Subject Matter Experts: Do We Know How to Use Them in Consulting?

This article will address some common pitfalls by consulting firms in the way in which they utilize SMEs and integrate them into the overall service to their clients and also offer some suggestions on how consulting firms can make optimal use of SMEs by attending to value-driven practices that embrace respect, integrity, responsibility, unity and service.

Some Common Pitfalls
Success as measured by past performances and contract awards is difficult to argue with and many consulting firms have been successful and may feel content with the way they use their SMEs in achieving awards. However, the changing environment in which consulting firms are now entering and competing for work cannot be lead entirely by past ways of doing business, especially where the needs and service environments are becoming more sophisticated and complex. One example of a new environment where SMEs are gaining prominence is in the new expanding market of health care.

The health care arena is continuing to change and rapidly becoming an increasing sophisticated and complex environment that demands and requires SMEs who possess domain specific knowledge and experience in working in the field. Some in consulting may be tempted to assert that the current approach to the health care market is to seek and secure contracts by emphasizing a strategic and management consulting model with the added value of SMEs.

By simply offering SMEs with knowledge and experience as a part of the qualifications or "quals" for performing the work, there is an appearance of raising the standard of performance. However, what can happen is that the role of the SME is restricted by managers and executives responsible for the strategic and management model and the level of value-added performance of the SME is constricted or even muted. When SMEs are presented in the qualifications, there is temptation to underestimate their value. In addition, SMEs are expensive, so their engagement may be reduced either in the actual proposal or when the work is implemented based on budgetary concerns and cost savings. I

In the past, the roles, duties and functions of the SME can remain at a level of the "quals" and the award win. The risk to the client and the consulting firm is that the impact of the SME is diminished. This is a misguided approach, at best, and dismissive and prejudicial, at worse. In fact, many SMEs possess skills and experience that can contribute on multiple levels in the consulting engagement including, but not limited to overall strategy, planning and management.

Often clients become frustrated and disappointed by the SME capability offering as reflected in the proposal or statement of work and what they actually receive. That is a risk to consulting firms who seek to win work based on a model that relegates SMEs to a restricted value-adding role and without full engagement by SMEs. When SMEs are defined and utilized in a restricted way the outcome can result in deterioration of morale, frustration, disunity, and feelings of lack of respect for SMEs.

If consulting firms are to be innovative and resilient, they must undergo a paradigm shift from old ways to new ways of doing business and in their service delivery to clients. Embracing values is critically important. There must be respect for the SME's expertise, integrity whereby the SME is fully integrated into proposal development and implementation of the work, unity of purpose where the SME is included as a valued member of the team and not just an add-on, responsibility that is shared by the consulting firm and the SME, and service that is driven by engaging the SME fully in all aspects of the work from strategy and planning to management and implementation.

Lack of Integration means Diminished Optimization and Performance
Clients of consulting firms may see the SME as integral to the mission and responsive to their needs, but they, too, may be defining the role and expectation of the SME in a narrow and restricted way. There are several potential reasons for this occurring. The client may feel that they exclusively possess the subject the matter expertise and that the role of the consultant SME is strictly to perform task assignments which they alone have identified.

However, there is a risk that by not expanding the role of the SME consultant to engage with the client in higher order thinking about the actual methods and procedures to be employed to address problems there may be risk of diminished impact and even poor performance outcomes. This is especially true in sophisticated and complex environments that are confronting change. One example of a sophisticated and complex environment that is being challenged to undergo change is health care.

Our health care delivery systems are being challenged to be cost effective and responsive to increased demands while at the same time preserving the highest standards associated with quality of care. Creative solutions are needed. To engage in problem solving around these issues and fostering creativity, clients and consultants must engage fully. On the consulting side, offering SMEs with knowledge and experience working in health care who can sit alongside the client as they consider new ways of delivering services can be important and truly value adding.

Clients must be prepared to expand their notion about their own subject matter expertise and allow for colleagues who work as SMEs in consulting to contribute to their thinking. In turn, consulting managers and executives need to consider how they include their SMEs as "client facing" and assuming leadership in the initiative. It would seem that the challenge for effectively engaging SMEs into the work of the client requires both clients and consultants to consider new ways of conducting their work together. Focusing on unity can be important to this process.

When SMEs are not fully engaged with the client and relegated to operate "behind the scene" there is a risk that the SME's real impact is watered downed or, worst of all, dismissed by consulting managers and executives before even being offered to the client. There can be an interesting dynamic when consultants armed with expertise in strategy, management, and technology incorporate SMEs into the mix when serving clients.

SMEs can represent an important link in this dynamic by bridging communications and elevating the nature of the conversation around problem solving and client needs. Clients expect knowledge and experience from their consultants and consultants need to be able to communicate their capability offerings in understandable ways to clients. When the challenge demands creativity about forging a new path, it is critical that communications be comprehensible, understandable and at a level that reflects substantive knowledge and expertise. The SME can provide that important communication link. It is here that the SME consultant can be instrumental in not only bridging communications, but help in conceptualizing the problem and work in service of identifying effective and implementable solutions.

Need for a Paradigm Shift
Change is needed in the way SMEs engage in the work of consulting. Consulting firms have an obligation to consider how they work in the service of clients who operate in sophisticated and complex environments. It is tied to their integrity and their service offerings. The SME represents an important ingredient in responding to this service need. It requires a paradigm shift from old practices and approaches to new ones.

Executives and managers of consulting firms, SMEs, and clients need to be engaged in this work and all have responsibilities for fostering a shift to new ways of doing business. Fundamentally, consulting firms, SMEs, and clients must focus on such principles as respect, integrity, responsibility, service and unity as they engage together. How is this done? It begins with each addressing their responsibilities.

Consulting Firm's Responsibilities
Consulting firms need to address the weaknesses or pitfalls associated with old ways of engaging in SME their work with them. SMEs need to be identified as not only possessing specialty knowledge and experience, but how they can be engaged in other ways in advancing the consulting work by considering how to expand their roles and functions. This requires an understanding of the client's environment and the range and scope of what the SME can offer to the engagement. Their role and function within the consulting firm and how they engage in client work is critical.

SME consultants should not be viewed as a "hybrid" and/or as having a narrowly defined role or function in their work on behalf of the client. SMEs should be valued and included in the work that begins with market analysis, proposal review and development and the implementation of the work. Within the consulting firm's organization, this may require that SMEs be given rank and status alongside executives and senior managers that take into account their training and experience.

This can represent the greatest challenge for consulting firms with established organizational structures and the paths for achieving leadership positions within the firm. Most SMEs with experience have held comparable positions in their specialty area directing and administering/managing programs and departments. Consulting firms need to be prepared to incorporate this kind of expertise into the leadership of their organization.

This, too, represents a change in the way most firms work to integrate new personnel. The consulting firm should be prepared to mentor where necessary SMEs who are entering a new career in consulting. This can be achieved by experienced executives and senior managers who themselves may have functioned as an SME. If the consulting firm does not have such experience then they need to develop a plan of integration that reflects the issues related to how SMEs with established careers and experience are treated and assimilated into the organization. They may need to create a new enterprise within the firm and practice their commitment to growth and development that results in change.

It is unlikely that orientation programs conducted for junior level staff and managers will be sufficient for on-boarding SMEs, especially those with extensive professional experience. A period of mentoring with senior executives is likely to achieve the best results. It is certainly an investment to do so. It also avoids costly turn over and attrition that consulting firms experience when SMEs depart after a relatively short time due to frustration, impatience and lack of integration into the consulting work.

Some might say that the first step in recruitment of SMEs is to be able to clearly describe the process the SME will experience in regard to firm's consulting work. Such orientation and training are best done by those with knowledge and expertise as consulting SMEs. It is also good practice to consider how best to orient and assimilate SMEs into the structure of the consulting firm. Clients who are confronting difficult and complex problems are eager to engage the best capabilities into their work, but the engagement of SMEs must be more than just in name and "quals," but in the actual work of coming up with solutions and solving problems. The sooner the SME is client facing and oriented to the consulting process, the better the outcome for the client.

Consulting firms need to recognize that SMEs need to engage with their colleagues in their specialty field by attending professional conferences where up to date research and practices are addressed. In the health care arena, this may require that the SME be supported by the firm in maintaining licensure requirements by participating in continued education programs and attending conference to stay up to date in their field of practice and engage in professional networking.

Many clinicians who move into consulting do not want to abandon practice all together. Consulting firms may need to address this interest by pursuing contract work where those opportunities exist or establishing avenues whereby SMEs can engage in volunteer services in their respective area of practice. To offer and/or sponsor such service initiatives for their SMEs exemplifies value driven practices.

The Consulting SME's Responsibilities
SMEs have a responsibility to be knowledgeable of the role and function as a consultant. This requires that the SME understands his/her role change from that of their past role that likely was in the client's environment. For those SMEs new to consulting this can represent a challenge. It may be easy for the consulting SME to assume roles within the client's organization and even adopt the client's perspective of them in their organization emphasizing their being an embedded service offering responding to program tasks. The consultant SME needs to be prepared for their new role as trusted colleague serving as a consultant to the client.

To do so requires communicating clearly with the client and, perhaps, even educating the client about their role and function as a SME consultant. It also requires consummate respect for the client and responsibility for working as a member of consulting team in responding to the client's needs. It necessitates the need for SME consultants to reflect on the role change and demonstrate it in their behavior.

SME consultants are not usually operating alone, but in concert with a team that are offering a range of capabilities and services. Consultant SMEs can assume leadership, but they may also need to be prepared to work as a colleague/team member. It requires that the consultant SME engage with the consulting team as a collaborator and sometimes reframing their role and function for the benefit of their consulting colleagues and the client. It may even require the SME consultant model this behavior in circumstances where they delegate to other team members the task of responding to a demand that can be appropriately fulfilled by someone without the training and experience of the SME.

For those new to consulting, SMEs must receive orientation and mentoring from experienced SMEs and executives in the firm. SMEs also have a responsibility to reach out to senior managers and executives in regard to all aspects of their new role in consulting. This exchange within the firm's organization will be invaluable, elevate the engagement, shows respect and integrity, and, importantly, promotes unity. Consulting SMEs also have a responsibility to be fully acquainted with the mission, goals and services of the client and, most importantly, with the need of the client as articulated by their request for consulting services and their statement of work.

Consulting SMEs need to stay abreast with developments in their professional area and participate in annual conferences where current research and practices are shared. A significant feature of this engagement at conferences and professional meetings is to report back to their clients and the firm's executives, managers and team members what they have learned.

The Client's Responsibilities
Clients have to consider the role of the SME in a different light. True partnership that is genuinely value adding necessitates that the client is not bound by a narrow definition mandating a constricted role for the SME. It requires considering the consulting SME as a trusted colleague in the role of consultant and advisor. Such a relationship does not mandate a subservient role or lessening of function. If the consulting SME is respected and trusted to engage and perform on behalf of the client's goals all restrictions are self imposed and only serve to reduce the opportunity for full engagement in finding solutions, implementing new practices and successfully achieving goals.

Clients have an obligation and responsibility to engage with consulting SMEs without an attitude of superiority or competitiveness. The client should be secure in their position and leadership without imposing artificial barriers to the true exchange of ideas, concepts and methodologies that may advance goals. Similarly, the client has a responsibility to avoid adopting the position that the added value component of having a consulting SME is to merely represent an extension of their existing service.

Clients need to avoid thinking of the consulting SME as just another member of their organization that needs to be managed and included into program task orders. Clients should adopt approaches that are inclusive for the SME to engage with them in executive sessions around mission implementation and where the SME's expertise can be shared. Clients must insist, if not, demand that SMEs be identified in the work, that they meet their expectation in regard to appropriate training and experience, and that they will have unencumbered access to them.

Conclusions
In responding to the challenge confronting consulting firms who are relying more and more on SMEs in serving their clients, it is important to comprehend the nature and complexity of the client's environment and the problems they confront. To do so requires that common pitfalls by consulting firms in the utilization of SMEs be avoided. It requires a paradigm shift from old practices, methods and approaches in service offerings to new ones.

Active reflection on and implementation of values of respect, integrity, unity, responsibility and service can be foundational to the optimal use of SMEs in consulting. Consulting firms, SMEs, and clients have responsibilities for making the necessary changes in their perceptions and attitudes about their roles and functions to optimize their engagement with one another to allow for new and innovative solutions to problems.

To optimize the contributions of SMEs in consulting requires that new approaches be demonstrated and employed in service to clients. By emphasizing and practicing their principles or values consulting firms, SMEs and clients can engage in the paradigm shift necessary to optimize the performance of SMEs in complex environments and thus demonstrate that we in consulting, indeed, know how to use them.

James M. Schear, Ph.D. is a Clinical and Research Neuropsychologist who has worked as a subject matter expert in a variety of consulting settings. He has served as an educator, researcher, and health service provider for more than thirty years. The optimal utilization of the subject matter expert in consulting has become one of his passions in his own work as an independent consultant. He can be reached at jamesmschear@gmail.com.