From the Lecture Hall: The Consulting Mindset for Project Success

What if the secret to elevating your project management skills isn't found in a new methodology or software, but in adopting a different mindset?

This week I had the opportunity to be a guest lecturer at my former colleague and good friend Jessica Ferrell’s Portland State University (PSU) course in the School of Business.

The topic: Bringing a consulting mindset to project management.

Here's the truth: any great project manager is inherently consultative, and any great consultant can adeptly manage projects. Why? Because both roles demand deep listening, assessing gaps, building a strategic plan, facilitating solutions-focused dialogue, narrowing priorities, and shepherding people to action on a timeline. Whether we're tackling creative endeavors or complex technical projects, these skills are non-negotiable.

To illuminate this, I pulled back the curtain on our business, sharing insights into our operations. We discussed how our team handles internal and client kickoffs, the mindset we cultivate for solving client problems, practical tips for showing up like a great consultant, and how we measure our success.

At its heart, a consulting mindset is built on core principles like curiosity, openness, a commitment to continuous learning, expert facilitation, and the ability to frame challenges effectively.

The students had insightful questions, and their curiosity truly highlighted the practical challenges and opportunities in the field. Here's what they wanted to know:

Q: How do you assemble teams for consulting projects?

A: When we’re talking to clients about their challenges and needs, we’re listening for three key elements: skill, personality, and culture. If a program needs structure, direction, and leadership at a fast pace in a big startup, we’d look for talent who has program management chops, can navigate ambiguity, and knows how to wrangle stakeholders to move toward a shared goal. When we’re organizing bigger teams, we’re also thinking about how the team will work effectively together. We then facilitate internal teaming sessions and client kickoffs to get everyone gelling together. 

Q: How do you manage cultural differences with teams located around the world?

A: You can really smooth out collaboration and engagement outcomes with some upfront teaming, alignment, and kickoff sessions. It’s best to understand your teammates’ styles, personalities, favorite tools, trust builders and breakers, and ways they like to give and receive feedback before it gets challenging. If there are big potential cultural differences, sometimes it’s valuable to ask a trusted stakeholder how you can be most respectful of cultural differences so that you’re finding ways to work with those nuances. As a consultant, we often spend some time observing the dynamics in the room to identify tactical ways to move teams toward clearer communication, better collaboration, and ultimately meaningful outcomes.

Q: How does a project management consultant play the role of the “translator?”

A: As consultants we need to versed in many different languages and styles to be able to connect people, ideas, needs across organizations, functions, teams, and levels. The way an business leader speaks is often different from engineering, creative, vendor teams. Knowing the translation and being able to synthesize the work and key messages into language that everyone can understand and action is key.

A project manager must also be able to translate the vision of a leader into measurable goals into tangible requirements into a clear roadmap for delivery into team tasks to action and so on. It’s about taking a kernel of an idea and bridging it to the results mapping each step along the journey to help others go on the adventure.

Q: What are some ways that you document delivery and outputs for quantifiable results?

A: There’s different types of documentation all along the client lifecycle. At the onset we will document what we heard and our approach in the proposal process. When we kick off an engagement, we will document a more detailed timeline for the engagement and what success looks like to ensure we have aligned expectations, after meetings we’ll send follow up emails with decisions and action items, at regular intervals we’ll also send status updates to maintain a shared understanding and visibility of our progress so that we’re being proactive about risks, concerns, roadblocks, and issues before they arise. Over the course of the engagement, we’re writing a narrative or story of our delivery.

Q: How does storytelling play a role in project management?

A: Storytelling is often considered to be primarily a marketing or branding skill; however, I think it’s everything we do in business and leadership. Whether it’s a business strategy, a project plan, a product roadmap, or a status update, we can bring the tenants of storytelling to those deliverables. We need to help our audiences understand where we’ve been, where we’re going, what we’ve learned, how we’ll get there, and what happens when we arrive — and that’s a story. Knowing how to formulate those pieces in a way that’s visual, clear, interesting, and concise is the mark of a great leader.

Q: How do you manage change resistance within an organization?

A: Well, that depends on where the change resistance is coming from. If leaders are driving change but employees are resistant to adoption, we'd start with empathy mapping. This involves creating personas to understand their perspective and identify the most resonant ways to communicate. Once we grasp what they need to feel comfortable, bought in, and engaged, we build strategic and tactical plans to address that specific resistance.

If, however, we're providing strategic guidance and the leader or buyer of the engagement is resistant to our recommendations, the approach shifts. Here, it's largely about building a powerful business case. We aim to provide enough data points and insights to persuasively demonstrate that our guidance is in their best interest. That said, as consultants, sometimes we must offer our best advice and then let go of the ultimate outcomes. Ultimately, the business is accountable for its own decisions and actions.

Q: How do you manage conflict when issues arise on a project?

A: Our first goal is always to diffuse the situation for which there are many tactics. We’re big fans of Chris Voss’ MasterClass on negotiation where he talks about the importance of naming emotions, giving a client a chance to say no, and mirroring to diffuse a situation. Next, we want to move clients out of the problem to a solution by identifying an option for a path forward, aligning on that, and actioning it. Whenever there’s conflict on a project, there’s an opportunity to relieve the frustration, realign expectations, clarify roles, rebuild trust, and grow a deeper, stronger relationship. Many of the strongest business relationships are built through challenging projects. Yet, our goal with upfront clarity, structure, teaming, kickoff, and communication is to prevent conflict from ever arising.

Q: How is artificial intelligence (AI) changing project management and consulting?

A: Right now consulting firms are focused on helping clients implement AI data solutions, policies, best practices, and technologies to modernize their systems and workforces. They’re selling process optimization, training, data remediation, and program management solutions. Internally, they’re also evaluating how they can evolve their data engineering teams and entry-level positions with AI.

You may have seen the posts circulating on LinkedIn about the skillsets for 2030. There’s going to be a higher demand for strategic, creative, empathetic, leadership thinking as we adopt technologies that make some of the more remedial, repeatable tasks easier and faster. My guidance to you is to learn how to use AI like it’s a tool in your toolbox like anything else — Google Workspace, Figma, etc.

Q: How do I get into consulting?

A: One big false belief is that you need many years in your career or industry to get into consulting. Truth is, you need to know how to act like a consultant and that begins with mindset. A consulting mindset begins with empathy and curiosity to uncover challenges and assumptions, an ability to create frames and conditions for people to ideate and solve problems, a resourcefulness to connect research, ideas, people, and concepts so that you can move people from point A to B with decisions, milestones, and path clearing along the way. You can learn to do this coming out of college. 

Another big false belief is that consulting is just giving ideas and advice for an hourly rate. Sure, there is some of that in consulting. Yet, the best consulting is problem solving in ways that are tangible with real deliverables, rolling up our sleeves, getting things done in a way that creates value and impact for the client.

I always love finding a way to lay out the ladder for the next generation of talent. Taking time to spend with students eager to learn, grow, be successful in this new era of business is a joy.

Big thanks to Jessica Ferrel and PSU for having me in class!