The Intelligent Client

In an uncertain and complex business environment, you are under even greater pressure to produce results. At the same time, like most of your colleagues, you have become increasingly sceptical about management gurus who promise instant solutions based on theory.

Aimed at both senior managers and consultants, The Management Consultancies Association series provides practical and comprehensive guides that describe how key management ideas can be applied in reality.

The Intelligent Client

Managing Your Management Consultant

It is a fact that only in the minority of consultancy projects do the managers involved know — let alone agree — why consultants have been hired. The Intelligent Client aims to redress this balance by keeping you, the manager and the client, firmly in the picture. This book will help you to create effective, productive and value for money client-consultant relationships.

• Part 1: Hitting the Ground Running
1. Identifying the need
2. How to select a consulting firm
3. Comparing consultancies
4. Presentations, proposals and pitches
5. Finding the optimum working arrangements
• Part 2: Maximizing the Value of Consultants
6. Managing consulting projects
7. The client–consultant relationship
8. Balancing innovation and structured methodology
9. The exchange of intellectual capital
10. Bringing the outside view inside
11. Change management: consultants as 'belief agents'
12. Converting theory into practice
13. Selecting and implementing technology
14. Outsourcing
15. Consulting and organizational learning
• Part 3: Outcomes
16. Measuring the value of consultancy
17. Increasing the value added by consultants in the future
• Appendix: Management Consultancies Association Statement of Best Practice