Good consulting
The craft of good consulting
Most advice is either too safe to be useful or too confident to be trusted. Good consulting sits in the narrow space between the two.
Judgement, not capacity
A lot of what gets sold as consulting is really staffing — capacity dressed up as expertise. Good consulting is the opposite: an opinion you couldn't have formed yourself, formed by someone who has no stake in being kept on afterwards.
Say what you actually think
The most useful moment in any advisory relationship is the one where the advisor says the uncomfortable thing plainly, without hedging it into three options and a workshop. That only works if it's said without ego — as a contribution to someone else's decision, not a demonstration of expertise.
Leave, don't stay
Good advice makes itself unnecessary. If an engagement is structured so the client needs you again for the same kind of decision, something has gone wrong — either the advice wasn't transferable, or it wasn't meant to be.
Why "good" is the point
Good, in this sense, isn't a claim about outcomes. It's a description of the posture: honest about uncertainty, direct about risk, and more interested in the client being right than in being agreed with.