It’s become a truism that if a communicator wants to get a Board or a senior management committee to listen to a new idea or a proposed change, the path of least resistance is to hire a consultant with some street cred, and get them to say the same damn thing the internal communicator has been saying, probably for years.
Far be it for me to bash consultants, as I’m proud to be among their ranks. But this pattern does raise some interesting questions:
Why does the Board respond better to consultants?
Why doesn’t the internal communications team have the credibility required to provide influence?
And, perhaps most importantly… What are the consultant’s strategies, methodologies or presentation approaches that might be successfully adopted by the in-house team to step up their game?
Hey, if you can’t beat ’em, perhaps you can join ’em.