TERMINATION

SUBTOPICS

11. 1 Time for Withdrawal

11.2 Evaluation

11.3 Follow – up

11.4 Final Reporting

TERMINATION
• fifth and final phase of the consulting process.

• Every assignment or project has to be brought to an end

once its purpose has been achieved and the consultant’s help
is no longer needed.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE IN TERMINATING A
CONSULTING PROCESS?

CONSULTANT
The consultant has primary responsibility for suggesting at
what point and in what way he or she would withdraw from the
client organization.
The consultant’s withdrawal means that the job in which
he or she has participated

● has been completed

● will be discontinued

● will be pursued, but without further help from the consultant.

The consultant and the client should jointly establish whether the
assignment can be qualified as a success, a failure or something in
between.

Ideally, here should be satisfaction on both sides about the relations that
existed during the assignment.
TIME FOR WITHDRAWAL

 To choose the right moment for withdrawal is often difficult, but a

wrong decision can spoil a good relationship and jeopardize the
success of the project.
PLANNING FOR WITHDRAWAL
Some assignments may be terminated too early, for example if:

● The consultant’s work on the project could not be completed.

● The client overestimated his or her capability to finish the project without having been
sufficiently trained for it.

● The client’s budget does not permit the job to be finished.

● The consultant is in a hurry to start another assignment.

INSTANCES OF ASSIGNMENTS THAT FINISH LATER THAN NECESSARY ARE ALSO
FREQUENT. THIS MAY HAPPEN IF:

● the consultant embarks on a technically difficult project without making

sure that the client is properly trained to take it over.

● the job is vaguely defined, and new problems are discovered in the
course of the assignment.

● the consultant tries to stay longer than necessary.

EVALUATION
 Evaluation is a most important part of the termination phase in
any consulting process.

 Without evaluation, it is impossible to assess whether the

assignment has met its objectives and whether the results
obtained justify the resources used. Neither the client nor the
consultant can draw lessons from the assignment if there is no
evaluation
WHO SHOULD EVALUATE?

 As with the whole consulting process, effective evaluation requires

collaboration. Both the client and the consultant need to know whether
the assignment has achieved its objectives and can be qualified as a
success story.
EVALUATING THE BENEFITS TO THE CLIENT

 The reasons for evaluating the benefits of the assignment are self-evident.
The benefits define the change achieved, a change that must be seen as an
improvement, as a new value added to the client’s business.

 Basically, the benefits are evaluated by comparing the situations before

and after the assignment. This is only possible if the evaluation was
foreseen in designing the assignment, i.e. in defining the results to be
achieved and the criteria for measuring and assessing them.
SIX KINDS OF BENEFITS OR
RESULTS
 new capabilities
 new systems
 new relationships
 new opportunities
 new behaviour
 new performance