I had a great conversation with clients and consultants about the differentiators that make a consultant provide great value to clients. We agreed on these 3 characteristics:

1/ Operational Leadership – you’ve lived your client’s situation and challenges as an operational leader and you can relate. You know what worked and what is operationalizable and what is not. You can easily save a lot of time and energy to your client by bringing your expertise.

2/ Consulting skills – You have methods, agility, listening skills, and many ideas for improvement. You can provide synthetic and effective deliverables, crunch data, communicate, push people to make things happen. You know the market and the trends. You can guide and lead your client in a structured and professional manner.

3/ Multi-industry experience – You have experience in different industries, such as financial services, manufacturing, software, telecommunications, beverages, etc. You think outside the box and offer perspectives and choices from other industries to solve problems.

It takes many years to learn all these skills at a high level. Think about this when you have choices to make in your career path if you want to thrive and have your clients rave about your work.

I would add multicultural diversity, as I am French and live in the US, but that’s the icing on the cake (cherry on the top of the cake for French 😊). And we haven’t even talked about the willingness to help and serve…that’s another topic to dig into, for sure.

Have a great day.

JC