You Hired an Expert. Then You Ignored Her.

By Vicki Morris | V. Renee Consulting

You did the hard part. You admitted you needed outside expertise. You went through a search process. You made the hire or signed the contract.

And then — gradually, without quite deciding to — you stopped listening.

And then you said the consulting engagement didn’t work.

How ignoring happens without looking like ignoring.

It rarely looks like direct dismissal. It looks like delays. The recommendation goes under consideration and stays there.

It looks like additions. You take the strategy and add your own layers until the original thinking is buried.

It looks like selective implementation. You execute the tactics that feel comfortable and quietly set aside the ones that require real change. Then you evaluate the result of the partial approach and wonder why it didn’t produce the full outcome.

What you’re actually communicating when this happens.

To your team: we hire experts and then override them, so expertise is not really what we value here.

To future consultants and vendors: we are difficult clients who will pay for recommendations and not follow them.

To yourself: I am more comfortable staying where I am than doing the things that would actually move the business forward.

The resistance is usually about something else.

When business owners don’t implement expert recommendations, it’s rarely because the recommendations were wrong.

It’s because implementation requires change. And change, even when it’s clearly the right move, requires effort, risk, and letting go of approaches that feel familiar.

Understanding that the resistance is about comfort, not logic, is the first step to moving through it.

How to get value from the expertise you’re paying for.

Before the engagement starts, get clear on what’s actually on the table. Are you willing to change the message? Adjust the structure? Invest in things that will take time before they produce results?

If the answer is no, be honest about it. A good consultant can work within real constraints. What she cannot do is be set up to recommend things she already knows you won’t implement.

Create accountability. Who is responsible for moving the recommendations forward?What is the timeline?

A question worth sitting with.

Think about the last engagement where you paid for expertise.

What percentage of the recommendations got implemented? Not considered — implemented.

If the number is low, ask yourself: was the work bad, or was the follow-through the problem? In most cases you already know the answer.

Expertise you don’t act on is not an investment. It’s a cost.

Get honest about what you’re actually willing to do. Then hire someone to help you do that.

That’s the version of this that works.

Vicki Morris is the founder of V. Renee Consulting, a strategic communications and marketing firm based in North Alabama. She works with business owners and leadership teams who are ready to stop guessing at marketing and start building something that actually works.

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