If you work in industry, you are most likely an Entrepreneur, a C-level executive or a top-level manager.
If you work in the public sector, you are most likely a policy maker, an analyst, a growth- development- or training- manager.
If you work in Universities or Research Foundations you are most likely a Research Director, a Dean or a Head of Department.
In any case, you are a decision maker and budget holder. You can make decisions rapidly without having to go through layers of hierarchical approvals.
You are clever and committed to making a difference in your organisation.
You are an ‘idea practitioner’ - borrowing the phrase from Tom Davenport, Laurence Prusak and James Wilson to “describe industry practitioners who are intrinsically motivated to assess and translate existing ideas and develop new ones to bring into their organisations, and then fight for them with those who resist the change that these ideas inevitably bring about”.
If you describe yourself as a theory-oriented practitioner operating in the world of practice but with a passion for new ideas and willingness to experiment; then you are looking for practice-oriented theoreticians with a burning desire to change the world of practice and the ability to generate ideas that you will want to experiment in your organisation.
You are not looking for somebody who will try hard to show you they know your problems and who will vomit onto you the usual canned and tried pitch for a standard consulting tool or approach to giving you the solution you need.
You know that won’t work: you and your team have looked at the problem already. If you did not solve it, the chances are that whoever will try to win your consultancy contract won’t have the solution right the way either. You are therefore looking for somebody who will have the humility to tell you what they do not know; the rigorousness to collect all the information there is about the problem; the skills to make a creative jump from data to insight; the persistence to brake down all the walls along the way until they’ll devise a usable solution to your problem.
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