I recently met with a consulting team I’m subcontracting for on a fairly ambitious project. They were frustrated: The client just doesn’t seem to get the big picture, they said. We have to spell everything out, and even then, they’re hesitant—they don’t understand how it all fits together.
Then they described their process: they walked into a workshop cold, dropped a ton of new material in front of the client for the first time, and expected them to react—on the spot, in front of their staff.
Honestly, are we still doing this?
Yes, some clients need more hand-holding than we’d like. Yes, some take longer to get up to speed. But our job is to set them up for success—and that means delivering information in a way that respects their time, capacity, and decision-making process.
We need to stop blindsiding clients and expecting instant, on-the-fly reactions to unfamiliar material.
Too often, this comes down to the consultant’s own poor planning. If you’re scrambling the night before to assemble a slide deck, you’re not likely to have also crafted a clear, user-friendly document that the client can digest on their own time.
But that’s what good consultants do.
We take the time to prepare. We present the new material in a readable format, clearly outlining:
- what’s changed since the last meeting,
- what’s new or important now,
- and how it all fits together.
We send it a week in advance. We include a short, friendly list of questions to guide their review. And then we ask:
- How would you like to provide feedback?
- Do you want time to reflect and respond in writing?
- Should we book a follow-up meeting to walk through it together?
- Would a couple of feedback sessions help?
That’s what good consultants do.