My Worst Ever Consulting Project

What you can learn from a consulting project which went very wrong.

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What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Back in 2019, I was approached by a large non-profit to join them as part of a larger tender for a multi-million dollar contract (from an even bigger non-profit organisation).

The project looked interesting, and its value was over six figures to me. I had just wrapped up a couple of projects, so I had some space for a big client.

All three of these factors caused me to break several of my rules. This included:

• Agreeing to an hourly rate.

• Working through an intermediary rather than directly for the end client.

• Working within another organisation’s structures and methodologies (vs. bringing our own into the picture).

• Investing significant amounts of time up-front to secure the contract.

Despite this, things initially seemed to be going well. We collaborated to win a multi-million dollar project to deliver a range of outcomes, including a community (my piece of the puzzle).

However, shortly after we won, nagging issues began to emerge.

These included:

• The intermediary frequently dropped tasks on me with short deadlines to complete.

• Requests were made to attend meetings at short notice or scheduled for times when I’d made clear I was unavailable.

• They informed me of the outcome of discussions with the client rather than involving me in the discussion.

• Invoices were paid late (and the no. hours were frequently questioned).

• They constantly asked me to send work in draft form and critiqued areas which had yet to be completed or included.

• They frequently ignored my recommendations and changed the work I had created.

Despite having several direct discussions to address these issues, they came up in different forms.

After one harrowing call, I began feeling stress—more stress than I’d ever experienced in the past. I decided to wrap up my current deliverable and leave the project afterwards.

However, the following day, I received an email from their procurement team stating that the contract had been terminated effective immediately. They believed I had been fully compensated for all of my contributions to the project (i.e., they didn’t feel they had to pay for the past month).

Why Consulting Relationships Can Break Down

It’s easy to place the blame solely upon the client. Yet, if you asked them, I’m sure they would tell an equally harrowing story about me. But if we boil everything down to the root problem; we had different expectations of each other.

I suspected this client would be similar to other clients, and they probably suspected I’d be similar to other consultants they had worked with.

But the real root cause is that we didn’t spend enough time together in advance to check we were the right match.

Due to their busy schedules, the low odds of winning this project, and their pitching for multiple projects at once, we didn’t get to spend much time until the project was won.

This led to several differences in understanding. This included:

• Contractor vs. consultant. While they listed me as a consultant, they treated me as a contractor to whom they could assign work and request meetings at will. In short, they acted as if I were a short-term employee they could delegate work to rather than a consultant guiding them through my methodology.

• Respect of expertise. Typically, we respect each other’s expertise in a client engagement project. The client knows more about the organisation than I do, and I know more about my field of expertise. This doesn’t mean we can’t disagree and collaborate to find solutions - but we respect the piece of the puzzle we each bring to the party. We don’t overrule each other in our fields of expertise (i.e. they might tell me a recommended approach to building a community won’t work for their organisation’s unique constraints, but they won’t simply say they know a better approach to building a community). In this project, they frequently assumed their expertise trumped my own and made changes without warning.

• Process. They expected me to work within processes designed for employees, not a process for consultants. They wanted up-to-the-minute sharing of information they could give feedback on vs. sharing at specific milestones when feedback was required. This meant I was constantly answering questions about why some sections hadn’t been completed yet, or some information hadn’t been included.

• Terminology. We didn’t share the same understanding of ‘community’, ‘strategy’, or even the project's outcomes. This meant we had very different interpretations of the deliverables we were creating. Their interpretation of strategy was a single persuasive document showing the desired end goal, while mine was a set of goals, strategies, and tactics to bring the community to life.

All of these issues are things that we should have addressed before winning the contract.

Lessons To Learn

If I’m honest, I did what many people have done. I ignored several red flags from my rotten opportunities checklist because the contract's value exceeded six figures.

If I could go back in time, I’d tell myself that:

“Yes, the value of the contract is high, but you will only be paid that amount if you complete the work. And that requires a good, positive working relationship with the client. If you don’t have that, the work will never be completed.”

This is why it doesn’t make sense to ignore red flags and accept the contract just for the money — because you probably won’t be paid the money. I think I earned just $25k for this project - despite all the stress and work I had to endure to win it.

Some lessons from this

1. You must build a relationship with the client team before beginning a project. You need to do a vibe check to ensure you have compatible personalities and working styles (Aside—this is one of the significant problems with RFPs).

2. Check your shared definitions. In the sales process, ensure you have a shared understanding of the terminology you will be using and the deliverables you will create. Go deep into each of these and make sure you’re aligned.

3. Agree on status and process. It should be clear when you will share the work you’ve done and get feedback. Sharing and getting feedback is a good thing, but it should be done in a controlled way and not simply give the client open access to see where you are right now. You need a mechanism to share where you are in the project, what you want feedback on, and how you want that feedback.

4. Understand how they have worked with clients before. Check what kind of consultants they’ve worked with and how that project went. See if they have worked with consultants and what they learned from working with them.

Good luck!

Richard Millington