Creating a project experience your clients can replicate
Independent consultancies make up nearly 90% of the consultancy industry and contribute up to £2 billion a year. Whilst most people may think that the consultancy industry is made up of only large companies there are tons of smaller consultancies that shoulder most of the industry.
With low barriers to entry it’s a growing industry that shows no signs of decline. Competing in such a competitive environment can be tough, especially when you need to be able to teach clients in a way that they can easily replicate. Whether it be a huge global project or something much closer to home, your clients need to be able to share your incredible consultancy knowledge with the rest of the business to actively evolve their company based on the information you have delivered. In fact 35% of respondents to a recent MCA survey have said that knowledge transfer and achievement of project goals are key!
As a business creating a knowledge sharing experience that is consistently replicable can be a tall order. Whether it’s training colleagues, helping to transform a client’s business through a consultancy project, or running a training course, you need to be able to create an experience that can easily be shared.
If the project experience cannot be easily replicated, then it can’t be shared across an organization to make real change. Without the ability to apply learnings in a clear and consistent manner, much will be lost and altered. A little like Chinese whispers, with original information getting altered one character at a time.
To create a knowledge sharing experience that your clients will be able to use there are four key steps you need to follow.
1. Information needs to be easy to follow
Consultancy projects are often highly complex, and many organizations focus on only involving the upper management in the process. Inevitably upper management will have to pull through the learnings from the consultancy project to the rest of the organization for any project to reach its true potential. For information to be passed along without getting twisted up, project content needs to be easy to follow with clear, actionable takeaways.
2. Easy to share with others
Did you know that humans are being more selective about what we devote our attention to? The format that knowledge is shared can affect the way in which people absorb the information. Just as you need to create clear key takeaways, these actionable project points to make the jump from a talking shop to a success need to be simple to share with others. Whether it’s through a town hall meeting with a handout at the end or providing colleagues with access to a knowledge sharing platform that they can access anywhere, at any time, it needs to be a format that can easily be accessed and used.
3. Supporting materials available
For a consultancy project to succeed, you need to leave the organization you’ve worked with a lasting legacy of change. Ultimately the organization will take the knowledge you’ve shared and make it part of their ‘business as usual’ approach. Part of leaving a positive legacy is by making sure that there are supporting materials available for the client and their employees to be able to continue making changes on their own. This can be in the form of videos, short articles, imagery or quizzes, the trick is to make sure that there are lots of different options.
4. Easily teachable
Unsurprisingly the best way to pass on knowledge and cement it into someone’s mind, is by having them teach others. Making sure that key takeaways from your project can easily be taught to others means that information does not get warped. No matter what you’re sharing the core understanding needs to remain intact so you can deliver a clear return on investment and keep that client coming back for more.
Overall, creating a replicable experience for clients might not seem like a high priority at first, however being able to demonstrate a return on investment is key. And of course, the key to that is to share knowledge in a way that can be replicated across the business.
