I don't like the word "consultant." In my experience, it can get misconstrued by the people I'm working with, as they might fear that they are not doing enough or that their jobs are in jeopardy because the company went and hired an outside consultant. So it's not great from the client side. I also don't like it from the consulting industry side, because so many consultants come into a company with their playbook of what they're going to create for their clients.
My "consulting" is much more like working with a therapist or personal trainer. These professionals give you a mindset and some tools for how to progress. They work on it with you and cheerlead you along the way. They celebrate successes with you. But their goal is not to be around for the rest of your life. Their goal is to teach you these mindsets and tools so that they become a part of you and you can go off on your own until you have a new goal or something comes up and you need their help again.
This type of mentorship is how I work with my clients. I can do the project for you. And if you really need me to, I will. But the most successful projects are the ones with heavy client involvement. I can never know as much as the people who work for an organization day in and day out. I used to think I could. I usually recommend working deeply on an initiative with a small project team to start and then shifting my responsibility to the client team as they increase and master the HCD skillset.
When I first started in this design consulting world in the late 2000s, budgets were big and timelines were long. We would agree on a project, have a kickoff meeting, and go our separate ways. We, the consultants, would do our work and come back to the final presentation, crossing our fingers that what we created was what the client wanted. We usually got good feedback but rarely did our work every go anywhere. Because the clients were not involved, all of the feasibility and viability was not considered, and therefore, when we left the desirability projects got put on a shelf to collect dust.
A few years later we started seeing that clients wanted to be more involved. Budgets were tighter. They wanted to see what we were seeing. So we would have weekly check-ins around a spreadsheet and sometimes they would come out to do research with us. Better than before, but still pretty light.
And then the design consultancy world started changing. Big companies started either buying shops or creating ones in-house with the purpose not only to take on projects, but to train general staff in how to think and act like a human-centered designer. So I started shifting my business model away from doing and more to mentoring. And now I almost always recommend it. It's the best way to ensure that you're getting what you need to make ideas real.