On Hiring a Consultant to Manage an Agency Restructuring Project
This case study demonstrates multi-voting techniques used in the search and selection of a consultant to manage the re-engineering of an agency’s case management services. While the names and places were fictitious, the information presented closely followed the results of an actual restructuring of human services.
We will again turn to our hypothetical Midwest County whose case management services involve 650 caseworkers. With the managerial guidance of the County’s administrator, the consultant, Public Service Advisors LLC, performed beyond the expectations of Midwest’s Board of Directors. As managers of the County’s restructuring effort, the consultant earned phrases, be it the transparency in all proceedings, the completeness of documentation, the thoroughness of communication, the minimal interruption of staff time, the close adherence to the project’s budget and the timeliness of project completion.
Statement of Work. Ernie Gumban, the administrator has had experience as manager of a cross-functional re-structuring project. While continuous improvement has been an operational mantra for Midwest County, he believes that a project like this will blur the hard delineation between service areas. With the assistance of Lamar Smith, assistant administrator, Ernie after short conferences with each program manager, drafted the project’s Statement of Work. This two-page document received approval from the Board of Directors. The Statement of Work is a high-level description of the business case, scope, consultant skill requirements, data security and deliverables designed to complete an RFI package sent to all potential consultants.
Internet Search. Lamar canvassed Midwest’s senior managers and searched the internet for names and contact information of consultant and consultant groups. With the statement of work on hand, he proceeded to verify their capability and interest. Of the seventeen consulting entities that have confirmed skills, eight expressed interest in managing the project for a non-profit agency, returned proposals and named a representative for on-site interviews. These were the Fortrex Group, Johnson Roberts, Leading Edge, Public Agency Advisors, Public Knowledge, Public Shares, Service Programatix and Social Service Solutions.
Consultant Evaluation Worksheet. Lamar Smith formed a group to evaluate the candidates during and after the interview. Each of the five members represented a service area. Guided by the Work Statement, the 40-minute session using the nominal group technique (NGT) began by brainstorming questions to ask the interviewee. Group members gave question statements on a round-robin succession until everybody declared a “pass” as ideas ran out. The only discussions allowed were clarifying questions to the originator of the question.
Flip charts displayed eighteen questions generated from the brainstorming session. These were reduced to a more manageable six following the N/3 multi-voting technique. Each of the five group members was given six distinct colored stickers to be placed as votes near the questions of choice. Questions receiving three or fewer votes were crossed out. The process was repeated four times until there were only six questions remaining. The importance of each question was calculated to percent weight from the number of votes received relative to all votes.
Eight consulting entities came in for the interview and were evaluated using the evaluation worksheet. The table above exhibits the six questions each member of the evaluating group concurred upon. It also shows, as seen in the righthand column of the table, an interview rating of 9.2 given by the assistant administrator to Public Agency Advisors.
This table summarizes the scores given to the eight interviewees by each of the members of Midwest’s consultant selection group.
Finalist Interview. The consultant selection group concurred with the evaluation worksheet and asked Public Agency Advisors, Fortrex Group and Service Programatix to return for the final interview. Having learned more about agency re-structuring from the first round of interviews, the selection group sought to have a more detailed and comprehensive set of questionnaires in the final round. Lamar arranged for another 40-minute NGT and N/3 sessions as that in the first round. The result was as shown in the following table.
Conclusion. The search and selection process using multi-voting techniques led to the engagement of Public Agency Advisors as project manager of Midwest County’s social service re-structuring. Before a public service contract was executed between the parties, Ernie and Lamar contacted several references provided by the prospective consultant. The contacts were recorded and archived along with all notes and data generated during the search process. A Due Diligence document was drafted and sent to the Board for final approval.
By Mgmtlaboratory.com staff. 2020