6 ways CIOs sabotage their IT consultant’s success

But these are the employees who are hardest to free up from their day-to-day work, and so less-wise clients often take the easy way out, assigning the employees who are easiest to do without.

Even the best consultants will have a hard time overcoming the limitations of subject matter experts who aren’t experts at all.

Grousing

Sometimes, and especially when a consulting engagement hits speed bumps, the temptation to badmouth the consulting team can be overwhelming.

That’s especially true when the consultants have been trying to overcome obstacles put into their path.

IT managers need to resist the temptation, for three reasons. First, everyone in earshot knows who chose the consultant in the first place. Second, not everyone in earshot will be naïve enough to accept one-sided blamestorming at face value.

Third, and most important: To succeed, consultants need client management’s cooperation in all areas and levels. Should IT succeed in discrediting the consultants it reduces everyone’s willingness to work with them.

Missing the point of post-negotiation work

It’s an uncontroversial truism that effective leaders and managers see their job as helping employees succeed.

For some unaccountable reason many IT leaders and managers don’t see their relationship with the consultants they bring in to complement their in-house expertise in the same light.

It’s true that outside consultants are more likely to have an intrinsic conflict of interest in the form of wanting to maximize margins and increase the scope of the work they take on.

But smart managers and leaders do everything they can to keep their consultant interactions on the right side of the line that separates collaboration from negotiation.

They understand that negotiation is what happens before the project starts. After that, if collaboration isn’t possible, it means you chose the wrong consultants.