Are you really a Consultant?   What is a Consultant, really?

I seriously doubt that there is any other term in common use today in the IT industry that could be more misunderstood.   For a variety of reasons, we need to tighten up our use of terminology.   There are at least three categories of knowledge worker today which use this colloquial term, and only one of those (certainly the smallest group) is a Consultant at all.

Group One:   Temporary Employees.
These are the folks – usually from far-away places – who basically have a job for one reason:   someone in the Accounting Department has decided that they are “–er.”   Usually, it is that they are “cheap-er.”   But it can also simply be that it looks better on the balance sheet.   Leaving all of that where it may lie, the significant characteristic of such people for our immediate purposes is that they are people who show up at an appointed time, leave a certain appointed number of hours later, and do whatever you tell them to do in the meantime.   The companies who provide these laborers might refer to themselves as “consulting companies,” and they might call their laborers “consultants,” but they simply provide a labor pool.

Group Two:   Contractors.
If you want to know what a real contractor looks like, think “Larry the Cable Guy.”   A contractor always has a contract, and always works strictly to that contract, and that contract is always for a particular, well-defined task or service – such as pulling miles of cable through tight crawl spaces.   The contract also calls for a particular, well-defined standard of completion:   all that wiring actually works.   It also calls for recourse:   if the wiring doesn’t work, Larry has to fix it, probably on his own nickel.   C’est la guerre.

Group Three:   Consultants.
Consultants are professional peddlers of expertise.   They, too, work on a specific contract describing exactly how and to what ends their expertise (and the products of that expertise) will be delivered, but what you are buying is their presence and their know-how.

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Re: Are you REALLY a "Consultant?"
by locked_user sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Apr 18, 2011 at 12:24 UTC

    Human indeed I am, and here is my Meditation ...

    Many of you hold yourselves out to be Consultants.   But if this be so, and you do not wish to starve to death, it is very important that you and your client clearly understand – and, clearly establish and clearly maintain – the terms under which you will avoid starvation (perchance to profit).

    Many folks are actually temps.   Companies have sometimes filled-out their entire IT workforce with what they call “contractors” but who are actually temps.   The key player in this game is “the agency,” because, as the only one who has actually signed a contract with the company, they hold all the cards and you hold none.

    Contractors always know exactly how many feet of cable are to be stretched into what rooms and exactly where each outlet is supposed to go.   They have it in writing.   They had it in writing before they showed up.   They’re gonna put exactly those outlets in exactly those places and guarantee that all of them will work.   Nothing more or less.

    Consultants, usually, are “consult-ing something-or-others.”   The term is usually an adjective.   But there is a clearly defined scope-of-work, a clearly defined question to be answered, a clearly defined goal-state that the organization is to be guided to.   And it is on a signed piece of paper.

    Why do contractors and consultants, as I have defined it, succeed where others fail?   (a) Because there is real money on the line.   And, (b) because the line has been clearly drawn before money was laid upon it.   “That piece of paper” changes both parties’ approach to the entire engagement, and it is a key reason for success.

      Isn't there some legal nonsense (at least in the states, and I use the word "nonsense" in the sense that I'm legally clueless, not that it might exist for a nonsensical reason...) that a contractor can only be hired at a given company without fulltime status for a certain period of time?

      So pedantically speaking, doesn't that make all contractors temps?

      Also aren't many fulltime employees hired to be a do-er of something? And many live as the contractor, doing solely the minimal required by the terms of their employment? And other fulltimers are hired for their expertise.

      --Ray

      PS. Hrm. I guess I consider myself a full-time Consultant at my current job... of course my boss probably considers me a fulltime temp. :-)

[reply]
Re: Are you REALLY a "Consultant?"
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 18, 2011 at 14:41 UTC

    Could you please clarify your meditation? I don't mean your personal feeling toward the terms: consultant, contractor, freelancer, temp worker or vendor.

    Are you suggesting it's not enough to call yourself a consultant? Is this about creating a job for yourself (or having one defined for you in the case of onsite temp/freelance work) or building a business by developing relationships with clients.

    Whatever the direction, it's not clear right now but could be an interesting discussion.
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Re: Are you REALLY a "Consultant?"
by locked_user sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Apr 18, 2011 at 19:01 UTC

    I’m glad you think so...   I was beginning to wonder...

    The point of my Meditation is that, in the marketplace that we many of us live and work in, there is one bit of terminology that is being freely tossed around in connection with three very(!) different sets of working conditions and expectations.   Only one of these meanings, IMHO, actually conforms to the true meaning of the term ... and I consider this to be a rather serious problem, with impact not only upon our own pursuit of “our business,” but upon our clients, as well.

    The differences that I have (IMHO) drawn between these three categories are, to my way of thinking, simultaneously “profoundly important” and “virtually unrecognized.”   If you use a particular term in a particular way, but the person with whom you are negotiating could have one-of-three meanings for the term that you are using (two of which are “wrong”), then you have a communication problem and you might not know it.

    Engagements can go a long way before either one of you fully realize that this disconnect exists.   You might have turned-down or set-aside other engagements in preference to the one that did not work.   You might have made commitments (based upon your understanding of terms) which your client (or one of his associates) misinterpreted.   You might also find yourself in competition with companies who use the same word to mean an altogether different thing.

    In an effort to steer this toward a meaningful locus of discussion ... so that this thread might yet achieve a useful “lift-off” ... how’s this:

    • If you are “a consultant,” by my chosen definition of the term, how do you express your product or services in the marketplace?   Do you encounter the ambiguity that I speak of, and if so, how do you counter it?   Do you think that it affects you?   If so, in what way?

      There is no such thing as a "true meaning of a term". There's "a common meaning", "an old meaning", "my meaning", "your meaning", "this company's meaning", etc. but no "true meaning". Anyway you may dislike the ambiguity, you may write a meditation, but that's about all.

      Jenda
      Enoch was right!
      Enjoy the last years of Rome.

[reply]
Re: Are you REALLY a "Consultant?"
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 18, 2011 at 05:32 UTC
    Are you really human or is your name "Eliza"?
[reply]
      > Why are you interested in whether or not I am really human, or is my name Eliza?
[reply]

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