What Happens After the Consultant Leaves?

A consulting project can look very good on the day it ends. The new process is in place. People have been trained. The numbers are improving. Management is pleased.

The consultants pack up, everyone shakes hands, and the project is declared a success.

Then comes the more important question:

What happens next?

Six months later, is the organization still operating differently? A year later, are the improvements still there? Or has the operation gradually returned to the way things were before the project began?

That’s one of the real tests of improvement.

Consultants Eventually Leave

A consultant can bring expertise, structure, urgency, outside perspective, and additional resources to an organization.

But if the improvement depends permanently on the consultant being there, we haven’t finished the job.

At some point, ownership has to transfer. The new process has to stop being “the consultant’s process” and become our process.

That’s harder than it sounds.

During implementation, there is unusual attention on the project. Meetings happen. Measurements are reviewed. Problems receive immediate attention. Leadership asks questions. People know someone is watching.

Then the project ends and normal business returns.

Priorities compete for attention. People change jobs. New employees arrive. Shortcuts appear. One exception becomes two.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the old way can begin creeping back.

Improvement Requires Maintenance

We sometimes talk about process improvement as though a process is a machine we repair once.

It isn’t.

Processes are operated by people inside organizations that are constantly changing. That means improvement requires maintenance.

Are we still measuring the right things? Are supervisors reinforcing the process? Are new employees being trained correctly? When exceptions occur, are we understanding why? Has the business changed enough that the process itself now needs to change?

And perhaps most importantly:

Does anyone still own this?

If the answer is no, deterioration shouldn’t surprise us.

Ownership Has to Be Internal

The strongest implementations I’ve seen have something in common: someone inside the organization owns the result.

Not symbolically.

Actually.

They understand what was changed and why. They watch the measurements and ask questions when performance moves in the wrong direction. They don’t allow every inconvenience to become a reason to abandon the new process, and they continue improving it after the consultants are gone.

That is success.

In fact, one of the best outcomes for a consultant is becoming unnecessary.

The Real Finish Line

Projects have completion dates because businesses need them. But organizational improvement doesn’t really have a finish line.

There is a point where responsibility changes hands.

The consultant’s role becomes smaller and the organization’s role becomes larger. Eventually, the outside team leaves.

Then we discover whether we installed a process or helped build a capability.

Those are not the same thing.

A process can disappear when attention moves elsewhere. Capability remains in the organization.

So when I’m evaluating the success of an improvement effort, I don’t want to know only what the numbers looked like on the final presentation. I want to know what happened after everyone stopped calling it a project.

What happened six months later? What happened when a key manager left? What happened when business conditions changed? What happened when nobody from the consulting team was standing in the room?

That’s when the organization gives us the answer.

The consultant eventually leaves.

The improvement shouldn’t leave with them.