In this article, I’m going to share with you the most important skill to look for when selecting a consultant for your next cloud implementation. As more organizations are moving to the cloud, a new critical skill is emerging that separates the best consultants from the rest.
Up until now, a great consultant needed soft skills such as confidence and leadership, written and verbal communication, relationship building, listening and team building, conflict resolution, and adaptability.
Once a consultant learned their industry and platform-specific skills, they could settle-in and sort of “coast” on their existing knowledge. They still would need to stay informed of industry news and changes, yet for the most part, the work stayed fairly consistent from one project to the next.
Now that we’ve moved to the cloud, everything’s changing at such a rapid pace, consultants can’t coast on their past knowledge any more.
The rate of innovation has skyrocketed and entire industries are being created, disrupted, or eliminated on a regular basis. To thrive in this kind of evolving space, there’s one skill that stands above the rest. It’s the one skill that differentiates top performers from those that just barely “keep up.”
For example, in the old days of Oracle Applications, an organization might go a couple years without seeing any significant changes in the application. The application stayed generally the same. Regular updates included minor navigational improvements, bug fixes, and security patches plus the business had a lot of control of when those updates were pushed into their production environment.
In the cloud, updates happen much more frequently and often include major changes to functionality, UI, or even add entirely new modules. In Oracle cloud applications, these updates happen four times a year and are required within a given time frame.
Most implementations take between 6-12 months which means the system will have been updated between two and four times during the implementation! This also means that as the business is learning the application and as the consultant is configuring the application – it’s changing!
To thrive in this kind of world, a consultant needs to develop the ability to find and internalize new information rapidly from many sources and then apply what they’ve learned, all in real-time. Consultants that try to coast and stay comfortable with their existing knowledge and ability will be left in the dust.
The most valuable skill isn’t simply the ability to learn, it’s the ability to learn how to learn.
I think of it as a Meta-Learning or Super-Learning ability. How can you recognize this skill in others? How can you tell if a consultant is one of these top performing super-learners? There are three characteristics that can be used to identify these types of consultants.
Characteristic #1: Highly Resourceful
Where does a consultant get their information? The more sources they have access to, the more resourceful they can be. To keep up with changes in cloud applications, a consultant needs to check support articles and customer forums, industry-related blogs, release notes and documentation, colleagues and internal groups, and even leverage personal relationships. Listen when the consultant is explaining new features and functionality and you’ll often hear one of these sources mentioned.
Characteristic #2: Leverages Strong Personal Network
Although a implementation partner may have many knowledgeable consultants in its ranks, the relationships between consultants within the company are a big factor in how well those resources are utilized in an implementation. A consultant that collaborates with and supports their colleagues develops relationship capital that they can later tap into for insights and experience into areas outside of their expertise. Notice if the consultant ever offers to “take the question to their personal network” for answers or if they offer to help colleagues offline.
Characteristic #3: Takes Initiative when Faced with New and Unknown
A large part of this super-learning skill depends on being able to get hands-on with a new functionality and learn through trial and error. Understanding something from documentation or by hearing about it is one thing, yet actually going into the system and testing it is something else entirely.
By getting into the nitty-gritty of the application, there are many assumptions that are either validated or contradicted through testing. Often times the functionality that was supposed to be there isn’t quite ready yet, or there is a bug preventing the full use of it. Consultants must rapidly test out new functionality and come up with insights to determine if that path is valid for meeting the business process or if another solution is required .
In the past, when a consultant would say “let me test that out and get back to you”, it probably meant they didn’t know the system as well as they should. In the cloud, this means they are thorough and want to validate the functionality 100% before giving you an answer. Considering the pace of changes to existing functionality and addition of new features, this is what you want to hear.
Here’s a personal story that exemplifies these characteristics…
Not too long ago I was able to put my super-learning ability to the test. I was preparing for the first testing event of the implementation for the Oracle talent management modules alongside another consultant who was working on the learning management module. About a week prior to the first testing event of the project, I received news that the other consultant had become terribly ill and wouldn’t be able to complete the testing event for the learning module.
Luckily for me, I had already been familiarizing myself with the learning module by reviewing documentation and testing functionality in the hopes I could take on a project for it. I offered to run a few meetings with the client to review open issues for the learning module so at least we could still make progress in the consultant’s absence.
The client was a bit hesitant at first yet they were confident in my ability due to my efforts in the talent module and agreed to let me lead the meetings. I spent a week devouring information and relentlessly testing the system to fully grasp the new module. Things progressed so well, that I ended up conducting the testing event for the new module only a week after starting it and finished the project taking both the talent and learning modules into production.
Since the module was still fairly new, I was also able to spend several hours on calls with Oracle development to review enhancement requests for the client that actually made it to the product in version 19C. I became certified in the learning module shortly afterwards and have been taking on learning projects ever since.
In summary, the best cloud consultants are those that have the three characteristics of super-learning; resourcefulness, a strong personal network, and the willingness to take the initiative.
I hope you found this article useful. If you have any questions or if you need an Oracle cloud HCM consultant for your next implementation you can reach me on LinkedIn.
