Develop a Consulting Practice Plan:

This assignment requires students to demonstrate their understanding of organizational consulting and coaching by applying their knowledge in the development of a Consulting or Coaching Practice Plan.
There is both a written and presentation or oral component to the assignment which will be submitted.
The plan may take one of three forms:
a) the development of a Consulting Practice Plan acting as an internal consultant to an organization.
b) the development of a Consulting Practice Plan acting as an external consultant to an organization.
c) the development of a Coaching Practice Plan acting as a coach to an individual.

Written Paper Requirements:
The written component should be a Consulting or Coaching Practice Plan approximately 10–12 pages in length not including the Title and Reference pages but it may be longer if needed. The paper must include at least 6 scholarly references from 6 different sources. All papers should be double spaced in accordance with APA style guidelines. APA must be used for all formatting including headings, body, text citations, and reference page. All papers will be reviewed by Turn-It-In as a check on plagiarism. The written component must be submitted MSWord document.
Papers are evaluated in three main categories:
1. Content completeness, depth, and quality showing a strong knowledge of the material and the ability to apply it effectively to the key questions addressed in the paper.
2. Writing quality including interesting and important ideas, sentence fluency, and specific word selection.
3. APA usage, consistency, and correctness. Presentation Requirements:
The presentation or oral component should be structured as a PowerPoint formal delivery:
a) to the CEO and vice presidents within the organization specified, if internal,
b) to business investors or consulting partners, if external, or
c) to the individual who will receive the coaching.
The presentation should be approximately 15-20 minutes in length.

Suggested Weekly Activities for the Consulting Plan Paper & Presentation
Week Topics & Activities

2 Working with consulting clients: determining roles and responsibilities, contracting with the client, identification of the presented problem, and the entry phase of a consulting project.

3 What competitors are doing in the areas of marketing and addressing client resistance issues.

4 What research competitors are doing in the niche market you have chosen.

5 What best practices are used in either consulting or coaching in the areas of communicating feedback and delivering feedback to a client.

6 What best practices are used in consulting or coaching to develop interventions that promote client support and engagement?

7 What issues are of specific importance within the niche market area you intend to pursue?

Suggested Guidelines for the Internal and External Consulting Practice Plans:
Internal Consulting / Coaching Acting as an Organizational Subunit / Department
Self-assessment and initial visioning:
1. Identify your current skills: What are your current skills that make you ready to do consulting?
2. Mission and Goals: What is the mission of your department/subunit charged with offering internal consulting services to the organization? What are its goals? What problem is being addressed?
3. Gap analysis: Conduct a gap analysis comparing the department/subunit mission and goals versus the current skill sets represented in your department/subunit. If there is a gap, how do you intend to address the skill set gap. Personal development plan? Hiring of staff? Etc.
4. Build a rationale for the development of your organizational department/subunit. Include projected costs and impact on the organization if approved by executive leadership. How does having such a department build organizational capacity / capability and improve the performance of the organization and its systems?
Set up issues:
1. Steps toward developing a successful consulting department/subunit for your organization: What are the steps you envision as necessary to help assure the launch of a successful internal consulting department/subunit?
2. Marketing: How will you market your services inside the organization? How will you identify and develop key organizational contacts? How will you contact them initially? What is your purpose within the organization? What issues will your department/subunit’s target for change or interventions?
Working with clients:
1. Entry: State your department/subunit’s objectives for the initial entry phase with clients and how you intend to accomplish those objectives?
2. Services provided: What will be the typical points you want to make as you describe your services to a client? What are the benefits to the client? How are you going to understand and meet the client’s needs? How are you going to make the decision-maker’s life easier?
3. Needs of your clients: How do your department/subunit’s services meet the projected needs within the organization? How will you assess the needs of employees and departments or subunits within the organization? How does the mission of your department/subunit, charged with offering internal consulting services to the organization match up with the needs of your organizational clients?
4. Working with those inside the organization: What issues come to mind as you consider working with other members of the organization?
5. Communication: Speak to ongoing communication with your clients. How do you envision this?
6. Achieving and maintaining quality: What are you going to do to ensure quality in your services to clients? Do you have guidelines about work that goes out to clients?
7. Parameters for practice within the organization: Speak to the issues of scope or services provided and managing expectations of internal clients. There are clients you want and those that you do not want: How do you determine whether or not to work with a client? Do you have the option to say “no?” What are criteria that you look for that are “red flags” to indicate clients to avoid? Speak to the political issues involved in doing so.
8. Explain your phases of working with internal clients. Be sure to include how typical ROI is to be done on projects developed and completed.
What else needs to be included for your consulting department/subunit to be successful? Add it here.
External Consulting / Coaching Acting Acting from Outside the Organization
Self-assessment and initial visioning:
1.Identify your current skills: What are your current skills that make you ready to do consulting?
2.Mission and Goals: What is the mission of your consulting practice? What are its goals? What problem is being addressed?
3.Gap analysis: Conduct a gap analysis comparing the consulting practice mission and goals versus your current skill set. If there is a gap, how do you intend to address the skill set gap. Personal development plan? Hiring of staff? Etc.
4. Build a rationale for the consulting practice. Why are you doing it? Why is it needed? What are your “targeted” areas of practice?
Setup issues:
1. Setting up your corporation: Inc. or LLP or LLC? Choose a name. Create a short phrase to put on your business card that states what your business is about.
2. Expenses: What are your projected monthly expenses? What are your projected start-up costs?
3. Fee schedule: Create your fee schedule. Carefully consider your experience and the targeted market.
4. Steps toward a successful consulting practice: What are the steps you envision as necessary to help ensure the launch of a successful consulting practice?
5. Marketing: How will you market your services? How will you identify them? How will you contact them initially? What is your “target” market?
Working with clients: Explain your phases of working with clients. What issues need to be included to be successful?
1. Entry: State your organization’s objectives in the initial entry phase with clients and how you intend to accomplish those objectives?
2. Pitch: What will be the typical points you want to make as you “pitch” your services to a prospective client? What are the benefits to the client? How are you going to understand and meet the client’s needs? How are you going to make the decision-maker’s life easier?
3. Needs of your clients: How do your consulting services meet the projected needs of your clients?
4. Request for Proposal: What will be the components of your standard RFP? What will be your follow up process on an RFP?
5. Standard contract: What will your standard contract look like?
6. Sales: What at the targets (“Hot buttons”) you intend to use to convert the initial meeting into client commitment and a sale?
7. Working with those inside the organization: What issues come to mind as you consider working with other members of the organization?
8. Communication: Speak to ongoing communication with your clients. How do you envision this?
9. Consider issues of liability and how to handle them.
10. Achieving and maintaining quality: What are you going to do to ensure quality in your services to clients? Do you have guidelines about work that is presented to clients?
11. Clients you want and those that you do not want: How do you determine whether or not to work with a client? What are criteria that you look for? What are “red flags” to indicate clients to avoid?
12. Explain your phases of working with clients. Be sure to include how typical ROI is to be measured on projects developed and completed.