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I am a publishing consultant. So it may seem odd to warn against the engaging the services of a someone like me.

In fact, I am not. There are many, many good reasons to bring in a consultant. A consultant can bring an outside perspective and allow a publication to see its operations in a fresh light. Consultants can address long-postponed problems that publications staff do not themselves have time to tackle. And consultants can help a publication confront a challenge--say, a long-term decline in advertising sales or readership--whose reversal may require a course correction too painful to contemplate on one's own.

But there are things consultants cannot do. Namely, tell you what you do not, at some level at least, already know. Force you to make decisions you cannot bring yourself to make. Close down or outsource publications you or your volunteers want to retain. Or, worse of all, force your staff to operate differently, when you have done nothing to prepare or sustain a different way of operating.

My fellow consultant John Cox has a saying that gets at the mistaken reliance on consultants: "A consultant is someone who asks to borrow your watch, then charges you when you ask the time." (He also shares a bit cruder version: "A consultant is someone who can tell you 50 ways to have sex, but doesn't know any women.")

If I had to list three reasons not to hire a consultant, these would be tops:

1. You can't make a decision. If you are expecting that the consultant will arrive with a report in the way Moses came down with the tablets from Mt. Sinai, your expectations are wildly unrealistic. A consultant can only offer you ten suggestions, not ten commandments. It's up to you whether and how to interpret and inplement them. If you can't make a decision, the consultant's report is very unlikely to point to a path so compelling that the decision to follow it is automatic.
   
2. You want to put key association volunteers in their place. If you're constantly butting heads with volunteers who want to edit the magazine, choose the cover photo, use the publication to cozy up to a sponsor, or dictate advertising and c policy, you have a problem deeper than a publications consultant can solve. You likely suffer from a more fundamental problem in volunteer relations and governance, and the proper roles of staff and volunteers need to be more clearly established before you can address problems with a publication. (However, a publications consultant can sometimes provide outside confirmation of the wisdom of a course that staff have suggested but association leaders have dismissed. Staff publications prophets too often go unrecognized in their own land.)
3. You want a consultant to give your publications program a vision and purpose. In healthy organizations, as described in the recent book 7 Measures of Success, products and services are aligned with the organization's mission. A publications consultant cannot reasonably determine how the publications program should support the association's mission and vision; that is a matter for some deep soul searching among staff and volunteers. There is no one answer. A publication might support the organization by generating revenue, by being an authoritative voice in the industry, or by aiding member recruitment and retention. A consultant can help you to discover the possibilities and to achieve them once a direction is decided--but the decision of where to go must begin in the association itself.

None of this is meant to discourge you from hiring a consultant--a step that, as a consultant, I often heartily endorse. But with associations' resources often limited, it is best to go into a consulting arrangement with expectations realistic and outcomes clearly defined.

One prospective client recently told me all he wanted was a "magic bullet" to turn his publications program around. Much as I wish it were so, consultants do not have a supply of magic in their holsters. What they do have is tools, techiques, and insights to support the hard but ultimately rewarding work of creating successful publications.

Labels: consultant publications

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