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If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life should be, then maturity is letting go again. – Mary Beth Danielson
In prior posts, “Blood Type of a Consultant“, and “Blood Type of a Contractor“, one of common elements between these two types of external expertise is that they are hired to go away at some point. This is a financial necessity and critical to maintaining a healthy long term relationship.
From the consultant or contractor perspective however, letting go is a very hard thing to do. The process of performing the type of work which consultants and contractors do is intellectually and surprisingly emotionally engaging. Comparisons can easily be drawn between many consulting and contracting engagements and raising children. There is a great deal of the consultant’s soul in the project. They have typically started with a problem, a concept, and sheet of paper, and molded this into a living entity which has a life of its own.
The project will have certainly experienced growing pains along the way, and like any good parent you will have helped the engagement get back on the right path. There will have been may extended “car trips” where people got on everyones nerves, only to come out stronger at the end. The project may have gotten in with a bad crowd or taken some bad turns, but you would have corrected these deviations. At the end of a successful engagement, the rewards are in seeing the fruits of your labor being adopted, value being realized, and your immediate “work with” realizing the benefits which go along with a successful strategic change initiative.
The consultants and contractors will have fulfilled their role. Hired guns. Change makers. Mission accomplished. They now must now leave and allow what they have so carefully nurtured go out into the world and make their own path. It is never easy on successful projects. Easier on less successful projects. Necessary on all projects.
