What if the brand consultant worked inside your team, not above it?

My new Guide-Coach-Enabler service is based on all that, and it came about almost by accident. I’ve had a great client for the past six years: we’ve worked through a major repositioning, a merger, a visual re-identification, architecture, culture, naming – all according to the traditional project-based consulting structure. But earlier this year the client’s needs and requests became more granular, varied, and continuous to be packaged as discrete projects, and we started a different kind of relationship where I’d work directly with their teams as an embedded colleague: meet regularly, once or twice a week, interpreting needs, uncovering dependencies that only their in-house knowledge can see, a common chat and a LinkedIn group, planning work breadth and depth together, bringing to bear relevant parts of my online course and its case histories, assigning and reviewing work, then finalizing and codifying - all at their pace and schedule, and on their executive managers’ radar. The team hums along in unison, continuously improves/gains skills, the work gets done, and the cumulative effect yields real and lasting value. And, importantly, all at a highly reasonable retainer fee.

Three months into it, I’ve identified six key traits of a successful relationship of this type.

1.     Executive guidance and support. Trust at and in the CMO level is indispensable, as the team feel understood, supported, and protected – and all based on a shared understanding of direction that gives the work coherence and authority.

2.     Efficiency & Effectiveness. No operational obstacles like procurement cycles, project kick-off delays, and multiple onboardings, yielding a frictionless and organic relationship: the work fits into how the team operates, and in the context of everything else.

3.     Granularity. This working model eliminates the typical Big Things Are Done and Small Things Are Ignored syndrome, catching and considering everything before anything problematic can compound.

4.     Focused Direction. Everything is directionally aligned, as one hand knows what all other hands are doing and what are the opportunities and dependencies: this yield no deviations in intent, and ‘Brand’ doesn’t contradict at the edges while it's being built at the center.

5.     Openness and team trust. The format equalizes every member of the team and part of the responsibility is lifted from them and assigned to the Guide-Coach-Enabler – but in a highly collegial manner.

and finally, what I consider to be the catalyst of it – and my personal contribution:

6.     experienced knowledge in a way that transfers: not lectures and reports, but the sharing of a way of thinking borne of extensive experience in the form of perspectives and case histories immediately applicable to the matters at hand.