So you want to be a knowledge management consultant?

ONTOLOGIQUE
 Doug Breitbart & Joe Raimondo
 Semantic System Design
COPYRIGHT © ONTOLOGIQUE 2011-14

SO YOU WANT TO BE A KM
CONSULTANT?
Joe Raimondo
Ontologique
November 2014
COPYRIGHT © ONTOLOGIQUE 2014

www.e-nactsolutions.com

3 FACTOR KM MODEL
 Innovation
 Monetization
 Stewardship
 All projects KM have one or more, in some ratio
 Ratio(s) determine approach

3 FACTORS

K&IM COMPETENCIES
 Developer
 Designer
 Story teller
 Teacher
 Geek
 Facilitator
 Practitioner
 Semanticist/Ontologist
 Methodologist
 Developmentalist
 Change agent
 Negotiator
7

ANALYZE K&IM BEST
PRACTICES: NAVIGABILITY
(JR)
8
•Smarter Content
•Everything in noSQL
•Semantic & social search
•Auto-everything
•Case: “Don’t mention search”
Source: Robert Gray
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/rbfnotes/grea
tc/gcvep.html

ANALYZE K&IM BEST
PRACTICES: RESEARCH (JR)
9

ANALYZE K&IM BEST PRACTICES:
SOCIAL TOOLS-DION
HINCHCLIFFE)
10

SO YOU WANT TO BE A KM
CONSULTANT?
 The Making of a Consultant
 The State of the KM Consulting Market
 KM Consulting –a Career Perspective
 KM Consulting Strategy: 2015 & Beyond
 Seven Keys for Consulting Success
 Conclusions & Takeaways
 Questions

THE MAKING OF A
CONSULTANT
 I Always wanted to be a consultant
 I don’t know why
© www.despair.com

THE MAKING OF A
CONSULTANT
- Worked in “Big KM” – Big 4 in the ‘90’s.
The time we fondly remember.
- The eye of the storm for KM at the
time
- Everyone want to get back to that time
- But, IT’S NOT COMING BACK!

THE KM PROFESSIONAL
SERVICES MARKET 2014
- Vertical Market Perspective
- Horizontal Market Perspective
- The Bottom Line

KM CONSULTING – A
VERTICAL MARKET
PERSPECTIVE
 Pharma & Life Science
 - AV & BV
 Financial Services
 Integrated Manufacturing
 Chemical and Process
Manufacturing
 Professional Services
 Public Sector
 Non-profit

KM CONSULTING – A
HORIZONTAL MARKET
PERSPECTIVE
 Subject matter expertise
 Project & Analysis Expertise
 Technical/Platform Expertise
 KM Expertise (plus…)
 Trusted Advisor/Guru

KM MARKET – THE BOTTOM
LINE
1) Knowledge Management is still relevant
- Still the best term to encompass the broad spectrum of
technologies and disciplines involved in optimizing the
value of an organization’s intellectual assets.
2) The strategic justification is a major challenge
- Business environment of cost-cutting and consolidation
3) The tactical justifications are driven by
- Platform consolidation
- The search for “intelligent” life
- Public sector-graying workforce
4) Finding the right “internal team” and defining their concept

KM CONSULTING –A CAREER
PERSPECTIVE
- Three Words
- Who Gets the Coffee?
- A-B-C
- Guru-dom

UP OR OUT
- Successful consultants are like sharks – they have to keep
moving
- The Big 4 model – up or out – is kind of a constant, either you
qualify yourself as a partner, or you eventually land a staff
position at a client
- There are staff positions at consulting firms, but it a risky
proposition – always the first to go in a downturn.

WHO GETS THE COFFEE?
- In my experience, the key to long-term success in consulting is SELLING, not
delivery
- Once you sell, of course you deliver – but the long-term perspective on
business development and closing is the engine for growth.
- Consultants who aren’t good at sales, but who are successful, will have a good
sales team at their side
- Successful sales in consulting comes in all forms, from cold calling to 100
percent networking

A-B-C
- Selling in consulting come in many forms:
- High volume, sales as marketing
- Low-key networking, the country club approach
- Proposal machines
- The all important follow-on

GURU-DOM
 The option to being the big
closer/Partner/Principal is to be a Guru.
 Requires more of a focus on constantly
generating new intellectual property.
 Still requires selling and closing, but the IP
(books, courses, methods, etc.) are the
primary draw.

KM CONSULTING STRATEGY:
2015 & BEYOND
 Strategy as the Optimization of a Portfolio of
Intellectual Assets
 A Textbook Approach
 Strategy and the Sole Practitioner

STRATEGY: OPTIMIZING A PORTFOLIO
OF INTELLECTUAL ASSETS
- E.g., practice what you preach
- Develop and Leverage your own portfolio of
assets
- Capture, classify and develop avenues for
distribution of as much of the artifacts of your
intellectual effort as possible
- Provides the engine for generating the intellectual
assets that move your firm forward
 For more info, see The June 2005 Harvard Business
Review “Surprising Economics of a "People
Business” by Felix Barber, Rainer Strack
http://bit.ly/2B0Jtt

A TEXTBOOK FIVE-FACTOR
PERSPECTIVE
Strategic factors driving decisions about allocation of:
- Time/Attention
- Capital (financial/social)

STRATEGY AND THE SOLE
PRACTITIONER
 Even sole practitioners faces the need to operate strategically
 - “Kill and eat” is not really a strategy
 If you’re not operating strategically, you short-change your
clients, even if you are totally successful at delivery

SEVEN KEYS TO CONSULTING
SUCCESS
(1) Winning the Proposal Game
(2) Your Give Away
(3) Dealing with Expectations
(4) Moving In – becoming part of the family
(5) Appearing bigger than you are—project yourself
(6) Eating your own dog food—practicing what you preach
(7) Build your virtual team

WINNING THE PROPOSAL
GAME
 Successful proposals don’t simply win you business
- They are the blueprint for maintaining the relationship with
the client
 Successful proposals usually win on the strength of the team,
and the demonstration of capability to perform
 - You need to document all your past experience
(qualifications) rigorously.
 You need to run the proposal through an applicable project
management method to clarify scope, identify resources and
role, and to manage risk.

YOUR GIVE AWAY
 You might offer a “freebie” – a lure for
potential clients
 - A free taste of the services you offer to
get them hooked
 The BEST charge clients for their give-away.
 - It gets the client’s skin in the game
 Make sure that you (and the potential client)
don’t confuse your give away with your real
offer!

DEALING WITH
EXPECTATIONS
 Winning professional services business requires
setting high expectations.
 The biggest source of suffering in professional
practice is the inevitable divergence of
expectations once delivery begins.
 The client is always right – to a point.
 It’s important to establish a partnership with
clients that allows give and take.
 Don’t be afraid to fire a client. In the long ruin,
it’s more important to maintain your
professional integrity than to be abused for
billable hours.

MOVING IN – BECOMING
PART OF THE FAMILY
 “Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar..”
 You want to cultivate a trusted advisory
relationship AND maintain your
independence.
 This is a high-wire act for consultants.
 You have to create your own structure that
YOU belong to so you’re not dependent on
belonging o the client’s culture and
structure.

APPEARING BIGGER—
PROJECTING YOURSELF
 One of the tenets of small business is to
find ways to appear bigger than you are.
 Overinvesting in image – quality of
materials, deliverables, web site, etc. is one
way to accomplish this.
 Pulling in allies from your network to flesh
out your team also can be helpful.
 Be smart about this, and also be accurate.
Leaving people with an impression is
different that mis-representing yourself.

EATING YOUR OWN DOG
FOOD—PRACTICING WHAT
YOU PREACH
 Vexes every consultant – focus should
be on delivery and new business
development.
 But especially in a discipline like KM, it’s
important to be able to lead client – to
show a vision, to open their eyes.
 Practicing KM internally – no matter
your size – expands the boundaries of
your professional capabilities.

BUILD YOUR VIRTUAL TEAM
 Consultants are expected to be experts in their
disciplines. But too often they think that their
expertise in on domain extends to other
domain.
 Beyond your professional cadre, it’s important
to build a social network that’s balanced with
people who have key skills – sales, marketing,
branding and image, project management, etc.
 Train your teams eyes to spot opportunities for
you. They should be clear about what you do
that they can reliably identify an obvious
opportunity back to you.
 - Train them!

QUESTIONS
 Joe Raimondo, @JoeRaimondo
 joer@ontologique.com
 http://www.ontologique.com

So you want to be a knowledge management consultant?

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