Out Of The Consulting Tunnel & Onto The Trail

It’s tempting as a consultant to view client projects as a tunnel, both the consultant and the client blindly following a set in stone process, a single path, toward the distant light. “Tunnel consulting,” let’s call it, can certainly yield amazing and valuable results – why else would it be the norm?

But in my experience, even when occasionally gratifying, this type of consulting relationship feels deeply inauthentic. Tensions arise when a client doesn’t understand why an activity is being done, or how it’s helping them achieve their original goal. Consultants bend over backward to defend their approach, to retrofit it to a client’s unique situation, to explain why it’s necessary and proven. Clients either get in line or they don’t.

In my 10+ years working as a brand and marketing strategist, I’ve noticed this mindset makes me treat clients like, well, clients and not like the complex, messy, and brilliant humans they are. They are my teachers as much as I am theirs. The tunnel consulting mindset puts both client and consultant in the dark, holding on dearly to the only guidance they have: the process. Both miss out on all the insight and magic and creation that may live just outside the typical scope of work. Both sacrifice a layer of their intuition, ignoring the ideas that emerge along the way to stay on track, to not ruffle feathers, to reach the light.

What would it mean to move away from the tunnel mentality into a more emergent way of working?Perhaps we could imagine it as: trail consulting. When we’re on the trail, we still have a destination in mind (the summit, the swimming hole, the viewpoint) and we have a path to follow to get there. Those things matter because they create a container for collaboration, but importantly, they don’t define the collaboration or limit it. On the trail, obstacles and distractions are welcomed as a part of the journey. The path will get us to our goal, but it is okay if along the way we have to build in more breaks than we realized – the mountain is a lot steeper now that we’re on it! It’s okay if we go off-trail for part or all of our ascent – perhaps the summit never really was our destination. It’s okay if, together, the consultant and the client decide that a new endpoint has emerged along the way.

At no point is any one in the dark.

Central to “trail consulting” is trust in our own expertise and in ourselves to bring that perspective in a variety of different settings. I’m not recommending having no process to go on, but rather to hold that process loosely and trust that our expert instincts will help us reach the destination together – whether it is the summit we originally had in mind, or a new emergent destination.

I’m still working on what it means to implement this new way of engaging, of holding space and providing expertise while making room for what emerges on the journey. The trail beckons, and on it, there is plenty of space to experiment.