First of all, I want to say that the roles of consultants and business managers are similar, but they are also very different. * * * Three similarities and three differences.

* * * Similarities:

1, must have a certain level of management theory and practical management experience. Only by combining the two can a manager or consultant truly and accurately grasp the reality of enterprise management, and what is the real problem. I have always insisted that an MBA who has just graduated without any practical management experience is not qualified to engage in management consulting or hold senior management positions in enterprises. A person with a high theoretical level can really understand the actual and specific business management after at least two years of business management practice. If he is lucky and smart enough, he can also start to grasp the overall situation of enterprise management. Understanding the reality and grasping the overall situation are the necessary prerequisites for enterprise managers to manage enterprises well, and also for consultants to ask questions correctly and create creative solutions. Anyone who uses someone who has no actual management experience to do management or consulting is taking a great risk of failure with his own enterprise or customers. In my opinion, both managers and consultants are extremely irresponsible and immoral. It is also for this reason that I am more and more skeptical and opposed to the practice of McKinsey and others who love to recruit MBA training for a few months and let them do projects immediately. They can be assistants, but they can't be main consultants.

They must have the basic ability to analyze and solve problems. Managers or consultants, their main job is to solve some problems existing in enterprises and achieve work goals. Consultants naturally need strong ability to analyze and solve problems, and so do managers? Of course, managers are more concerned about solving the relatively complicated and detailed operational problems that occur every day, but consultants should obviously go beyond this and provide managers with more professional management tools, methods and systems. He is a very good consultant, but a good consultant is not necessarily a good manager. I will explain the reason below.

They all need to have strong teamwork and leadership skills. We see that both consultants and managers must work as a team, and often need to undertake the work of team leadership to push the whole team or organization forward in the set direction and track. Consultants not only provide personal professional advice, but also need to fully discuss and communicate with other consultants and customers to find and form the most practical solutions for enterprises. Consulting work is full of interaction and collective wisdom. Not to mention the manager, asking you to manage is to lead and motivate a team and make the achievements that the enterprise wants you to make.

Difference:

1, the biggest difference is that managers are always in a complete overall situation of enterprise management, and consultants must consciously stagger their foothold from the role of managers and objectively examine enterprise management issues including managers themselves as a purely objective third party. A manager must be firmly rooted in the vivid reality of his own enterprise management, because this is exactly what he should do first. Only when his eyes, thoughts and energy are all focused on the whole history and reality of his own enterprise can he grasp how his own enterprise can operate normally or better, and the affairs he needs to pay attention to and deal with are big and small. Consultants need to look at enterprises and managers and their management activities from the perspective of bystanders. They must stay out of it psychologically in order to objectively observe and judge some problems existing in the enterprise. In principle, they can't have interests other than consulting contracts with enterprises or managers, so as to avoid the interference of interests in the minds of consultants.

2. The second difference is that managers need to be more responsible for decision-making and implementation at the same time, while consultants only propose solutions to problems for managers to make decisions and implement. Their roles are quite similar to those of generals and military advisers in China's classical novels. Of course, as a consultant, this military adviser was invited temporarily because of the urgency of the problem. If he really becomes a military consultant, he becomes an internal consultant of the enterprise, sometimes called vice president, sometimes called senior manager, and so on. This means that consultants will think more about how to provide the best solution for enterprises, while managers must think more about the specific situation and practical feasibility of enterprises and the requirements of different solutions for enterprise resources. Managers are the real decision makers, and consultants play the role of decision researchers and consultants.

3. The last big difference is actually obvious and important, but it has been neglected for a long time, that is, the manager is a member of the enterprise and needs to bear the ultimate responsibility for the operating results, while the consultant leaves after paying the money, that is, the consulting company that can provide consulting after-sales service actually wants to do the next business, and does not really care whether their plan brings the expected value to the customers. There is nothing wrong with this: the situation of enterprises is changing at any time, and the solutions provided by consultants are a big basic framework, which is a good thing and enterprises also need it. But how to use and digest this framework well should be the greater responsibility of enterprise managers themselves. The consultant will charge you once, which does not guarantee that you will be disaster-free in your life or cure all diseases. The body of the enterprise needs long-term patience and good conditioning, but the doctor can tell you how to keep in good health and collect money to treat you if necessary.

By clarifying the above six points, we have a very clear understanding of the role of consultants.

1, you must understand the actual management of enterprises and have a high theoretical level;

2, must master a set of analysis, thinking methods and tool system:

3, must be able to cooperate with each other, wisdom to achieve the overall goal;

4. It must be an interest pattern outside the enterprise, which is true and objective;

5. Must be able to provide professional and operational solutions;

6. It must be clear that you are not responsible for all the management results of the enterprise, but only for whether the service results provided by the project meet the requirements of customers;

The role of a doctor or coach in this enterprise.

Then let's talk about what a good consultant should be like. I summed up my own thinking and summarized the conditions of an excellent consultant into four basic abilities, namely, general management template ability, personalized management design ability, communication and leadership ability and management theory research and development ability. Corresponding to these four abilities are four ability levels and four different roles in the growth process of consultants.

1. Ability to manage common templates (consulting assistant role)

A qualified consultant must master the general management knowledge required by the consulting projects he participates in and have considerable management experience in order to be competent for the job requirements of his post. For enterprises with low requirements, mastering the general template can already be a consultant, with the aim of helping enterprises establish basic standardized management modules. However, for enterprises with higher requirements, it may not be enough to master the general management template. Enterprises have their own management model, and consultants must have higher ability to help enterprises solve the improvement problem of their management templates. Therefore, personally, I have always tended to define a consultant who only has general management knowledge and ability as a consulting assistant.

2, personalized management design ability (consultant role)

Most of the management problems of enterprises are personalized. Therefore, a qualified consultant must have the professional ability to customize the management template based on the general template and the specific situation of the enterprise. The personalized ability of management design is an important symbol of a consultant's maturity. It is not a pure creative ability, but a management model reengineering based on rich and profound management experience and a deep understanding of the general management template. It is a comprehensive local innovation ability of consultants. Generally speaking, the stronger the personalized ability, the higher the level of consultants. Of course, the management foundation and experience that consultants have to lay will become more and more profound and solid. With personalized ability, consultants can independently undertake consulting tasks, and if they keep working hard, they will have the opportunity to become consulting experts.

3. Communication and leadership (the role of consulting director)

All qualified and excellent consultants will have high theoretical level, solid practical management experience and certain personalized management ability, and should also have good internal communication and customer communication skills, but to become a consulting director and lead a capable consulting team, they must also have strong communication and leadership skills. Consultants need to constantly interact with relevant people inside and outside the enterprise when helping enterprises solve problems. The strength of communication skills often determines whether consultants can be recognized by enterprises and whether they can get cooperation and help from consulting team members. The consulting director must undertake the dual functions of business director and customer director at the same time, both of which require leadership and communication skills. Once you have strong communication and leadership skills, consultants can become better consultants on the one hand, and lead the team to meet customer needs on the other.

4, management theory research and development ability (consulting master, management master role)

The last item is the ability of theoretical research and development. Those who have no theoretical research and development ability can only become excellent consultants, because their main job is to personalize the advanced theoretical and practical achievements of others, make partial modifications, and hand them over to customers in need. Their work needs some creativity, but more is the value-added work of existing management methods. They can be called experts, but not masters. There are only two kinds of masters, one is a real master, and the other is an expert with personal original contributions. Kenichi Ohmae, a very famous consultant, may be more suitable to be called an excellent consultant, but talking about a master may not be enough. Of course, China's rich and active management practices provide fertile ground for the management innovation of managers and consulting experts. It seems that we have reason to expect that there will be some management masters in China in the next twenty or thirty years.

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