Every consultant begins with reconstructing themselves – Mykhailo Alperovych

During the war, some tectonic changes of the paradigm of the profession of consultant happen

Mykhailo Alperovych – the Vice President of CMC-Ukraine, management consultant with about 30 years of experience.

In 2014, Intron consulting company, founded by Mykhailo, stopped working in Donetsk. He managed to fully restore the volume of the consulting practice by 2022 in Kyiv. He had to abandon the business and home for the second time due to the military actions of russian occupants, this time in Kyiv region. Since the first months of the war, Mykhailo Alperovych has been actively involved in projects on support and recovery of Ukrainian business.

Our conversation is about consultants and the market of management consulting of the wartime.

• What 2022 was like for you, what did it teach you?

- Values, principles – these are the things which were subjected to the biggest challenges.

Non-toxicity of partners, suppliers, customers, beneficiaries was added, or, more precisely, it became more important. Almost all the people of business have lost their strategic focus: to leave or to stay, what to do with assets – sell, leave, preserve, move, continue using... What to do with suppliers, with customers, with debts, with remnants of products, with the staff? And just in general – what to do?!

My war continues for a long time, but in February last year its acute phase began.

In 2014 it was difficult to decide whether to return to Donetsk or not. I came to finally understand that there would be no return after the events in Illovaisk and Debaltsevo. It took me almost the whole year to fulfil my obligations to customers and employees. I started to establish practice in Kyiv: I found new clients, equipped the office, picked and trained employees.

The decision of temporary relocation was made really quickly in 2022, since it was already trained. We were not even considering the options of not returning – we have to win.

• It would seem that it would not be appropriate to think about consulting in such difficult times. However, you are one of those people who have raised the question: “How to maintain the market and save the profession of management consultant in Ukraine?”

- We have dealt with this task quite well. The proof of that would be the fact of preserving and restarting the CMC-Ukraine community during wartime in 2022. Consultants also suffered the loss of strategic focus and were faced with a great number of defining questions – whether to leave or stay, what is the current state of affairs with old customers and where and how to search for new customers?

And the most important – what should be done for customers, how is it possible to help them?

Looking back at nine years and last year, I see some tectonic change of the external context, which is in need of no less tectonic change of the paradigm of the profession of consultant, but, of course, only if you decide to remain in the profession.

• Which change of the paradigm should happen? In your opinion, what change consultants have to make?

- When a turning point comes, every consultant, as every person, at first consciously, subconsciously, even unconsciously, reconstructs themselves and after they put themselves together, they are ready to decide whether to remain in the profession, or not.

It is definitely a purely personal decision, but there is also such thing as serving – as, for example, a doctor, who took the Hippocratic oath, as a soldier who pledged loyalty to people. We as management consultants do not pledge loyalty, do not take any oath, but once we decided that we were able to help customers with their business, and the customers believed and trusted us.

To my mind, this is about the concept of serving. Apart from serving the country and the community, we are being responsible to customers and the profession.

- The responsibility before customers is not limited by the frameworks of the contract, it is much more broader, it continues after the completion of the contract, too, and, by the way, is not always monetized.

- Responsibility before the profession – it is prevention of the risk of devaluation of the profession, because even if just one person does something of poor quality, the negative perception of prospective customers is applied to everyone, without any exceptions.

• Yes. The war raised the requirements for our professional colleagues not only in Ukraine. The influence and role of the personality of a consultant are becoming increasingly popular all around the world. How do you manage to preserve productivity?

- Management of my personal productivity is a very important topic for me during a crisis period.

My personal life hacks are quite simple. In order to put myself together I focus on the present – here and now, reduce priorities for medium- and long-term objectives. I practice GTD (method developed by David Allen “Getting Things Done”) in order to fulfill time slots. This way, the long-term objectives do not disappear and will be available when I have resources again.

• And what about management of results and outcomes of consulting projects? The strategic focus is shifted for both customers and consultants; projects have become shorter, while customers’ expectations have increased.

- During a crisis period the speed of changes is much greater, than during a period of stability, that is why project meetings become shorter and should be conducted more frequently. For example, if, before the war, a consultant was able to work in one or two projects, then now, we observe our colleagues in the community who can lead much more projects at the same time. Switching between projects takes some time and requires efforts. Here are a few life hacks which will help increase the effectiveness:

­- Documentation of the project. All the work (in my professional area, of course) is carried out on customer’s Miro board. The whole project team works there. I do not erase anything since the board is infinite, and for every iteration I create a copy of the previous frame and we continue working. In every frame there is a segment with relevant sequence of tasks which should be completed. Every meeting is concluded with actualization of tasks and fixation of insights. By doing this, I support customer engagement, transparency concerning timing and content of the tasks which are solved with fixation of micro wins after each iteration. And I totally simplify the process of switching between projects for myself, since everything needed for iteration is contained in one frame.

- Standardization of services. In the area of my expertise, I am more extensively using the cubes similar to the ones we have developed and are using in uber-projects.

- And here, the question concerning the depth of immersion into customer’s problems arises. During some very crisis periods, it seems to me that the speed of decision making is more important that the depth of immersion. Acceptable results are more important than the best possible ones. However, this hypothesis deserves a whole separate discussion.