The Need to Take Control of the Conversation

Our client’s commitment to sustainability is commendable, and they believe in the power of individual actions to foster systemic change. However, their broad focus on the "use and reuse" space poses a challenge in terms of project scope. Prior to our meeting, numerous questions came about in my head. Would the client be amenable to our internally narrowed scope? Given that the expectation was an internal tool to be applied internally— what was it going to be used for— was it to scope out future investments in the same business area? Furthermore, we wanted to ascertain the level of embeddedness in the firm that was needed; i.e., without an NDA, what could we have access to? What had the firm done in the “reuse” space, and what were the takeaways from these past projects? What levels of analysis— both for conventional financial metrics and impact assessment— would be most useful for the client? This was especially difficult as the project scope was quite broad, and it was difficult for the team to pinpoint the scale of quantitative and qualitative work that was needed to be done.

The meeting was fruitful if a bit overwhelming. The answers to many of these questions ended up bearing more questions, and the client actively sent over a huge number of resources of past projects. The firm was sending lots of data, but the important things we needed, like the investment vetting process/ philosophy and strategy (i.e., how long does the client stay, what do usual investment sizes look like) were still opaque. It was only at the end of the meeting in which the client said that the group had liberty in directing what the form of the work will look like. Our group had arbitrarily split work, equally with two members dealing mainly with data and two with writing and research. This ended up changing heavily as we got an idea of the client’s expectation— a deep analysis of the “reuse” business model was needed, and therefore everyone had to engage deeply in research, with the specific data from the client coming in later in the project. Though the meeting provided us with valuable insights in our work, it also made everything much broader, and our group realized the importance of focusing the conversation to follow our refocused scope. What I realized is that there is a high degree of agency needed to become effective consultants. Though it sounds counter-intuitive as consultants seem to follow the needs of the client, good consultants can offer insight that is fresh and usable when they commit to a doable scope of work, and effectively communicate to the client what and how these products will look like as the work progresses. We had already committed to what our deliverables would be (a general market study and competitive analysis in the “reuse” space that is to be applied to the case of an investment the client made, to refine our project scope), and therefore needed to use the time with the client to answer important questions we need with our work, instead of touching on multiple possibilities of where the project could go.

The group agreed that we were all a bit hesitant to control the conversation, and the time in the first meeting was used more to understand the culture of and build a connection with the client. Moving forward however, I believe that we must “dig our heels” and communicate first how the work will progress— thinking about the project in phases, the first being a general landscaping of the business environment and the second a more specific case study, was especially helpful. Apart from trust and understanding the culture of a client, to imbue confidence in the work and in the team, it seems like it is necessary to be clear on what the deliverables will be and what it will not be. This will lead the conversation with the client to be more fruitful— our team has been coordinating with the client and getting added research data documents, being specific on our needs. This enables our work to progress smoothly and effectively, without bothering the client too much to send everything. In the world of consulting, it is essential to adapt and refine the project scope as we gain a deeper understanding of the client's needs and the project's complexities. It is in finding specific actionable insights that drive positive change in the client’s operation and in the market where they want to invest.