Although consultancy is a wide-ranging discipline, there are common themes that run through the profession, which draw together the disparate activities performed.

The following five elements are common across all consulting engagements. Consultants always:

Advise. Consultants provide advice based on their specialised knowledge, skills and experience in areas that the other party typically lacks. This advice is tailored to each unique situation and can range from strategic planning to operational assistance. The consultant’s expertise may include business processes, market trends, product development, financial analysis or any other area needed for a successful project outcome.

Augment Augmentation is a key feature of consulting engagements. In this context, consultants fill gaps where companies have a lack of appropriately skilled resources. This allows businesses to benefit from specialist knowledge and expertise without having to hire new staff or train existing employees in the necessary skillset. Consultants can create value by bringing specialized capabilities and insights that enable them to provide valuable advice and solutions quickly.

Add value. They can add both tangible and intangible value to the client because they have the skills and knowledge required to meet the client’s requirements, and they are able to impart this through knowledge transfer or delivery activities.

Facilitate change. They add value in a major way through influencing activities that result in organisational change. Facilitate is the key word here and consultants work closely with clients in order to ensure that the necessary changes are effectively implemented and monitored over time. Ultimately, successful consulting engagements result in tangible positive impact on an organisation’s performance and efficiency.

Leave. They are only there temporarily as companies often have requirements that need to be satisfied in a defined timeframe. Once the requirements are satisfied, it is time for the consultant to leave. The impact of the engagement, though, and the relationship, will hopefully be much longer lasting.

Even though these are the common themes, they are not all equally weighted at all times. At any given point in the consultant lifecycle, one or another could be at the forefront and the others in the background. Consultants need to adapt by focusing clearly on the purpose that best fits the situation there and then.

Whilst there are common themes in consultancy, equally there are significant variations in how it is performed. To fully understand these differences, to understand the variety of consultancy, you need to look at consultancy from several perspectives: the core capability, the position of the consultant, the roles that are played, the employment structure of the consultant, and the amount of leverage used.