When the Consultants Leave: Why Your Transformation Isn’t Going as Expected

As a consultant at a global software company, I ushered enterprise clients through major transformations. Some were far more successful than others. 

In fact, I could often predict whose transformation projects would stick and who would be back to square one within a few months, to a couple of years.

Transformation projects are endeavors that require you to rethink how you go about business. Think of the integration of new technologies like AI and cloud, a reorganization, or the introduction of new methodologies, processes, or tools.

Who was most successful? The most successful companies were the ones that made changes to their belief systems. In other words, they changed their culture.

Major changes require rethinking what your organization believes and values. You can’t work the same way and suddenly get different results because new technology or methods are present. We’ll get into this more deeply in a few paragraphs. But when your culture supports your desired business results, your transformation is more stable.This stability helps your team stay the course amid the tumult that naturally comes with big changes. Through stability and staying the course, your transformation will continue to gain traction. 

And most importantly, you can continue to gain ground on your own.

Culture change is easier and more pragmatic than you think. Yet for some reason, it’s almost completely absent from most transformations, leaving them incomplete. This is one of the main reasons things fall apart when the consultants leave.

Let’s talk about it.

Enter the Consultants

The experts have arrived. 

Consultants pour into your organization to get your transformation project underway. Some look like consultants you’ve met before—middle-aged people in khakis with company logos on their polos and backpacks. Some are strikingly young. There’s more diversity than you’re used to. Someone has funky hair.

One of the first things you notice is the energy and enthusiasm the consultants bring with them. 

Sure, there is some anxiety in the air; that’s coming from your team. A lot is changing, and some people feel especially anxious about how little they know about the new subject matter. Yet, the consultants are deeply enthusiastic about what they are bringing to you, and it draws you in.

Where does that come from? 

It comes from a deep belief in the work they do and the outcomes they know are headed your way.

A couple of months in, and you are getting used to the rhythm of unlearning old things and learning new things. Your guard has come down, as has that of others on the team; people work out of a place of curiosity.

You are building new skills and habits, and you see the impact on your business outcomes. The team works better together because they all learned together, and because they went through a major change together, a bit like a boot camp.

It's now been several months since the consultants arrived. 

In the beginning, when everything was new, they led the charge, and you were in the supporting role. Now, the day-to-day work has completely changed hands. You and your team are leading while the consultants tweak and fine-tune.

Finally, the day comes. The consultants turn in their badges and head to the airport for the last time and the reins are in your hands.

Everything is going well, until it’s not. 

Why Transformations Backslide

One way that consultants create change is by operating with your team in isolation.

This gave you and the consultants the control you needed to establish real change. This means the consultants focused on your transformation using projects that only included your team. 

Now, you and your team work one way, and everyone outside of your team works in another way.

What happens when you start working on projects that intersect with other teams? You experience the differences in all sorts of ways: how outcomes are defined, your processes, metrics that measure success, and culture.

These unacknowledged intersections between you and other teams create friction. Whether it’s acute or builds up over time, friction won’t work for the organization as a whole. There can only be one way of working.

Often, to avoid conflict, many leaders ignore this situation, allowing their teams to be tossed about by the churn that has been created by this situation.

The consultants didn’t teach you how to handle these situations, and transformations will start to crack here, under the pressure.

This problem needs to be solved, and it’s multifaceted. 

Here’s a clue to where the answer lies: you will have more success faster when you begin with culture.

Getting Great Outcomes

When you start with culture, you inherently start with values. 

Think of culture as an expression of what is valued in an organization. I’m not talking about the company-level. These are often very high-level and hard for an individual employee to relate to their daily choices. I’m talking about what is valued at the organization or team level. Values at this level motivate your actions and those of your teammates. 

You may have heard of the Agile Manifesto. We will use this as an example because its authors start their manifesto by establishing their values.

We have come to value

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

The authors go on to say,

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

The structure of the manifesto is explicit about the authors’ intention to make a change in values. They are laying a new foundation, a new belief system, to replace the old. 

What is valued determines the choices you make. Different values drive different business results. 

How, then, will you respond when challenged by other teams to revert to old behavior? What will anchor you and your team during these storms? 

If it is only the methodologies the consultants taught you and the technology you adopted, well… Get ready to backslide.

However, if you have embodied different values—a different culture that supports the new outcomes you aim to achieve—you will be able to rely on your new core beliefs to help you navigate challenges.

The deeper the transformation goes, the easier it is to handle unique situations. The more superficial the transformation, the less substance you have available on which to grab a hold.

It’s the difference between learning to cook and being a chef. 

When you’re learning to cook, you follow recipes. But when you’re a chef, you rely on the principles of cooking, your knowledge of flavors, chemistry, and physics. As a chef, you can reliably create your own recipes, shift on the fly, and correct an error. These are things you couldn’t do when you were simply following someone else’s instructions.

It makes sense, then, that when the transformation gets into your DNA—when it takes root in your values— you can handle almost any situation. You have developed a solid foundation from which to make decisions. 

It’s at this point that you have a belief system—a culture—that drives your outcomes.

Having a culture based on business outcomes provides you the flexibility to discuss with others how to execute outcomes when your methodologies conflict. In other words, you have shifted from capitulating to conversing. You have removed the false dichotomy that it’s either their way or your way. You can now find ways to discuss with others what is best for the business. You can compromise with integrity and intention to move forward in ways that won’t negatively impact the new outcomes you worked so hard to get. That’s why you spent all that money and time on consultants, after all. 

Being able to shift what started as a tug-of-war into a conversation about business outcomes can plant seeds for future transformation in cross-functional partners. It’s tantalizing to see transformation not just in process and tools, but in people.

Arguing puts up walls, whereas genuine expressions of values through a healthy culture are a great amuse-bouche for change. And it’s a critical leadership skill everyone ought to learn.

You also give off that same enthusiasm that you experienced when the consultants showed up at your door. As a team, the consultants carried their culture into your organization—you were feeling their values, the belief they held that they were about to do something great for you. 

Take your transformation all the way to bedrock and anchor it in your belief system. It’s fast – like a couple of days. Doing this will disambiguate many of the judgment calls you need to make. When everyone gets in lockstep around the right values, you will be able to maintain that transformation you paid so much for and worked so hard to get off the ground.

If this is something you’re struggling with and you want to learn what’s possible for your organization, let’s talk.