Do You Need Training or Consulting?

Posted by Jim Connolly on 15 September, 2009  Email This Post -  Print This Post

As promised in my last post, I said the next post would answer the question “Do you need training or consulting?  This question came up at a dinner meeting with a long time client.

In short, if you need new knowledge or skills, effective training is likely the answer.  On the other hand, if you need expertise, you would do well to contact a consultant that specializes in the area of expertise you need.  Of course, in some cases you need both.  However, avoid assuming that a trainer or a consultant can provide both.

What’s the goal of getting advice/expertise from an expert?  To gain insights into how a process works, get expert advice about which model would be best for a specific situation or use the expert to provide a service that you can’t or shouldn’t provide internally (i.e. behaviorial interviewing, strategic planning), etc.

What’s the goal of training?  Once you have the expertise you need, implementing it successfully is critical.  New knowledge and/or skills are introduced to impact the beliefs and behaviors of employees in order to improve their invidual performance.  When enough employees improve their performance, organizational performance improves as well.

Both training and consulting, when done effectively, provide value in improving organizational performance.

I hope you found this post useful.  There are more than 30 other articles/posts on our blog.  Feel free to use them to improve employee and organizational performance in your organization.  If I can answer a question for you, please let me know.