How to Become a Standalone Consultant

You need to become a standalone consultant. At some point, you will hear these words from your leadership. But what exactly does it mean?

It starts happening when you are not a newbie anymore.

You have a few projects under your belt. You understand what is required from you. You can produce decent outputs.

But, you still find it challenging to drive your own workstream.

You rely on inputs from your managers and partners. Often, you are unsure what to do next. What decisions to make? What quality of outputs is acceptable?

Leadership starts pushing you to become more standalone, exert more ownership, and drive your workstream independently.

You want to do that, but it's not clear how.

Like anything in consulting, the requirements are vague.

There is no clear manual on how to do that, leaving many consultants unsure of where to start.

In fact, being a standalone consultant requires orchestrating multiple skills.

For example, problem-solving, workstream management, and communication. It will require applying certain mindset tricks.

Let's unpack this in a structured way.

A Typical Misconception

A common mistake is to believe consultants must come up with a perfect answer independently.

After all, this is what superstar consultants do, right?

They produce perfect outputs with no or little leadership input. That must be it.

You try to copy superstars and get sorely disappointed that you can’t quite do that yet. You get overwhelmed with the complexity.

The trick here is that these superstars went through their own journey.

What you witness is the culmination of their mistakes and learnings. That is why merely imitating them won't work.

What Does It Mean To Be A Standalone?

Ultimately, being a standalone means taking full responsibility for solving problems.

But it doesn’t mean that you should do everything yourself.

Put yourself in the shoes of your leadership.

They are extremely busy, exhausted, and fragmented. They have dozens of critical issues on their minds.

It is critical for leadership to offload their mental capacity.

What they really crave is to have consultants who can manage their own problems, make non-critical decisions independently, and actively engage leadership only in critical issues.

They highlight potential risks, remind about important meetings, and clarify priorities.

They think in advance what needs to happen in the next few weeks.

An excellent analogy is a self-guided missile. Aim, launch, and forget.

Consultants who can identify the target, correct the course, if needed, do the necessary work, and hit it.

Let's consider two scenarios to better understand what it means in practice. In these scenarios, let's assume you are a consultant and I am a project manager.

First Scenario

In the first scenario, I give you a task to create a simple slide.

You'll need a few hours to do that. Your mind is preoccupied with how to execute this task. You can’t do anything else, especially if I put a time box for your task. You are in reactive mode.

Meanwhile, whatever I asked you to do is already in the rearview mirror for me, a thing of the past.

I am already thinking about what should be next, and I have time to think about it while you prepare the slide.

So, when you come back, I'll be ready to assign you the following tasks.

The cycle repeats: Managers generate new tasks, and consultants execute them.

When consultants get asked what to do next, they have no idea. They never thought about it.

That is why they struggle to get ahead in the thinking process.

I used to think that my managers were geniuses.

They immediately saw the tiny gaps in my analysis, came up with brilliant ideas, and always knew what to do next. I just couldn't keep up with their thinking.

But, when I became a manager, I realized it was because of their position and a little more experience.

This scenario is typical for newbies.

But if consultants want to over-perform, they need to turn things around.

Second Scenario

Now, let's imagine a different scenario.

I give you a task.

But you know that merely executing this task will keep you in reactive mode.

You need a breakthrough. One great insight.

You managed to find great insight and created a great output. You showed it to me.

I'm impressed by this content. I haven’t seen it before, so I don't have any prepared next steps and actions.

I may add a few ideas on the go, but the quality of that thinking is generally weaker. You should be able to predict these points and have relevant answers.

You prepared suggestions for what to do next and explained why they are important. I hear them out, and they make a lot of sense.

Then I bless you for doing your work. My confidence in your judgment and ability to drive this workstream increases.

As a manager, I am excited to bring this excellent content to clients and leadership.

It helps me create positive momentum for the whole project. Suddenly, you become a hero who saves the whole team.

If you continue doing this, I start trusting you more and more.

After some time, I'll let you drive your own workstream and speak directly to clients and partners.

But, this change doesn’t happen overnight.

You need to practice and experiment. At first, you get this right once or twice per project. Then, later, the more you practice, the more quickly it becomes fluent.

Behind Or Ahead

Whenever I started a new project, I had a litmus test for myself:

Am I behind or ahead of my manager?

If I got ahead of my manager, I would expect to receive a 'Above Average' rating. If not, then I would receive an 'Average' rating.

I kept asking this question myself throughout the project's full duration. On average, it took me 3-4 weeks to get ahead of my manager.

It is not easy in the beginning.

For the first few weeks, the entire team experiences chaos. We don't know the client, and we don't have the data. It feels awkward for everyone.

Managers are more experienced and have a bigger-picture view. In these circumstances, getting ahead of them is challenging.

Then, when I delved deeper into the content, I gained an advantage. I focused on content, sought new insights, and built stronger client relationships.

Managers typically can't spend as much time on this as I could.

Once this happens, you can become a leader of your workstream and drive it with high conviction.

This approach also helped me stay highly motivated. I realized I didn't enjoy people telling me what to do.

So, instead, I always tried to own every problem fully. I would tell what I planned to do and why it was necessary. Any input and suggestions were welcomed, but this was still my action plan.

Tips And Tricks

There are some practical tips and tricks on how to start being a standalone consultant.

Extreme Ownership

One of my favorite books is Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. A former Navy Seals commander explains the leadership principles that Navy Seals employ.

The main idea of this book is that you need to hold yourself responsible for everything you do.

Even in reality, it may not be the case. Many things can happen that are outside of your control. But it is still a very powerful mindset to have.

It becomes especially visible when people take ownership of their problems. This is very attractive and inspiring behavior.

This approach made a lot of sense to me and worked well. I highly recommend reading this book, especially for young consultants. You will find many parallels between consulting and how Navy Seals operate.

Clear Priorities

Defining and owning your priorities is an important element of being standalone.

Clarifying what is important and why will help you communicate it to your leadership.

If leaders see that you can define your own priorities and know what is important, they will trust you more.

Proactive Communication

When you have your priorities set, it is critical to proactively communicate them.

I tried to prevent my managers from asking me what I was doing. I made sure that they always were informed well in advance.

I didn't want people to come to me randomly and ask what I was doing, catching me off guard. I wanted to do it on my terms when I was best prepared.

When you are a junior and just learning the ropes, it is helpful to think of your time as blocks of 3-4 hours. Think regularly about whether your managers know what you are doing. If not, then find an opportunity to update them.

I seized every opportunity to communicate my priorities, including during team lunches, dinners, commutes to the hotel, Slack messages, and anything else.

You can do a short SitRep (situation report) in any situation, and managers will appreciate that.

Later, when your leaders trust you more, these time blocks will increase from hours to days.

I learned to predict when my leaders started wondering about what was happening. I would give my timely update just before they asked me anything.

This communication trick will show that you fully control your workstream. It contributes to the effect of being a standalone consultant.

When I teach my mentees, I suggest a simple test: If their leadership asks them what they are doing, they are under-communicating.

Solutions Instead Problems

Another hygiene mindset trick is to come to leaders with solutions, not problems.

Consider the options available to you. And what option is the best and why? What specific help do you need to make it happen? Always have your own opinion and perspective.

In my teams, I forbid consultants from coming up with open-ended questions asking what they should do. Instead, they should come up with their own action plans so that they can own and execute them.

Deliverables-Oriented Approach

Another big problem is that junior consultants tend to over-index on process management.

That’s understandable. It is easy to do compared to creating quality content. Naturally, people gravitate to whatever they can do better.

They even convince themselves that this process's work is really important, only to get disappointed later and learn that nobody cares about the process until it is broken.

Consultants must have the discipline to work with a deliverables-oriented approach. Any work should result in some form of deliverable. Always think about what outputs you are delivering today.

If your work doesn't contribute to any deliverables, it is probably unimportant.

You might ask how to focus on deliverables when bombarded with dozens of process tasks. Good question. That is when you will need to prioritize fiercely.

You won't be able to do everything. It is not possible by default. Read the Master Prioritization post to learn more about it.

Closing Thoughts

Being standalone is a complex skill requiring orchestrating multiple practices and mindset tricks. You must understand individual components and practice sequencing them.

It is hard to start doing it, especially for junior colleagues. But it is a necessary skill to become truly successful.

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P.S.

I feel your pain.

As a consultant, I struggled to perform and faced an impossible situation with extremely high expectations and minimal support.

My life turned into relentless stress, pain, and anxiety. But I always suspected that there should be a better way.

All that pain was not necessary with the right support.

Nine years later, I designed the coaching program I desperately needed back then. Its sole focus is helping you excel and achieve high performance.

Only then can you build strong sponsorships, find great projects, and become confident.

If you are an MBB consultant and want to achieve high performance, please
Book a 1-1 Discovery Session.

Learn more about the Hero Journey coaching program.

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