Successful Consulting..15 years of learning

I worked as an information systems consultant for 15 years. I had the opportunity to serve great clients all over the country, work on project teams with excellent professionals, build and implement cool systems, and learn more than I could ever imagine.  In that time I learned how to be a successful consultant.

During those years I figured out many things about working with clients.  We sold to them, built relationships with them, tried to satisfy them and used technology to make their businesses more effective and efficient.  I learned how to set expectations, how to communicate, how to roll out systems inside their organizations and how to resolve issues when things didn’t go well.  I enjoyed the process of building lasting relationships with clients.

I also learned a lot about working with teams.  Our teams were often made up of our own staff combined with our client’s staff. I had to lead, plan, delegate, motivate, schedule and solve problems with those on the team.  It was fun and rewarding to complete a successful project with a good team.

I built information systems.  Often, our projects involved using very new technology that we had never seen before.  The systems we built ran on handhelds, PCs, mid-size and main-frame computers.  We built systems that ran in one location and  in hundreds of locations. We built systems that were use by one user and by thousands of users.  I always felt very satisfied  when  I could implement a system that saved my clients lots of money or enabled them to do some thing they could not do before.

I want to share some of what I learned about being a successful consultant in this blog.  I think that anyone involved in consulting, freelancing or contracting with other companies can learn from my experience. Thanks to all those who were on that journey with me and helped me learn so much.

Related posts:

1. Successful Consulting: Be Prepared
2. Successful Consulting: Be Professional
3. Successful Consulting: Be Efficient
4. Learning from the Past: Ancient Technology
5. Entering Expenses. Yuck!