The Danger of Excellent Hard-Skills

Doing sophisticated, meticulously executed analyses with ground-breaking ideas. That is what clients need from consultants, right? This requires hard-core cerebral skillsets. I argue that overdosing these hard-skills by just focusing on these can be dangerous.

Why would anybody bother? You’re convinced just because the ultimate decision-maker decided to pay you for your skills it does not mean that you are just expected to give great recommendations. In order to be successful you must come up with recommendations that are excellent AND is executed. An implemented strategic advice drives ROI, not the sheer idea.

It means that you have to understand the organisation well enough on the cultural as well as on the political side to have your recommendation accepted and implemented. This requires soft-skills and these are vastly underestimated by outsiders. If you can combine excellent suggestions with superb soft-skills, it can make a difference for your project and for your clients’ bottom line, too.