The Key Players

The most important person in the consultant’s universe is the economic buyer. The economic buyer is that person who can actually pay for your services. If there’s a charge back system, then the economic buyer’s budget is the one charged. In any case, he or she is the one whose project is involved.

Other hallmarks of the economic buyer:

• They specify the results that are required.
• They can allocate resources.
• They are the clearly perceived sponsor or champion.
• They will evaluate results.
• Their unit or function is the target of the improved condition.
• They are taking the risk and reaping the rewards.
• The buck stops there.

The economic buyer, in effect, writes the check. There is not a direct hierarchical corollary. Division managers and department heads are often economic buyers (as are always CEOs, CFOs, etc.), but the critical element is the ability to fund the project without further approval. My key buyer in Merck for years was a man with the title of manager of international development, and in Hewlett-Packard a woman who held the position of director of knowledge management.

Many internal consultants try to avoid the economic buyer. Often intimidating and usually influential, the economic buyer presents a problem in some cases, especially in an organization setting in which you’ve each had your roles defined for a long time. You may well have separate colleagues, never attend the same meetings, and even eat lunch in different settings.

No matter. As a consultant, you need to be a partner of the buyer for the project. If you treat the buyer with deference due the position, or imbue him with Gnostic wisdom because of his rank, or refuse to oppose her because of fear of retribution, then you’re a sycophant, not a consultant.

Most projects also have critical sponsors. These are people whose support can enlist others to the cause but whose opposition—even quietly— can undermine the entire endeavor. A critical sponsor may be:

• An influential direct report of the buyer.
• A union officer.
• A highly successful salesperson.
• A major customer.
• An informal, respected leader.

It’s important to co-opt the critical sponsors. That means that you and the buyer (hence, one more reason for a trusting partnership there) devise a strategy to convert key sponsors to the cause. This may be an appeal by the buyer, an appeal by you, careful relationship building, the identification of their self-interests, and so on. It may be different for each sponsor. The important thing is to bring them aboard before they scuttle the boat.

Implementers are those people who will have a responsibility for executing the appropriate actions and/or adopting the required behaviors. They may well be resistant, since the present is usually comfortable and the future is problematic. But they must be made situationally uncomfortable, so that maintaining the status quo is not possible.

It’s not important that implementers like you; it’s simply important that they change in the manner desired. A sales team might not like cross-selling several products when it was accustomed to specializing in a single product, but that’s the direction in which they must be driven. The ideal agents for persuading implementers, in order of quality, are:

1. 1. Appeal to enlightened self-interest. Persuade the implementer that he or she is better off by indulging in the new behaviors. For example, demonstrate a higher potential income, or more latitude of action, or greater learning potential.
2. 2. Peer pressure. Develop a sufficient critical mass of converts so that any holdouts seem unenlightened and left in the dust. (The psychologists call this “normative pressure.”) If enough people seem happy to make the changes requested, a momentum will be created that will affect the onlookers. 
3. 3. Coercion. Make it unbearably painful to continue to resist. The buyer might use the financial pressure inherent in evaluations, incentive compensation, and bonuses; job assignments might be increasingly unpleasant; status may be reduced; there can even be threats about retaining one’s position. This is a tactic solely within the purview of the buyer, since the consultant wields no such power.

Move the implementers by whatever means necessary, but move them.

Finally, there are stakeholders of various types and varying degrees. These are people whose work or results will be impacted by the project. They may be employees, customers, vendors, management, shareholders, and so on. They have some stake in the quality of the outcomes.

It’s a good idea to sample stakeholders early to determine their perceptions of their roles, interests, and impact in terms of the success of the project. It’s crazy, for example, to introduce a new incentive system without sampling the sales force or a new pricing policy without talking to customers.

The ideal project will include a partnering relationship with the economic buyer; a strategy that successfully persuades all key sponsors to back you; focused and relatively rapid movement of implementers to execute the plan; and stakeholders who can recognize and support their own improved conditions due to the project.

Having said all that, if you don’t have a relationship with the economic buyer, the odds are stacked greatly against you.