When learning about how to be a consultant on our second day at the Data school, we learned that sometimes toddlers do know best when it comes to getting the real answer to a question. Toddlers are also at the forefront of understanding the relationship between a consultant and a client.
When you think of getting to the bottom of a problem, you often think that the older you are, the more you know. However, sometimes to get to the actual root of what the client is asking for, you have to ask ‘Why?’.
If a client says, “I want you to produce a dashboard on X.”
You have to take a step back and ask, “Okay, why do you want a dashboard about X?”
The client will then respond saying “I want a dashboard about X, so I can test for Y.”
To which you respond “Why are you testing for Y?”
And you keep repeating this until the client gets to the actual answer about what they want. So that you can truly understand what they want, and you can deliver quickly on the task they set.
We were also told about a children's book called ‘A Monkey and a Butterfly’ in which a monkey (the client) has lost his mum, and he keeps using very vague descriptions of what she looks like so the butterfly (the consultant), can help find other animals that match these descriptions, but the butterfly does not know all the information. As the monkey is revealing a bit more every time, the butterfly finds a new animal. The monkey finally says “None of these creatures look like me!” To which the butterfly replies “You never told me she looks like you!”
This is also true for client-consultant relationships. The client will never get what they truly want if they assume the consultant knows what they want.
So, for both consultants and clients, sometimes it's just best to be like a toddler.