The ‘Purloined Letter’ phenomenon is a powerful one. We all tend to look for answers in abstruse analytics, often too far up or too far away, when many times, the answers are literally right under our noses.

Consultants have to beware of making things overly complicated. I’ve just dealt with two sets of senior teams, made up of highly capable, articulate, dedicated members who needed to learn to listen better and more deeply to each other, and needed time to build relationships with each other. Everything else had been tried! Every other major or minor fad, multi-step program, you name it. Everything but the obvious.

Their other need was to look at the assumptions they were making, what CK Pralahad calls the ‘dominant logic’, in areas where they were stuck. It surely cannot be shocking that if we are persistently and consistently stuck, we ourselves, our thoughts and assumptions, might be the adhesive!

Asking clients “How do you know this?” when they trot out their favorite rationalizations for continuing to entrench recurring problems and not being fobbed off by fuzzy replies and factual tap-dancing is probably as potent as any four quadrant, multi-axis diagram ever created.  Probably more so.

Let’s realize the source of many trenchant problems will be lurking in front of us, ’so obvious they’re not obvious’ as one of my most insightful clients put it — waiting to be glimpsed, furtive only because we refuse to see them, and face them.

And let’s therefore also look for real answers where it seems we often least want them to be, but where they most often are nonetheless…in our thinking, in our communication, in our interaction, in our listening, and finally in and through the action we take as a result!

Consultants are prone to obfuscate. Around the world today, this is lethal to business success. Now more than ever is a time to get to the point — a point of value to your client needless to say.

During these days of draconian and often unthinking cost-cutting measures, consultants have to sharpen their wits, raise their game, and focus on providing tangible value of high priority for the client fast — not a bad health regimen after all!

We have to sharpen our wits to provide real insight, rather than obscurantist jargon and ‘trademarked’ fluff. ‘Baffle them with bullshit’ won’t work today at all. We’ve been deluged with so much rubbish from financial advisors, business leaders, politicians and more, that everyone has a highly sensitive garbage detector.

We have to raise our game so we can find ever more substantive ways of adding value, transferring skills, and moving goal-posts that help the client win in terms that matter to them. And we have to establish mutually agreed metrics that make it clear to everyone when this happens. Then a real ROI can be established.

Here is a chance for some consultant house-cleaning in larger organizations, with companies focusing on the few who truly partner, connect, add value, and provide refreshing simplicity amidst often vexing complexity. Companies are focusing on buying in expertise, rather than having consultants just provide reams of analysis, or send in troops to act as surrogate project managers or implementers. That’s good news for smaller firms that don’t have a profit model based on time units, hourly billing, and the vast deployment of junior colleagues.

Everyone is more sensitive today. So take the initiative and demonstrate the quality of your thinking and the impact you can offer, proactively and lavishly. Let people directly experience value  (through your writing, in an initial meeting, by inviting them to a talk, by spending a couple of hours with them to establish what’s needed), and they’re far more likely to be drawn to you as a partner, to actively and regularly seek you out, as well as appreciating that the premium you charge is really worth it rather than just being one more example of hype wafting through their lives.