A consultancy delivers a thorough piece of work. The analysis is sound, the recommendations are practical and the client is genuinely pleased.
Eleven months later almost none of it has happened. Two things were started, one was overtaken by a reorganisation, and the document is on a shared drive.
Nobody failed at anything. The engagement was scoped to produce a recommendation, and the work of actually changing how an organisation operates was never anybody's job.
The first failure: implementation is not scoped
The engagement ends at a recommendation. The client assumed the difficult part would somehow follow, and the consultant assumed the client would take it forward.
The second failure: nobody is named to do it
A recommendation without an owner is a suggestion. This is the single most consequential omission and it is resolved with one line in a proposal.
The third failure: no capacity is allocated
The people who would implement it have full time jobs. Change that requires somebody's time without anybody being freed to provide it does not happen.
The fourth failure: the sponsor moves on
Eleven months is long enough for a reorganisation, a promotion or a departure. Work depending on one person's continued enthusiasm is work with an expiry date.
The fifth failure: the recommendation requires decisions nobody will make
Frequently about people, budgets or priorities. A consultant can recommend and only the organisation can decide, and an unmade decision stops everything behind it.
The sixth failure: the report is too large to act on
Forty recommendations produces paralysis. Three prioritised actions with owners produces movement, and consultants are rewarded for thoroughness rather than for actionability.
The seventh failure: nothing is sequenced
Which first, what depends on what and what can happen in parallel. A list without a sequence leaves an organisation deciding where to start, which is where it stalls.
The eighth failure: no early win is identified
Something visible within weeks. Without it, an initiative has nothing to show at the point where attention starts moving elsewhere.
The ninth failure: the measurement is never established
What would indicate progress, measured from when. Without a baseline nobody can say whether anything worked, which makes continuing hard to justify.
The tenth failure: there is no check in afterwards
A consultant who leaves at delivery never learns what happened, which means they never improve at producing recommendations that get implemented.
The eleventh failure: the client did not want implementation
Sometimes the recommendation was for a board, a funder or a regulator, and the document was the deliverable. That is legitimate and it should be explicit rather than discovered.
The twelfth failure: the timescale was never realistic
Organisational change takes longer than any proposal suggests, which is the same pattern as implementation timeline and onboarding questions.
The fix: agree who implements before anybody starts
Name the owner, allocate the capacity, prioritise three actions, sequence them, identify an early win, establish the measurement and schedule a check in, all agreed in the proposal rather than hoped for afterwards. An assistant that establishes at the enquiry whether the client wants a recommendation or a change, and who would carry it out, produces engagements that survive the delivery meeting. The commercial terms sit in rate and engagement questions consultants should answer, the scoping in consulting enquiries that need scoping before a call, and the handling in how to handle sensitive questions in your chatbot. Start at try, see features, and the sector view sits under consultants.