Consultant Overcomes Constraints and Reaches the Goal in 5 Steps

 
by Philo Nordlund

Customers want immediate results. That is the name of the game – fast results. If you cannot offer fast results you are out of the game.

Have you asked yourself what bogs you down? What are the constraints that hold you back from producing great results fast?

I have few ideas after reading a book by John Arthur Ricketts Reaching The Goal: How Managers Improve a Services Business Using Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints. Rickets applies the Theory of Constraints [TOC] presented by Goldratt in his book The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement to Consulting Practice.

Here are 5 core steps  for applying TOC in Consulting Practice according to Rickets:

1. Figure out where the constraints are
2. Utilize the constraint to its fullest extent
3. Make sure that non-constraints keep the constraint busy
4. Improve productivity of the constraint
5. Repeat the previous steps

Constraints

The first step is figuring out what your constraints are. As a consultant I identify these three core constraints:

• My managers.
• The sales force.
• Myself.

Take Your Manager To The Max

What’s your managers purpose? To me it seems pretty simple, here is what manager should do:

• Set goals for me.
• Remove obstacles that are out of your control.

Instead, many times  managers do quite the opposite:

• Set unrealistic goals.
• Add more obstacles.

In this case it becomes a serious constraint for a consultant in achieving his goals.

Here is what one can do in order to utilize the constraint to its fullest:

• Set achievable goals. ”Sir, I understand you want to hit your mark, but I am only human. Here are some more realistic numbers.”
• Escalate obstacles that are out of your control and ask to remove it. ”Call that customer and force him to attend the meeting, you do not want to send him a bill full of ”Trying to set a meeting”, aren’t you?”
• Set priorities (utilization, satisfaction, revenue, readiness, etc.).“That blogging thing is really important, but please get me off of it so I can successfully wrap up my current gig.”

Take The Sales Forces To The Max

Sales people generally do two things – they forecast the sales and sell. When they sell, a consultant has a job, when they don’t sell the consultant sits on the bench [bad thing!]. So in short there are two constraints that sales folks pose to a consultant:

• Sell stuff consultant can hardly deliver [blur contracts, contracts that does not include consultant’s expertise].
• No sales.

Following are proven practices that helped me to utilize the constraint to the max:

• Help salesman to generate backlog for you:
  • Determine your value prop. What do you put on the table? What customers value you the most for? If you have hard times to quickly answer these questions you have serious and immediate problem to solve.
  • Generate related SOW’lets. SOW’let – SOW skeleton that outlines your activities and deliverables, it is the building block for a salesman. It should prevent creating blur contracts and SOW’s that you have no clue how to deliver.
• Help salesman generate more backlog for you
  • Send him related SOW’let when opportunity in the sight. Consultant is a field guy and he sees opportunities first hand. Waste no time.

Take Yourself To The Max

You are your biggest obstacle and constraint. Period.

Here are techniques that help me unleash myself:

• Create delivery kits to make the process straightforward:
  • Questionnaire to collect the data.
  • Questionnaire to analyze the data.
  • Common issues list.
  • Ready to use list for how-to’s that show how to solve the common issues.
• Create your personal KB  [knowledge base]
  • Do not just rely on Desktop search and Google – it brings too much noise and wastes time.
  • Make it extremely easy and fast to access. Make sure you get what you want in less clicks (How to Use Outlook 2007 RSS To Effectively Aggregate And Distill Information, Consume patterns&practices Guidance Explorer Via RSS Using Outlook 2007)
• Mater time management
  • Free eBook: Effective Time Management With MS Outlook 2007
• Follow rigid Prioritization rules
  • Use Covey’s prioritization quadrants

Practice This - Get Results

• Identify your constraints – know what holds you back
• Utilize your constraints to the max – unleash yourself and break the limits
• Read The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement and Reaching The Goal: How Managers Improve a Services Business Using Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints - the foundations of Theory Constraints and how to apply it in practice.

My Related Posts

• Program Yourself For Extremely Fast Performance
• Kaizen – Continuous Improvement The Japanese Way
• Personal Improvement - Kaizen Focus On Process