Why do we consult?

Every now & then I get a question from peole I've worked with: Do you think I'd make a good consultant? Well, my answer most often is - to lean on an oft-repreated consulting phrase - it depends.

I decided to leave a my corporate job and start an independent consultancy in 1996. I've enjoyed it, have made a good living, and believe it was a good choice for me. Consulting isn't for everyone, and having done it for a while now I think I'm getting a better idea of why that is.

Do you get satisfaction from consistency, from mastering a skill or a job and advancing through an organzation? Do you find it comforting to have a stable and consistent team around you, a place of routines, a familiar culture you can both contribute to and leverage for your advantage? If you answered yes to these questions, I don't think you would enjoy being a consultant.

Are you sort of restless, becoming bored with a standard, static routine? Do you like to change things, improving them and finding joy in successful achievements? Do you like to help people, being seriously interested in improving your client's job, the department, the firm? Are you always looking - rather impatiently at times - for a way to improve the task at hand? Do you like to take things apart and see how they work, and then put them back together so that they work even better? If so, then you would probably enjoy the consulting profession.

I'm generalizing, of course, but I think there is a consulting mindset that seeks out this type of work. Not content with hunting or gathering itself, but interested in the process of hunting and gathering. Someone's has to do it(!)