulting?
In this chapter you will
- Define consulting
- Identify the experiences, skills, knowledge, and attributes that will lead you to a successful consulting career
- Assess your consulting aptitude
- Identify your initial consulting focus
- Test your entrepreneurial attitude
Consulting: What Is It?
A consultant is a professional who provides unique assistance or advice to someone else, usually known as the client. The assistance is usually advisory, strategic, or tactical in nature. The work is defined by the consultant’s expertise, the structure in which the consultant works, and the process the consultant uses.
Expertise is based on what a consultant knows and has experienced. It can be anything from gardening to the stock market; from astral projection to pig farming; from organization development to preventing child abuse; from manufacturing to mining emeralds.
The structure within which the consultant works varies. You can work for a firm—for example, one of the large worldwide accounting firms, all of which have consulting branches. You could also work for a small or medium-size consulting firm or with a partner in your own office. Other possibilities are working in a virtual organization with a loosely structured relationship with other consultants across states or even nations, working as a subcontractor to any of those I have listed, working by yourself from a home office, or any of a dozen other structures.
The process a consultant uses ...
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