For decades, the status quo of the consulting industry has remained relatively steady. With the big consulting firms ruling the roost, client-companies came to know what to expect from a traditional consulting experience; a consultant would come in, tell everyone what to do and how to do it, and then leave. Typically, this approach would lead to the company needing to hire the consultant, sometimes again and again, only for them to tend to the same pain points that weren’t initially addressed or resolved.
Consultants can fail for a number of reasons. First, a consultant may not have much operational experience, so their recommended solutions are too theoretical and don’t take into account challenges that might arise during implementation. Secondly, they may use a pret-a-porter model with playbooks that apply to as many clients as possible, meaning they are unable to customize a solution where the client’s root issue is. Lastly, a consultant could fail because their best interest lies in helping the client enough to show value, but not enough that they don’t need to hire the consultant again to solve the same (or similar) problems.
Amira elAdawi, the founder of AMIRA & CO, knew there was a different way to approach the art of consulting that would result in empowered clients and problems solved — permanently.
“The traditional consulting industry is built around being the smartest person in the room and telling clients what to do,” explains elAdawi. With her firm, elAdawi set out to upend this traditional mindset, bringing a new approach to an industry long-overdue for disruption.
Empowering Clients
When elAdawi began laying the groundwork for what would eventually become AMIRA & CO, she tapped old clients and other consultants for information on what they both did and didn’t like about consulting services as a whole. The answers, unfortunately, didn’t surprise her, with clients saying while executives found the “smartest person in the room” consultant approach valuable, and often rewarded it, the rest of their organization didn’t necessarily like or respect the approach. As a result, the overwhelming majority of employees at the client’s organization did not like the consultants that were hired; they didn’t want their recommendations to succeed, often didn’t listen to or take the consultant’s advice, and as soon as the consultant left, it was as if they had never been there in the first place.
“I had a notion that this was the issue,” elAdawi explains, “and I wanted to see if it was right. I found that, while the need for consultants is still there, being the smartest person in the room isn’t the solution.”
In addition to these findings, Amira also knew that in many circumstances where the need and value of a consultant was disconnected between executives and other employees, consultants were hired repeatedly to fix the same problems. The answer to this issue was clear for elAdawi — create a new approach to offering consulting services, that aims to empower clients to lift up their own organizations, supporting their own “smartest people” to own and deliver necessary changes.
‘If You Don’t Have to Hire Me Again, I’ve Succeeded’
In most industries, retaining clients for repeated business is something that’s desired, or even necessary. However, elAdawi takes a different approach with her consulting firm.
“If you don’t have to hire me ever again, I’ve succeeded,” she says. According to elAdawi, this philosophy stems from her belief that by giving clients the tools to enact successful processes and lasting, actionable change, they will not have to return to AMIRA & CO repeatedly for the same issues.
“I want my work to be hands-on, interesting, and different,” elAdawi says. “Of course, my clients always want to hire me again, and I love supporting them, but I want to make sure it’s for different issues, because the first issue is now fully resolved, and they want to see the same sustainable change in other places – not because they want more help on the same issue, or want to figure out why things didn’t go as planned.”
Instead of relying on revenue from repeat clients bringing the same issues to the table, elAdawi has designed a boutique, one-client-at-a-time experience. She aims not just to deliver one-off plans to her clients, but ways to adapt and thrive as a whole company.
Word of Mouth and Excellent Personal Service
Since founding AMIRA & CO, elAdawi has continued building her business through solid word-of-mouth as well as a little bit of luck. While she admits that it takes time to build the structure and scale to serve larger clients, she was lucky enough to have one such large client take a chance on her burgeoning firm in its earlier days.
“I was lucky enough to have a really big client take a chance on me when I was first starting out on my own,” elAdawi says. “My approach was a theory at that time — it hadn’t been tested yet — but they believed in the approach and so they supported me in trying it out.”
Her approach worked, and the positive word-of-mouth began to spread. “You have to keep your clients believing in you and create real value,” elAdawi explains. “With good word of mouth, you don’t have to focus nearly as much on sales or business development.”
Although smaller consulting firms often find themselves able to compete on price, they are rarely able to do so regarding the value they offer clients, especially when compared to larger, more established firms. As such, the cornerstone of elAdawi’s business is to create and offer that value. This, in turn, has allowed her to develop a reputation that allows her to compete with the biggest and most established firms in the industry. “You have to consistently justify the risk of hiring someone outside of the big consulting firms,” she adds.
For her clients, elAdawi makes the justification easy by clearly communicating what makes AMIRA & CO different. With over a decade of experience in consulting with big firms, and having risen to the most senior levels during this time, elAdawi brings the same rigor, methodology, and quality of work as big consulting. However, it is her unique approach that makes her more valuable to the clients and organizations she works with. This co-creative approach has become the calling card for AMIRA & CO.
When elAdawi founded AMIRA & CO, she did so with the mission to bring enduring change to her clients and their organizations. She brings years of experience and a fresh take on consulting to the table for each client she works with, bringing disruption and innovation to an industry that has been long overdue.
Release ID: 325099
Source: https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/the-consultant-you-hire-when-others-failed-amira-eladawi