Your Consultant Could Be Harmful to Decision-Making

Is your consultant enhancing your business decisions or clouding your judgement? Today, I want to talk to you about these two particular points. I've worked with a number of consultants during my business career, and obviously, now I practise as a consultant.
Some of the things that I've had to consider along the way are these two particular questions:

1. Was my judgement being clouded?
2. Are consultants actually enhancing my decision-making?

Advisors are obviously working in the interest of their clients, and they
provide valuable insights, content and material. But, at the same time, you have to take that in. You've got to then convert that into the right decision for your business because, ultimately, they don't make the decisions in your business—you do.
They provide you with advice, counselling and guidance. But, you've got to make the decisions for yourself.

As the saying goes:

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

Now, how do you work with your consultants and your advisors to ensure that they're able to provide you with the advice and guidance that allow you to be able to make better long-term decisions and not cloud your judgment?

That's the key message that you've got to take. And, that comes down to the same thing as working with the right consultants. Some consultants are very focused on overdelivering value. They just come out with content and material, and try and bombard you with a lot of things because they want to prove and show their value. And then, there are other consultants who wait for you to come up with the concepts and ideas.

Finding the Right Balance

So, you've got two contrasting types and styles of consulting.
How do you balance that?
It comes down to you choosing the right advisor and consultant, but also, working with them to fine-tune what they need to provide you with. You've actually got to teach your consultant what you are looking for and how you would like to collect the information that they should be presenting you with.

Consultants provide exceptional value and external third party input and ideas into your business. So, certainly working with consultants and advisors, be it financial advisors or business consultants and advisors, is certainly beneficial.

Like I mentioned at the start, during my business career, I worked with a number of business advisors in my financial planning practice. They were tremendously valuable to my business.
But, some of them provided a lot of information, and I had to try and comprehend it. I had to make sense of it and try and see how that fits into my business plans. And then, there were others that were more laid-back and waited for me to initiate and take that conversation further with them. What I learnt during that process was that I wanted someone in the middle.

That's the message that I'm sharing with you today. Yes, the value of working with consultants and advisors is tremendous. They add a lot of value to your business and also in helping you grow your business. But, the way that you interact with this consultant/advisor comes down to your specific business and information requirements and needs.

So, is your advisor enhancing your judgment and decisions or are they clouding your judgment?