We deal in this chapter with what is often called the pre-contract phase of consultancy. It is, by definition, preliminary, and is characterised by the activity of negotiation. We do not imply, however, that negotiation only happens at the start. On the contrary, negotiation is likely to continue throughout the entire life of the consultancy, but from our experience it is likely to be heightened during this early period.

Beginnings

We have already acknowledged that a consultancy starts its life before birth, at the preparation stage. However, there is a more visible beginning, at the point where the consultants and clients begin negotiating. This is often referred to as the ‘pre-contract phase’.

Consultancies begin in different ways, affected substantially by their size and degree of formality. The larger and more formally developed consultancies are generated at senior level in central and local government, an in the NHS, are advertised and go through a process of tendering. There are smaller consultancies that lead to local, but still formal, agreements between consultants and clients. There are also some consultancy arrangements that are informal, where a fee probably changes hands without much being written down apart from the invoice from the consultant and the receipt when the fee is received.

What is significant, however, is that consultancy is a process, and every consultancy goes through its own unique life course, from beginning to end. Sometimes it is impossible to specify when the beginning actually begins and when the end takes place, since the work may grow out of previous work and may lead on to other projects. Another reason for the lack of clarity about boundaries is the tendency for consultancies to involve a lot of meetings, discussions and correspondence about possibilities for action, and quite often only some of these will be translated into action. Finally, of course, this lack of clarity resides in the reality that the consultancy involves relationships between people and these, necessarily, entail a degree of complexity and uncertainty.

Whatever the extent of complexity and uncertainty surrounding the beginning of the consultancy process, we can say that it entails some form of negotiation between the consultants and the clients.