Why Hire an Organizational Consultant?

Whenever I talk about what I do, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be asked something along the lines of “why would a company hire someone from the outside? Is it worth it?” It’s a reasonable question to ask! After all, a bottom-line focus by its nature begs debate as to the expense that comes with an organizational consultant. There are many reasons an organizational consultant is more than worth the investment, such as their expertise and training, or experience with multiple organizations. However, one of the most overlooked factors that a consultant mitigates is bias, specifically, confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret or recall information in a way that reinforces existing beliefs. In other words, if you go looking for something, you’re going to find it, and if you need to recall something, you will only recall what you want to recall. For example, if a manager is frustrated with a team member who arrived late to a meeting, they may only remember that fact, and disregard the fact that once they did arrive, their insight was impactful and drove several great ideas stemming from the meeting. 

If we expand this type of thinking to overall operations, confirmation bias shows when discussing challenges and goals. For example, if a team isn’t meeting its service goals, a manager engaging in confirmation bias may immediately presume that the team member who was late to the meeting also isn’t performing in other areas of their job. Soon, a target is on that person, and other facts – important ones to determine the actual root cause of issues – are disregarded. As a result, focus is poor, decision quality is poor, and the issues linger. This hurts motivation, productivity, and morale, and now an organization is potentially worse off than it was before. 

Back to the question at hand: why hire an organizational consultant? Because consultants are trained to be neutral, and by profession are keenly aware of bias and how it negatively impacts strategic decisions. In addition, an organizational consultant has the advantage of seeing operations with fresh eyes and no preconceived notions. The best consultants learn the facts from the team, and then apply their expertise to clarify and expand the information to educate and strategize the most effective way to improve.

It's true, hiring an organizational consultant does come at an expense. With a consultant providing expertise to an organization and an accurate, bias-free picture of where strengths and opportunities exist, that expense typically turns out to be a worthy investment in the long run.

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