Diagnosing and Planning

Overview/Description
 Your success as a consultant depends on your ability to diagnose each situation correctly. You need to use your previous experience, and bring fresh ideas to every new contract. Frameworks and models help you to make an effective diagnosis. They help you to evaluate the strategic position of the client organization, which is vital. To deliver solutions that are relevant and appropriate to the client's particular business, you must have a knowledge of the organization. Each organization is unique: there are different people and different challenges. One size does not fit all. You cannot respond to each and every organization in the same way. Rapidly learning about the peculiarities of each business is one of the biggest challenges you face. Take the time to plan what you deliver to clients. Time spent planning implementation--the resources and budget that you'll need--can help to prevent problems arising during delivery.

Target Audience
 Anyone with some specialist knowledge and general management experience who has recently moved, or is considering moving, into external consulting

Expected Duration
4.0 hours

Lesson Objectives:

Evaluating the Strategic Position

  • recognize the benefits of evaluating the strategic position of an organization before making recommendations.
  • determine whether identified factors are strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats.
  • use Porter's Five Forces model to analyze an external consulting scenario.
  • differentiate between the key elements of Rogers and Levitt's Product Life Cycle model.
  • make an appropriate recommendation for a hypothetical business situation, using the Product Life Cycle model.
  • identify the different parts of the Boston Matrix.
  • make appropriate recommendations for a specific consulting scenario, using McKinsey's Seven S's model.
  • recognize the different elements of a Value Chain model.

    • Planning and Implementation

  • recognize the value of planning delivery thoroughly for any consulting assignment.
  • match examples of resources management with remedies for shortfalls.
  • make appropriate decisions to ensure effective resources management, in a specific consulting scenario.
  • distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate ways of managing an internal consulting budget.
  • analyze the success of a given external consulting project using a profit and loss statement.

    • Course Number: CONS0113