Consulting = Team Sport
Consultants work in teams. Consultants work in packs.
We are hired to work on messy problems which are often complex, ambiguous, political, and time-sensitive. Basically, it’s a lot of work that has to be done in a short(er) amount of time. So, it’s a team effort.
Version control = quality control
“Version control” is just what it sounds like. v1, v2, v3 . . . .final version. For those of us Gen X who grew up before Google Docs and Microsoft OneDrive, we were saving copies of our files like crazy. Of course you don’t want to lose the work you did, or have multiple versions of the same file.
As a junior consultant, one of the easiest ways to drive your manager crazy is lose the version control. It’s the metaphorical equivalent to dog-sitting for your boss and losing their dog for a few hours; they will lose their mind.
Watch out
It’s like watching hockey with a puck getting passed around for person to person. It’s critical to know who is doing what. Communication is both the easiest and the hardest thing for a team to do. Humans are funny that way.
When it works, it is a beautiful thing
I was once on a team when we were putting together a demanding client proposal in a short time. I was based in the US, but co-created the document with an India-based team with amazing results. There was a continuous flow of writing, editing, reviewing and publishing. If that proposal was a machine, it would have been red hot, and probably would have overheated.
When it doesn’t work, it is painful
Earlier in my career, I had the opposite experience. As a newbie manager, I delegated work to my direct report – only to later find out that 1) I did a poor job explaining what I wanted, 2) even worse, I was unclear how we were divvying up the work. Net result: we simultaneously worked on section A, and no one worked on section B. Fail.
In a previous post, I argued that consultants are always be revising their documents. So what is the smartest way to co-create a document?
Version control happens throughout the process
In my mind, version control is more than the simple naming and numbering of files. That’s basic. It starts WAY before that at the very beginning of the team effort. It gets to the heart of all the key questions:
- Who does what? Is there any overlap in our work?
- When is it due? Do you need to review it before then?
- How good does it need to be? Who is the audience?
- How often do you (the manager) want updates?
- How should we raise questions, if we have them?
1. Agree on the goal
As a manager, spell it out. Make sure everyone knows what to do:
- “Here’s an example of a previous deliverable we did.”
- “As you know, this is the 2nd executive status report, therefore XYZ”
- “After Timmy finishes the gross margin analysis tonight, we will make these 3 slides.”
2. Encourage clarifying questions
Get as many latent questions answered as early as possible. As a manager, you don’t want to be answering individual questions randomly at night, by email, last minute. Nope, get in front of it:
- “Why don’t you repeat back to me your understanding of what we want done.”
- “What questions do you have at this stage?”
- “How far do you think you can get by Wednesday 2pm?”
- “Do you know the first 3-4 steps of what to do?”
- “How are you feeling about this assignment? Any concerns?”
3. Agree on the format, granularity
It’s better to clarify some of the formatting details up front. I know this seems trivial, but if you have 4-5 different workstreams – you don’t want people bringing back 5 different flavors of the same type of thing. It’s a formatting nightmare. Have a PowerPoint template that you all share (e.g., arial font, square bullets etc). Sketch out what will be on each page and how detailed it should be. Bring out an example from another project to “level-set” everyone on what it should look like, how it should read.
Think of it like building a railroad from California and New York. You will meet in Chicago, but the railroad width better be the same size or the railroad will not link up.
4. Divide and conquer
Piece the work out, and set up review cycles for junior people. Don’t want them going too far the wrong path. As a manager, the more MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) the works is partitioned, the less duplication there will be. Note: some of your workstreams will have inter-dependencies; as a manager, keep an eye out that you are not double-counting savings etc.
Agree on where to house the documents (shared drive, box.com, MS Teams etc) and the nomenclature. . .file name, date, time, status. There should be 0% confusion on who is working on what or who has control of a combined document.
5. Early-on, check-in, give feedback
Don’t micro-manage, yet, make sure the team is tracking. Drop-in, ask if they have any questions. Ask a few probing questions. Create a culture where it’s okay for people to show you work-in-progress. Think of yourself like an executive chef who is checking in on the different sous chefs; “taste the food” as you go.
6. One person does the final edits
In the final days and hours of the presentation, it’s a 1 person job. All the words, shapes, colors, font needs to be standardized and smoothed out. It’s massive accountability, and one person “brings it home.”
7. Trust
Underlying all this is trust. If you don’t trust the person you are working with, ignore everything above. It is just better to do all the work yourself. That is why consulting often becomes very tribal. It’s not because the partner doesn’t want to give you a chance, it’s just that she’d rather work with people she knows, trusts, and can flow with easily. She knows that Jimmy will have no issues with version control.
Agree with this, and also recommend a strict editor (probably not a consultant) to maintain discipline, grammar and spelling and style continuity. Another modern tech hack is to do the document drafting using Google Documents whereby people can work on the same document/presentation/spreadsheet simultaneously (and see each others’ edits in read time).
This can get the content up to a high enough standard for a single person to take the final version and formatting through to your step 5.
Agree with both of those points. On the topic of writing, I believe that only 1 out of 4 people actually write well. Most consultants – heck, most people – write poorly. Too verbose and unstructured. A good editor is saintly.
Excellent post, John! I will refer to this again and again in my teaching, I’m sure.
Your comment about editors made me think of a favorite (though now a little old) piece of scholarship that adds a lot of value to why editors (actually, why trained communicators like writing specialists) add so much to teams.
Here’s the citation: happy to send the article as PDF if interested.
Burnett, R. E. (1996). ” Some people weren’t able to contribute anything but their technical knowledge”: The anatomy of a dysfunctional team,”. Nonacademic writing: Social theory and technology, 123-156.
Great resource, thank you.
Great stuff and I realize I’ve worked as a solo consultant for so long that none of this is automatic for me at this point.
Glad to get the refresher as I’ve taken a permanent VP position with a scaling client and this is useful for adding to my management process.
Thank you for the comment, self-reflection, and go-getter craftsmanship. Winning.
This is so true, especially agreeing on the level of detail, a common design.
I think trust is something you’ll need always: in your team mates and as a manager in your team. No mutual trust = no good work
Today using the right collaboration tools makes it so much easier. Integrated version controls and one file that all team members will work on. Always with the latest edits.
If you are able to make people move from local network drives to the new network/cloud based tools.
Yes, I am a bit behind on collaboration tools = Slack, Ms Teams, Asana, Jira, Basecamp. I am so Gen-X, grrrr.