Why you may want to avoid independent consulting, especially overseas

Some things to keep in mind

On the face of it, independent consulting in international development is not an appealing career choice.

You’re on your own, with no institution to back you up.  You’re an outsider, a transient professional, an interloper. You touch down for a few weeks in a foreign country and have little time to acclimatize or develop relationships.  You often find yourself counting on team members who up until yesterday were complete strangers. You have to pray that they’re competent.

Of course, there are plenty of independent consultants for whom their career path was less a choice than a default position. It might have been thrust upon them. They may have originally sought the stability, structure and institutional opportunities that come with being part of a big development agency or a consulting firm of whatever size. But that didn’t happen.

Freedom is not always a blessing

Certainly, independent consulting comes with a lot of freedom. But freedom is only a positive thing insofar as you enjoy being untethered and don’t mind not belonging. There are a lot of reluctant gig workers out there.

Although it is rarely acknowledged, there are non-negligible advantages to being told what to do. A professional life where you can mostly focus on completing the tasks you are given. There is less decision making and need for self-discipline. Plus there is no need to file estimated taxes every quarter (as the self-employed in the US must do).

If, in addition to being an independent consultant, you are so “unlucky” as to work as an evaluator, you can expect to enjoy several additional drawbacks. While it is true that someone is paying you to look into a program or project, to collect data and information and ferret out the truth, a lot of people involved in that program won’t exactly appreciate your poking your nose around and asking sometimes uncomfortable questions.

They say evaluators play the role of “critical friend,” the person you can trust who will also point out your faults. Not everybody is reconciled to that concept. Who likes a party pooper? Who likes to get a diagnosis that they aren’t as healthy as they thought?

In other words, independent consulting ain’t for everyone.

But if you must…

Still, there are rewards to be had. A few of us are out there doing this type of work, after all, and not all of us plan to throw in the towel…

If you happen to fall into the sub-sub-sub-category of a) being a consultant who, b) works independently, c) is active in the field of international development, and d) conducts evaluations; then here are a few observations on what you might face.

Last month, my co-author Svetlana Negroustoueva and I published an article “Bridging divides and creating opportunities in international evaluation consulting” (behind paywall) in the Winter 2019 edition of New Directions in Evaluation, a volume devoted to independent consulting in evaluation.*  

In the article, we discuss common divides and some useful competencies that consultants that belong to the sub-sub-sub category use to navigate them.

We consider various divides that consultants likely deal with while working abroad. We identified divides along cultural, power, gender, national–international, language, geographical lines. None of these are insurmountable but, in one way or another, they require a bit of navigation.

Language is a common and obvious divide. Not speaking the language won’t necessarily prevent you from getting an assignment (except in French or Spanish speaking countries). However, relying on interpreters does pose some risks.  Things do get lost in translation. It adds yet another a layer of complexity to your work.

Because you are not part of the system, probably lack a deep understanding of the country, don’t have the relationships, or necessarily speak the language, you come with a built-in disadvantage.

If you are young and female, you may face further challenges. You may find, at least in some cultures, that you are not taken as seriously as your male counterparts.

Privilege and power – those perennial aspects of life that insinuate themselves into so much of our political and social life – are part of the equation, too. Independent consultants have both more and less privilege and power than meets the eye. On the one hand, as professionals who are independent, well-remunerated, and often based in Western countries, we have certain advantages. On the other hand, we face limitations. As outsiders, (often) not knowing the local language, not have the connections, not the institutional backing that our full-time employed colleagues do, our influence is certainly limited.

Most of the divides we identified spring from disparities between you, the consultant, and the social, political and cultural environment you work in.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

I’ve emphasized the difficult and less appealing sides of independent consulting for two reasons.

If you have doubts about this path, maybe reading this will help you clear them up, and push you in a different direction.

However, if you still think it’s a good idea, then embrace the challenge with open eyes.

On a related note, I like the concept of cognitive disfluency. It refers to the benefits that come from the mental effort of completing a task. If something is too easy to do or to learn, your mind is, according to the theory, less likely retain it. Learning to play the piano is hard. But by practicing day after day, you improve. The same applies to many other skills people acquire. Although a more nebulous skill than mastering a musical instrument, wWorking as an independent consultant, at least until you get the hang of it, is fairly effortful.

This brings me back to our article: we conclude that the very process of overcoming these divides and dealing with these issues can strengthen you as a professional, while also making the work more interesting and enjoyable. There is satisfaction to be had from overcoming life’s tribulations.

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*Junge, N., & Negroustoueva, S. (2019). Bridging divides and creating opportunities in international evaluation consulting. In N. Martınez-Rubin, A. A. Germuth, & M. L. Feldmann (Eds.), Independent Evaluation Consulting: Approaches and Practices from a Growing Field. New Directions for Evaluation, 164, 127–139.

Nils Junge January 31, 2020

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Mastering independent consulting without driving yourself mad

The appeal of independence

I’m often asked what life as an independent consultant is like, typically by people who have spent their working lives ensconced within an organization…while fantasizing about breaking free.

What to say? If you have ever hankered to play in a one-man band, put on a one-woman show, or strike out on your own as a gun for hire, then yes, independent consulting may be for you. It can satisfy those urges — to a degree. It also demands somewhat less creativity and risk-taking than the aforementioned vocations, while allowing you to earn a pretty decent living.

…and the limits of that appeal

Independent consulting is not, however, just about indulging in appealing work arrangements. You still have plenty of obligations. The less that is imposed upon you by others, e.g. managers, the more you have to impose upon yourself. You need to substitute internal motivation for external motivation. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt, with freedom comes responsibility. A big part of independent consulting is about managing, or coping with, that freedom.

There are conditions attached to being a free-wheeling consultant. This includes the need to be self-motivated. You must also develop the discipline to manage your own schedule, set your own internal deadlines, and find substitutes for the structure and social interactions that a normal workplace provides. And although you will be liberated from the yoke of the worst bosses, you’ll also want to avoid becoming your own worst boss. In other words, there are tradeoffs.

Is there anything in life that doesn’t involve trade-offs? No, there is not. 

One hundred tasks

To return to the one-man band analogy, consulting means doing a lot of tasks that normally would be carried out by others. In fact, you would be delegating those chores right now if you hadn’t turned down that plum managerial position last year.

Out of curiosity, I recently made a list of everything I do, professionally, over the course of a year. I came up with over 100 different tasks. (And yes, writing this blog is one of them.) Those tasks that are normally divided among supervisors, subordinates, and specialists — now fall in your lap as a solo independent contractor.

You may have a fantasy of specializing brilliantly at just one thing, of becoming, say, a world-renowned expert in energy regulatory policy or on malaria. That’s a luxury few consultants can afford. Going narrow means going deep, but going too deep can become a problem if demand for that particular skill dries up, even temporarily. I myself am a generalist. It took me years to figure out a balance that works for me. Like Goldilocks, you want to build up capacities in the “right” number of areas — not too many and not too few.

Many roles, one employee

As a consultant you don’t split your identity, but you play many roles: supervisor, researcher, data analyst, writer, administrative assistant, accountant, business development specialist, PR person and so on. You are, to a greater or lesser extent, going to have to internalize the various positions that constitute, well, a small firm, while staying sane. What I mean by “internalizing” is that, instead of different employees performing specialized tasks, you have to do them all yourself, in effect consolidating the different employee roles within yourself. To keep things moving, you’ll find yourself almost continuously switching back and forth between them.

At a minimum, you need to think of yourself as your own boss and your own employee. A boss needs to manage the budget, make sure deadlines are met, ensure quality control, motivate employees, and deliver results. An employee needs guidance, instruction and direction, and to produce what is asked for. Sometimes I, in employee mode, feel tired or lazy, or just totally bereft of inspiration. So, in manager mode, I have to cajole, or lay down the law, to get my “employee” to complete the darn task. Try out the carrots and sticks that work best for you.

Breaking it down

Here’s a tip: depending on how your brain works: you may want to cut your work up into small slices, and alternate between them. I’ve found that frequently changing tasks throughout the day can be invigorating.  When you get tired of analyzing the data, you can revise your CV, after which you can review that report, go to a meeting, review the background literature for your next project, and answer emails in between. In this way, you give the different parts of your brain a rest while still getting plenty done.

Other people may prefer to set aside large blocks of time and complete a task in one sitting. I really admire that. I know someone, a phlegmatic fellow, who will sit down for eight or more hours at a time, with barely a break, staying up into the wee hours of the morning to ram through a task to meet a deadline.

The outsourcing option

Another option, especially if you are overwhelmed, is to consider outsourcing some of your work. Depending on whether it makes financial sense, you can pay other people to do some of your tasks. You probably have to absorb the costs as part of your pay, since you are contracted as an individual. But it may be worth it, if you find it allows you to take on more work and it improves the quality of your outputs. 

The key is to find good people — who are reliable and deliver the quality you want. Over the years, I have subcontracted work to research assistants, editors, translators, and graphic designers on a short-term basis.

Find out who you are

The relative freedom from the constraints of a nine-to-five life suits some people better than others. You need to figure out whether you have what it takes to live without fetters. It comes down to temperament. Do you do your best work in bed, like Marcel Proust and Mark Twain? Be my guest. Does the ambient noise and languid activity of a coffee shop help your neurons to fire? There are probably a dozen choices within walking distance from where you live. Or do you find that you do your most penetrating analysis in a beach house in Bermuda? Experiment until you figure out an optimal routine.

And if you discover that you are, in fact, your own worst boss, that management position might start looking attractive. After you are back in an office, you can then hire those freewheeling independent consultant colleagues to do the work for you…

Nils Junge March 9, 2019

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