What are some practical ways to make your recommendations actionable?

As a consultant, you want to deliver strategic insights and recommendations that your clients can actually implement and benefit from. However, sometimes your recommendations may be too vague, complex, or unrealistic to be actionable. How can you avoid this pitfall and ensure that your recommendations are clear, concise, and feasible? Here are some practical ways to make your recommendations actionable.

1 Align with client goals

Before you present your recommendations, make sure that they align with your client's goals, needs, and priorities. You can do this by conducting a thorough stakeholder analysis, understanding the client's context and constraints, and validating your assumptions and hypotheses with data and feedback. By aligning your recommendations with the client's goals, you can increase their relevance, buy-in, and impact.

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Vlatka Jukic

Legal and Compliance Manager / Helping companies earn and transform through legal expertise / Specialist in commercial contracts, negotiations & litigation / General Counsel / People Expert // strategy // public affairs
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To best understand the client's needs, and especially if the client is unsure of the best path forward, conduct a due diligence to obtain an in-depth overview of the client's setup, processes, potentially ongoing lawsuits or other disputes. Depending on the scope of consulting, compiling a risk and control matrix can be additionally useful., together with a SWAT analysis. After completing a client snapshot, propose the methods, processes and the overall path and discuss with your client. He/she needs to be 100% in because they will own the process and the results down the line.

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Sanil M Mhatre

Director - Management Consulting || Growth Strategy | Project Advisory | Operations Excellence || Manufacturing & Infrastructure || Ex PwC-Deloitte-Mott MacDonald II Views are personal
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The most effective incentive for making any recommendation implementable is aligning it with quick & short-term targets which give the client push towards their organizational goals. Link these short-terms recommendations to long-terms targets to push for higher chances and effectiveness of recommendations.

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2 Use the SMART framework

A useful tool to make your recommendations actionable is the SMART framework, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. By applying this framework, you can ensure that your recommendations are well-defined, quantifiable, realistic, aligned, and timely. For example, instead of saying "improve customer satisfaction", you can say "increase the Net Promoter Score by 10% in the next six months by implementing a customer loyalty program".

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3 Provide a roadmap

Another way to make your recommendations actionable is to provide a roadmap that outlines the steps, resources, and timelines required to implement them. A roadmap can help your client visualize the process, identify the milestones and dependencies, and allocate the budget and staff accordingly. You can use a simple table, chart, or diagram to present your roadmap, and highlight the key actions, outcomes, and indicators for each stage.

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Vlatka Jukic

Legal and Compliance Manager / Helping companies earn and transform through legal expertise / Specialist in commercial contracts, negotiations & litigation / General Counsel / People Expert // strategy // public affairs
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Especially in more complex environments or when consulting on transformations and change management, leading your client step-by-step is a great idea, so as to provide added security and make yourself available in real-time while you are going through the steps together.

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Sanil M Mhatre

Director - Management Consulting || Growth Strategy | Project Advisory | Operations Excellence || Manufacturing & Infrastructure || Ex PwC-Deloitte-Mott MacDonald II Views are personal
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In any implementation environment, making a detailed roadmap with stage-gates to check implementation is important. These stage-gates and steps between stages will have to define the right approach to implement, identify most probable challenges and most relevant course correction measures.

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4 Anticipate challenges

No matter how well-crafted your recommendations are, they may face some challenges or obstacles during the implementation phase. Therefore, it is important to anticipate these challenges and provide some contingency plans or mitigation strategies. For example, you can conduct a risk analysis, identify the potential sources of resistance or uncertainty, and suggest some alternative solutions or scenarios. By anticipating challenges, you can demonstrate your foresight, credibility, and adaptability.

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Vlatka Jukic

Legal and Compliance Manager / Helping companies earn and transform through legal expertise / Specialist in commercial contracts, negotiations & litigation / General Counsel / People Expert // strategy // public affairs
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A SWOT or RACM are excellent tools when visibility is needed to be able to drill-down on an issue. Additionally, proposing a business continuity plan to mitigate risks and overcome them will show your market knowledge (when consulting on related topics).

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5 Follow up and support

Finally, to make your recommendations actionable, you need to follow up and support your client after you present them. You can do this by providing some additional resources, such as reports, templates, or tools, that can help your client execute your recommendations. You can also offer some feedback, coaching, or guidance along the way, and monitor the progress and results of your recommendations. By following up and supporting your client, you can ensure that your recommendations are not only actionable, but also effective.

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Erkeda DeRouen, MD ✨ Digital Health Risk Management Consultant ⚕️TEDxer

I help digitally-enabled healthcare organizations intelligently navigate clinical risk and compliance✨
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Providing follow up and support is instrumental. You can also work to add additional service to assist an organization with proper implementation.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Saurabh Pandey

Industry Strategy | Digital Transformation | Energy & Utilities | IIMA
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Identificatiom of the right project champions and co-creation of practical solution approaches taking the users and client on board at all times.

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What are some practical ways to make your recommendations actionable?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Align with client goals

2 Use the SMART framework

3 Provide a roadmap

4 Anticipate challenges

5 Follow up and support

6 Here’s what else to consider

Consulting

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What are some practical ways to make your recommendations actionable?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 Align with client goals

2 Use the SMART framework

3 Provide a roadmap

4 Anticipate challenges

5 Follow up and support

6 Here’s what else to consider

Consulting

Rate this article

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