Our seventh year, and still no itch!

As PiC enters its seventh year, I’m putting together content for our face-to-face event where I intend to reflect on where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we might be heading and it's a nice thing to look back and reflect…   

When we started PiC in 2018, it was founded on an ethos and a set of principles that, pleasingly, remain with us today. From a personal point of view, my co-founder Dave Jepson and I were both energised by building something that could last beyond both of us, something that delivers real quality to our customers and something which would make us proud. 

Central to our philosophy is that – as Dave Jepson would put it – the ‘how’ of consulting should be considered equally important as the ‘what’. 

To this end, we developed a ‘house style’ that guides the way we work with customers; we wanted to be easy to do business with and we hoped our customers would reflect on ‘how’ we worked and not just ‘what’ we delivered. We’re not perfect and we continue to learn lessons, but I look back oozing pride at what we have delivered for our customers, how we went about it and the legacy we’ve left beyond the engagement itself. 

A really important element of our offer is that we wanted to keep the cost and value equation front and centre; we wanted to offer outstanding value for money in a market where ‘land and expand’ and ‘sell at all costs’ can sometimes wrongly be front of mind.  

As I said, we continue to learn from each new engagement we do. But, after six years’ hard work here are the principles, I’d suggest to anyone looking to make waves in the consulting world by taking the plunge to set up from scratch. 

Principles to help deliver outstanding value for your customers: 

• Do the basics right - listen hard, update your customer of progress and challenges, and ask your customer how you are doing – the bedrock of a good engagement and I doubt those will ever change. 

• Be curious – don’t just assume what the situation is or what you think your customer needs. Ask questions, dig deeper, be curious around the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’. Most people deliver better work, more efficiently, when they have a greater understanding of the goals and the context in which they’re operating. 

• Focus on the ‘how’ and you’ll never lose a client! – It’s a sweeping statement, but our experience suggests that where most consultancies broadly offer the same mechanics for making change happen, it is ‘how’ change is delivered that drives efficiency, effectiveness, value for money, and a great experience.
• Listen hard to your customer’s needs, bringing genuine flexibility to shape engagements to reflect what is really required, delivering against every promise made and nurturing relationships that are collaborative are all vital components of the ‘how’. 
• Find the right people for each engagement – even the strongest most experienced people must be a good ‘fit’ for the customer, for the situation, for the specific need and for the style demanded at that moment in time. 

….and principles to preserve your sanity! 

• Let go! Crikey, I sometimes find this hard. In our first few months there were 3 or 4 of us that created most of the approaches, processes, tools, techniques etc that PiC used. However, as we’ve grown, I’ve had to let some of those go; and you know what, the next person that picks them up makes then better…  

• Be patient – consulting is about fit and timing, and I have spoken with loads of brilliant people that I’d love to work within the PiC family, and it hasn’t happened… yet. Demand for services isn’t linear, and its shape evolves. That’s all ok. Keep talking to people and things have a habit of working out when the timing is right…  

And finally… 

Running your own business is damned hard. It’s both relentless and rewarding. Time is limiting and, in the end, we’re all judged by the prioritisation decisions we make. 

Doing the right thing for your customers and your people is a guiding principle that has served us well since Dave Jepson and I first mapped out what would become Partners in Change. This, above all else, will continue to be our ‘north star’.