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This article discusses the key messages and drivers for an industry awareness campaign in the Caribbean consulting industry. It highlights the stakeholders, negative perceptions, market potential, and the need for standards. The article also emphasizes the key messages that need to be promoted and the campaign's focus, including professional and personal development, industry standards, and understanding the market. The next steps for implementing this campaign are also outlined.
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Felicia Linch What should Caribbean Consultants key messages be?
What is an Industry Awareness Campaign? ‘Primarily an externally focussed campaign to promote the benefits of a particular industry to its Stakeholders’.
Who are the Stakeholders in the Consulting Industry? Stakeholders for the consulting industry would be: • Consultants: Individuals, firms and companies • Clients and Prospective Clients: Businesses (SMEs, Entrepreneurs, large nationals and Multi-nationals), Governments, quasi- Governmental organizations, and State owned enterprises or Agencies, Not-for-profits • Financial Institutions: Banks and Insurers • Educational Institutions: Particularly at the tertiary level as these are potential future consultants
What are the Drivers for an Industry Awareness Campaign in the Caribbean? • Negative perceptions held by some stakeholder groups e.g. ‘consultants – what do they know’ ‘they charged a lot but did nothing’ • Eating our Lunch: 92.5% of consulting fees in the Caribbean region are going to ‘foreign’ consultants, and these projects tend to be the high-value end (strategy/systems).
What are the Drivers for an Industry Awareness Campaign in the Caribbean? • Un-tapped market potential: that is providing Strategy consulting services to SME’s /Start-ups, which make up a large majority of the enterprises in the private sector in the Caribbean, and also not-for-profits • Question of standards: With most Caribbean consultants being either independent consultants or small firms there is a perception that quality is lacking because it is assumed we don’t have: (i) the expertise, (ii) the experience to run large projects and (iii) lack financial stability
What are the key messages we need to promote? • Clear and consistent message as to the types of consulting roles: • Diagnostic role: identifying the issues/needs analysis • Expert role: unique knowledge and technical expertise • Process /Facilitative role: helping the client better understand their situation and actions towards improving it (based on E. Schein, (2nd Ed, Vol 1), ‘Process Consultation: its role in Organizational Development’, Prentice Hall ). • The benefits of using consulting services: • Independence • Skills • Analysis • Resource (source Kopac Consulting) • What we do: • Solving management and business problems • Identifying opportunities • Facilitating learning • Implementing changes (source Milton Kubr)
The Campaign’s focus In our definition of a campaign we said it should be: ‘primarily externally focused…’ However there are some areas of internal focus for us as Caribbean Consultants, i.e. • Our Professional and Personal Development • Industry Standards • Increased Understanding of our Market
Next Steps How do we implement this campaign? • Evaluating and ‘putting our own house in order’ • Develop mechanisms for engaging stakeholders • Recognising that collaboration at the national and regional level is key
