The Practice of Professional Consulting



Building Block One: Client’s Business Focus

One perennial complaint about consultants is that they do not have a strong enough business focus. This means that consultants can be exceptional in their expertise but lack a fundamental understanding of how business works as a total system. In strategy consulting, for example, the requirements of implementation are often secondary to formulating a great strategy. Organization development consultants may be too focused on one team or department without addressing the organization as a whole. This frustrates clients. The problem lies in the fact that consultants become myopic in their work, focusing on the use and application of their technical expertise ...