Over 10 years as a management consultant provided me with a solid skillset to advise and invest in early stage startups, but I found success requires a different approach and mindset.
As a consultant, I worked with countless Fortune 500 companies through a variety of business challenges and initiatives: Go-to-Market strategy and execution, M&A and Divestitures, Vendor Management, BPO (Business Process Optimization), enterprise software implementations and on and on. When I first began to consult startups I found that most startups aren’t equipped for handling consultants.
Why consulting isn’t a fit for startups
In consulting for enterprises, each engagement’s scope of the work was clearly defined. At the risk of over-generalizing, consultants either are bringing a new idea to the table or implementing a solution to optimize a piece of the business. This approach doesn’t ‘fit’ great in a startup environment.
For one, startups are innovation machines. They rarely find themselves lacking new ideas, moreover, they have more great ideas than they handle putting into action. So having consultants contribute more ideas without any ability to execute on them simply adds little value and only frustrates founders.
So why can’t consultants just execute for startups? Well, that is the second misalignment I have experienced - consulting work can be extremely expensive. Consultants are known to charge anywhere from $300-$1000 per hour for their work and expertise. Since many startups, especially in early-stage, are bootstrapped with founders sleeping on friends coaches this is a hard impasse.
Third, even if a startup has founders with sufficient capital, having consultants execute on all the nebulous challenges which surface when starting a business isn’t an effective approach.
Stumbling through each of these trial and error scenarios with companies is how I realized that the best way to help founders is by supporting them in building their company, not building their business for them.
Coaching and How Founders can Benefit
If consulting is delivering great ideas and solutions, then coaching is eliciting the right answers and strategy with startup founders. With coaching, clients are able to walk away with strategies for uncovering their own truth rather than being prescribed.
Here are some other differentiators between the two:
1. Patience is the most important skill
Most of us benefit from a soundboard - it allows us to spill our incomplete thoughts and test their logic. Since coaching is very much a self-discovery process for the person participating, it is critical for coaches to restrain the urge to get their own message across to allow founders to share more fully. I found paraphrasing and summarizing the founder’s thoughts encourages them that you’re completely engaged and allows them to arrive at a distilled version of their ideas.
Remember: this is an iterative process, so don’t forget to be patient.
2. Come with an Open Agenda
A career in consulting will have you hyper-prepare with agendas and action plans. And though this is important during certain periods of the process, generally it is best to let a founder come to you with their top priorities. Founders want to know their needs are being understood first before they are open to advice so beginning with a strong empathetic relationship is critical.
3. Approaching conversation with Curiosity
Staying curious during your interactions ensures that you are not prematurely prescribing solutions, taking the time to listen, and preventing yourself from being perceived as judgemental. Once someone feels judged or ignored they become defensive and the ability to influence quickly dissipates. Adopting a curiosity mindset also allows you to take time to ask the right questions which can open doors to further understanding how the founder thinks as well as their potential blind spots.
4. The Power of Experiences & Storytelling
As a consultant, I love providing a clear plan, roadmap and sequential list to execute, but it's not as powerful as sharing a personal story. Stories from our experiences are one of the ultimate forms of storytelling, especially when we provide all the in depth emotion and detail.
5. Turning Advice into Action
This is where you as a coach should be action oriented and traditional consulting skillsets are especially useful. Only after working on the aforementioned points, can coaches focus on outcomes. It is important to be as specific as possible in the actions and outcomes a founder wishes to meet.
I have found it most useful to end each coaching session with a concrete plan and action items but since founders immediately dive back into their chaotic world, it is imperative for coaches to follow-up and check-in between sessions. This serves to help the founder to continue to make progress but especially communicates that you are in their corner.
Finding a coach
If you are still skeptical that coaching is right for you, I highly recommend that you read Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt (yes, the former Google CEO). It highlights how Bill Campbell helped him and other tech leaders even at the pinnacle of their careers by inspiring courage and identifying and resolving simmering tensions that inevitably arise in fast-moving environments.
I hope that this article inspires you to find a coach, which can be difficult. A good coach must be relatable and have a similar background or has already been through your current situation. Someone who genuinely cares about your personal and professional growth, who isn’t ego-centric, and knows how to work with high performing individuals.
Remember “Always work with/surround yourself with people who help make you a better version of you.” ~ Don Roff
About the author:
Cesar is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, startup coach, and strategy consultant. Over the past 10 years he has worked with dozens of companies defining strategy, implementing solutions, raising capital, seeding startups with potential, and coaching founders seeking to rapidly scale their business.
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