Brian Curtner, principal of Quadrangle Architects Ltd., says what the consultant he leans on for many areas of business does best is to "draw it out of us."
Headstrong and cash strapped small business owners usually balk at the idea of paying for help from an outside consultant. But as startups evolve into established companies, it is often a necessary evil.
"A lot of companies think they can do it all," said Brian Curtner, principal of Quadrangle Architects Ltd. "They try to do their own consulting work and I don't think they do themselves justice."
Eric Morse, associate dean of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario who comes from a consulting background, also contends small businesses are reluctant to go out and find a consultant despite outside professional advice being an important part of the growth process.
"That time when you can't personally reach out and touch every employee such that they don't have a solid understanding of your vision, your values, that is a standard point when people need to look for advice," said Mr. Morse.
"Successful entrepreneurs are the ones who can make that transition and bring in other people that are having to amplify their message to the people that are working for them."
Ensuring all their employees "get" what their business is all about is certainly top of mind for many entrepreneurs, though rarely is it considered mission critical enough to be worthy of funding. With razor-thin profit margins being the standard for the first few years of any business's existence, sometimes even for the first few decades, few if any can afford the costly expenditure of hiring major consulting firms such as New York-based McKinsey & Company when they do encounter such issues.
"Most small startups obviously can't afford the McKinseys," Mr. Morse said. "They have different issues and different price points, so finding an independent consultancy that has a really good sense of the sector . can be very successful."
That is precisely what Mr. Curtner found two years ago, when his Toronto-based boutique architecture firm reached out to Rowley Mossop, principal of local independent consultancy Innovia Partners Ltd.
Originally looking for some specific advice related to growth, Quadrangle quickly found Mr. Mossop's usefulness to be much broader than expected.
"We started using Rowley primarily to help us with our strategic plan," Mr. Curtner said. "But now he has become such an integral part of our team that he is helping us in a variety of ways, whether it is in training, helping with marketing training, some creative writing, and we did a brand audit and Rowley was part of that team as well."
Intimate understanding of a company, and of the industry in which it operates, is the key to justifying the value of consulting services to smaller firms, Mr. Mossop says.
"Creative businesses are a great deal different from industrial businesses, they work in a completely different way," he said. "If you use an industrial model for managing creative people, you destroy what makes your company special."
Companies come calling to smaller consultancies such as Innovia for a variety of reasons, Mr. Mossop said, not just management expertise or message amplification. Assistance can range from being mergers and acquisition-related to more efficient accounting procedures to something as simple as establishing a secession plan for those veteran entrepreneurs at the end of their careers who are beginning to consider their legacies, he said.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Mr. Mossop also contends smaller businesses, in particular, can maximize the value they get from a consulting experience by looking for independent firms with leadership experience in their own industry.
"Because sometimes you find you can get McKinseylevel insight at a much lower cost from an independent consultant," he said.
Few case studies could exemplify the benefits of the small business-small consultancy strategy than the one between Quadrangle and Innovia. Formally trained as an architect, Mr. Mossop also spent several years in media as a producer for the CBC's The National nightly news program.
"I am probably the only human being alive who has graduated from both OCAD [Ontario College of Art and Design] and from the [Ryerson University] Rotman School of Management where I got my MBA," he joked.
His experience made him ideally suited to help Quadrangle, which is well known for its work designing in-terior office space for media companies. Some of their more recognizable work includes the former CityTV building in downtown Toronto's Queen Street West (since purchased by CTV Inc.), and more recently the new Corus Entertainment headquarters on the city's waterfront.
"What Rowley was able to do better than anybody, and maybe this sounds trite, was to draw it out of us," Mr. Curtner said. "That is really the key. He helped us to say things that we couldn't have articulated ourselves."
Many entrepreneurs might look at the yin-yang match up of Quadrangle and Innovia and think they could never find something as complimentary. But, simply asking for word of mouth recommendations can often lead to the ideal consultant, said Ronen Tal, a business analyst at Innovia.
"Looking to your own network of colleagues, clients and acquaintances is an excellent starting point," he said. "There is frequently a wider variety of experts there than one would ever expect to find."
The bottom line is great ideas make for great startups, but great companies require something more. And those great startups who think they can become great companies without any help from outside their own walls are risking the very lifeblood of their business, Mr. Mossop argues.
"In my experience, those are the ones that fail."
Thanks to Peter J. Thompson / National Post
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