Lesson 6: Collaborate and co-create value - don’t impose solutions

By Niall Anderson

Traditional strategy consultancies love to sell a beautiful, static blueprint, hand it over, and call it 100% of the value. But real, sustainable impact cannot be imposed from the outside - it has to be co-created.

In this instalment of our 10 Lessons for 10 Years series, our co-founder and CEO Niall Anderson breaks down what true, embedded collaboration looks like on the ground.

Sophie Pentony: Niall, this lesson stresses that real value must be co-created, not imposed. But often, a client just wants to hand over a problem and say, "I need a quick fix. I need you to sort this out." How do you actively disrupt that expectation from day one?

Niall Anderson: 

Often we're brought in after someone has already identified a problem or opportunity. Before we jump into solving it, I want to step back and understand what's really driving the need for change.

By stepping back, I’m looking to learn three essential dynamics of the business:

·       Who actually benefits? Identifying which internal function gets the benefit the most - like the ops guy in an operational optimisation project.

·       What does the client value? Too often, service providers talk about the value they think they're creating. The reality is simple: value only exists when the client recognises it.

·       What is the root motivation? Understanding exactly why they are making an investment in the first place.

Sophie Pentony: Do clients ever resist that approach? If someone says, "I don't need all of that, I just need you to do X," what is usually the root cause?

Niall Anderson: Sometimes that's because they believe they've already identified the solution. Sometimes it's because the project has been handed to them and they're naturally sceptical.

By going back a stage, you start to build a relationship and break down that defensive "My boss says I need to talk to you" dynamic. It moves into, "What are you trying to do? What's your ambition for this?" and you start to sense if it’s important to them or not. Building that relationship early is how we steady the ship.

Sophie Pentony: In your recent writing, you pointed out that a traditional consultancy sells a blueprint and calls it 100% of the value. What does smart/tasking do differently to stand out from that crowd?

Niall Anderson: We'll get the customer to tell us what they recognise the value to be. We may think the value is operational efficiency, but when we do that discovery work, the actual value is they can differentiate themselves in the market - which is worth way more than a 5% efficiency saving. It's about uncovering that and trying to join it all up.

And we give a glimpse of that entire journey right at the start. A lot of our competitors, particularly the larger consultancies, want to break it down and go, "Let's do the first bit first, then we can give you a view of what the second piece might be." Usually that second piece carries a much bigger investment level and becomes a surprise to the customer. 

What's different about smart/tasking is that we'll show clients the discovery work, the transformation, and the embedding process from the outset, so there are no surprises.

The map may change on the journey, but we give them that glimpse up front.

Sophie Pentony: You’ve noted before that people often think they are collaborating, but they completely leave out the internal end-customer. How do you handle that mechanical side of co-creation?

Niall Anderson: If a client collaborates with us, the chances of success are increased significantly. Now, the problem is often people think they're collaborating, but they forget to include the internal client who actually benefits from the outcome.

Take data, process automation, or data cleansing, which we do a lot of. Who benefits from the data? If it's a CRM, it’s the head of revenue and marketing. So why aren't they in the collaboration process? We join the dots for the delivery teams by actively bringing the end customer into the room.

Sophie Pentony: Can you share an example from the last decade where taking that step back to co-create fundamentally changed the trajectory of a project?

Niall Anderson: We had an existing client come to us with a distinct problem where we easily could have gone for a quick fix and just supplied resources to patch it up, but we didn't. We took that step back and said, "Well, let's take a bigger view. What are we actually trying to achieve?" 

We ran a proof of concept, fundamentally understood the deeper challenge, and co-designed a structural change. What started as a short-term resource request became a managed service that successfully supported the client for three years.

That is the test - If senior stakeholders aren't prepared to engage in that conversation, it's often a sign that the organisation hasn't yet recognised the full value of the opportunity. Most transformation projects fail because no one calculates the consequences of doing nothing as well as doing something. True collaboration allows you to calculate those consequences together and deliver a sustainable engine that outlasts the consultancy's exit.

The 10Strong takeaway

Real, sustainable change can never be successfully mandated from the top down. True value is unlocked only when you resist the quick fix, step back to engage the actual end-beneficiary, and co-author a solution that the client's internal teams genuinely own. The best solutions aren't delivered to clients. They're built with them.