PICA Member Spotlights

Q&A with independent consultants who successfully “made the leap” and created the consulting career of their dreams

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Q: Please introduce yourself and tell us about your consulting specialty.

A: My name is Douglas Sietsema, I am based in Southern California, and I'm an organizational effectiveness consultant, which covers a lot of territory. I mostly do organizational change management work for large scale business process re-engineering efforts and/or system implementations. I've also done work in human resources strategy, account management, organization design, and things like that.

Anything dealing with the people side of business is what I get involved in, usually in manufacturing, high technology, or healthcare. Recently though I've been doing quite a bit of work in the public sector for university, local, and state government clients. I've been doing this work for over 40 years now and it's been very rewarding. 

Q: Forty years is practically forever. Did you start with a large firm?

A: I got into consulting pretty much accidentally. I was in graduate school working on a PhD in Adult Learning and I needed some work. I signed on to do instructional development work for one of “big eight” consulting firms. I had planned on going into an academic career or a think-tank type environment, but when I took that job with Coopers & Lybrand, I got really hooked on the notion of consulting and working on a project basis. Basically, I would take on an assignment for a relatively short period of time, solve a problem, and then move onto something else. That was very, very stimulating for me.

In the intervening years, I've worked as a staff consultant with a number of large firms and most recently I've worked as an independent consultant. I've also worked as an internal resource doing change management work and other kinds of work for an organization. What I've found is that being a full-time employee of the company just drove me nuts. I lost interest after the first six to 12 months, I could feel my performance starting to slip, and I wasn't getting the results that I really wanted to get. Ultimately, I got back into being an independent consultant because for me, doing the work, getting my fingers dirty, actually interacting with a client, finding out what the problems are and helping them resolve those things – that’s what is exciting to me. In a large organization, I found that was much less possible.

Q: What was one thing that surprised you when you went independent in 2013 that you weren't expecting?

A: I guess the surprise started back in 2003 when I first started going independent, and that was that people just did not automatically call me, that there really is a business development requirement to be an independent consultant. That doesn't necessarily mean being out there on LinkedIn, or telephone calls, or knocking on doors, or going to conferences and so forth, but there is a relationship building process that takes a long time. One of the biggest benefits of me being involved in the larger firms was that I made a lot of good contacts over time. So when I did go independent, I wasn't just going out into the cold on my own. I had some experience and some contacts that I knew I could go to and get some advice. In many cases I got leads and referrals from those contacts so that I could actually set up shop and do some business.

Something else that rather surprised me though, was realizing that there's a clear difference in consulting on a project by project basis, versus having a lot of small assignments operating more or less simultaneously. During most of my consulting career, I have been one client at a time, whether that's for a couple of weeks or a several months. I recently rolled off a 27-month SAP project. Most of that time, I was commuting between southern California and central Pennsylvania, which was not a great deal of fun. But for me, taking on serial, full-time assignments is a model that's worked well. I know a lot of people who do have multiple smaller clients, and I would find that a lot more difficult because there's a lot more time management required to be able to switch your attention among those different clients, and make sure you have everybody taken care of all the time.

Q: Do you ever have more work than you can handle? And if so, what do you do?

A: I have had situations where there was just too much for me to do on a particular project. At that point I've just done what I can to triage the things that I had to get done by understanding which things were critical and which things were less essential. In many cases, it was a question of negotiating with my colleagues or my client as to how we were going to change or modify the scope of what I was doing. But in other cases, it's a question of saying, "There's just too much to do here. We really need to bring in somebody else." The fact of the matter is, if there is a clear, steady stream of successful activity and the client sees results for what you're doing, when you say you need more resources to get something done, they're usually pretty willing to listen. But there’s a trade-off process. They can decide, "No, we have to stick with a single resource so let’s look at the scope," or if they really need to stick with the original scope which is too big for one person, they can see what the value proposition is for bringing in another resource.

Q:  How do you set your billing rate? What's your pricing strategy?

A: I have found that there is a normal range that people expect to pay for somebody with my background. They recognize that I'm coming in with a lot of experience, so they're willing to pay a little bit more than if I were three or four years out of school. But for the most part, the market has set the rates that are available to me. For myself though, I've realized that there are some things that are just aren’t worthwhile for me to do. I can go find a better opportunity, or I can have some quality of life by taking time off instead of working for what I consider to be not enough money per hour.

I think it's also important to recognize that the hourly rate is a burdensome model that exists in the world of work in general. What really is the value proposition, what is it worth for the client to get that work done? When you think in terms of the project or the outcome as opposed to hourly rates, then you don't have to have that conversation about the hourly rate. You can really carve it out any way you want to. And because as consultants we're creative people, we can figure out a way to get something done in less time if we have to, so that it can be more profitable. Or we may be willing to invest the time even if the client doesn't have the wherewithal to pay the rate you expect, but it's still worth doing it because you get the satisfaction of delivering something that's of high value.

Q: If you have one piece of advice for an independent consultant, what would it be?

A: I think it's really important to plan for downtime and I mean that in a couple different ways. One thing is, it’s really important to cultivate a realistic view of what kind of total income you need to have from consulting. And you have to recognize that, by its very nature, consulting is a start and stop activity. People bring consultants in for a number of reasons. Expertise is one, but having additional resources to get a job done is another. And frankly, just handholding is an important part of the job. But all those things are time-limited. Somebody needs a consultant for six weeks, or six months, or a year and a half, whatever it might be, and then they don't need the consultant anymore. So it's really important for somebody starting out to recognize that what is a good project today is going to go away and eventually another one will take its place.

In between those projects, you have to have a plan to be productive. That means developing new skills and new interests. It’s a question of putting enough time into business development without making yourself crazy. I've known a lot of people who are very successful and get a big kick out of being constantly involved in finding the next opportunity by networking, and so forth. I'm not that guy, but I know that time between projects is up to me to manage, whether it’s staying in touch with people or developing one of my hobbies.  

Q: It took me about three years of being independent before I realized the next project is going to come along, and I stopped stressing about it.

A: Yes. You and I can tell people that, but until they've lived through those three years, they're not going to believe it. I think it's worth noting that one of the nice things about having a community like PICA is that people can share their experiences. There are a lot of people who have been successful operating as independent consultants for many, many, many years. We can look to those people's experience of being successful to define the things we can accomplish for ourselves and help us create the career that we want.

It's also important for somebody who's just starting out to recognize that it may not be their cup of tea. It may be that even though they have the right skills, even though they know the right people, it may just be a level of anxiety that they cannot conquer. There are really good reasons that we have different kinds of employment models. I’ve had many clients who would not dream of going out and being independent because they like being a part of a mothership. In many cases, these people have worked with an organization for 20, or 30, or 40, or more years. That's where comfort is for them.

As an independent consultant I think it's really important to recognize that they're thinking about things differently, and they're not wrong, and we're not wrong. They're just looking at life from a different point of view, and we need to respect and support that. Frankly, it's one of the reasons why, in many cases, our clients value our independent point of view because they know that we're going to go away at the end of the project and don’t have to be shy for fear of damaging a future career in the organization. They know that we're going to be willing to take some risks that they cannot take themselves, so by joining forces that way, they've got the stability and the long view within the organization to what needs to get done. I'm there to protect my client and help them be successful, and then move on to something else. They have a different point of view and that's okay. 

Q: After 40 years of consulting, you must be thinking about the next chapter of your life. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing when you're not consulting.

A: I learned something very important from observing my father. He got to retirement age, retired, and did not know what to do with himself. I took a lesson from that and I've been thinking about this for many years now. What kinds of things would I like to do if I gradually ramped down from consulting? At the moment, I'm consulting on a part-time basis and I'm enjoying that very much, but at some point I'll put consulting aside.

I've been an avid photographer for 50 years or more and have traveled around the world, taking a lot of pictures and have enjoyed the craft of photography as much as the art and now I have a website. If you take a look at vsquarephotography.com you can see what I've been doing. It's a fun hobby, because it can actually throw off some revenue. I just got word today that I finally got my first check from Getty Images.  I also play golf and I like to bicycle. I have a nice yard here in southern California where I've been digging out the local clay and replacing it with soil so I can grow tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, and all the rest of that stuff. And of course my wife and I enjoy traveling. And once this COVID thing gets behind us, we're hoping to get back out and visit the world again.

Q:  What's the best way to connect with you?

A: Probably the very best way to reach out to me is through LinkedIn. I say that for a couple of reasons. One, it's convenient, and second it's also an entree to my network. I'm very, very happy to help people connect with each other.

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