This morning, I want to talk about how Nigerian Management Consultants can get work from SERIOUS govt agencies. Many Consultants send in proposals blindly, usually offering training. Many send in their training calendars and brochures for courses in Dubai. Most are binned. Thread
I’ll start by explaining some basics and making some exclusions. The biggest components of the Recurrent budget are training and travel. These two budget items have been used by some public servants as a source of extra income. Consultants have rightly targeted these budgets.
Something serious happened early in 2015, immediately after the elections and before the new govt took power. Govt banned virtually all foreign training and severely restricted foreign travel. Many consultants either did not know or just didn’t believe it. Some still don’t know.
So, rather than have 20 people go to Harvard (a favorite of the Nigerian public service), bring the Harvard Professor here to train 50 people. Cheaper for govt. Denies the public servant the opportunity to travel and to claim Duty Tour Allowances: a vital LEGAL salary top up.
Most of the training institutions around the world has the Nigerian public service as its biggest clients. Indeed, many Nigerian consultants set up office in Dubai, London, Johannesburg & Kuala Lumpur to provide the foreign location needed to facilitate training allowance claims.
Within a few months of the ban, one of the biggest training firms, London-based RIPA International, promptly went out of business. Other smart ones adjusted their strategy and started packaging training to take place in country. Some others simply refused to believe it would work
Now, public servants know politicians inside out. They knew that the new government coming in would distrust virtually everything the former govt did, including these ban on foreign training and restrictions on foreign travel. They were ready for the new government.
In the first year alone, requests for permission to travel out of Nigeria dropped by 70%! Let me not dwell too much on that aspect for now. Suffice it to say that compliance with the ban and restrictions have not been as total as it first was. It largely depends on who is the SGF
I will exclude “juicy” agencies often headed by political affiliates. They tend to make their own rules. I will also exclude consultants that arrogantly and contemptuously assume that what the public servants lack is training. Many public servants are better trained than many.
I want to focus instead on serious public sector consultants that want to do serious work for serious government organisations. Many have made genuine efforts to get work and have not been able to. Some say public servants just chop the budget and that’s why they can’t get work.
What many don’t know is that, with the cash crunch from 2015 and the recession that followed, a lot of what was budgeted wasn’t released. With the ban on foreign training, that budget line was simply deleted for most organisations in subsequent budgets from 2015.
Serious organisations doing serious technical work tend to comply with government regulations. Not so for agencies headed by politicians. Serious organisations doing serious technical work & headed by serious-minded technocrats also tend to be underfunded. Not so for some others.
The serious agencies led by serious people will make a case for better funding but will not go and prostrate for anybody. They’ll keep ramping up more and more work which will make their budget more and more inadequate. Internationel donors will notice the work and offer help.
As DG, I used to say that I run a poor agency that has rich friends. While the agency doesn’t have money, it can often get support from donors. When you work for donors you ACTUALLY have to do the work. This excludes unserious consultants that just want to do deals.
I was once invited to address a gathering of IT consultants and companies. I told them about a tool we had developed. We could only do it using Excel. The public service simply doesn’t pay enough to attract high-quality IT people in-house. The agency had no money to buy the skill
So I finished my speech to the IT people by asking anyone willing to help us turn it into a database FOR FREE to indicate interest. Everybody laughed...except one guy. He came to me afterwards and said “I believe in what you are trying to do. I’ll do it for you for free!”
He spent a month of his time doing it for us. At the end, I felt compelled to at least cover his expenses and gave him a little money for his staff. He initially declined but I insisted, since it had taken that long because we were not always available to sign things off for him.
Then we showed the tool to a donor that said “Wow! Let’s pay him to do further work on it.” They did. They were also supporting us to build a management information system. He got nearly 18 months of continuous donor-funded work for the one “free” month he initially gave us.
Another consultant came and said “I have studied your work. I can make it easier for you to focus, prioritise and demonstrate the impact of your work. You don’t have to pay me. I’ll do it for free.” I said “Sure.” He trained us for a week. We only paid for venue and refreshments.
He showed such a deep understanding of the public service that I was quite impressed. When we wanted to do donor-funded work that needed an experienced public sector consultant for 3 months, guess who I recommend? Yep! Again, he earned much more than I could have paid initially.
I have many more examples but you get the point. A few consultants like @femain actually studied problems and came up with viable solutions. Unfortunately, I could only recommend him to others because it was focused on healthcare which I had no control over.
We also had a free Health and Safety assessment from @TFMLNigeria but we were based in the Federal Secretariat and had no control over the offices we occupied. If we had been to have been located in our own or in rented accommodation, it is likely that would have got work from us
Many IT companies and consultants design solutions and then go around looking for a problem to solve it with. You invite them to show you and they won’t even wait for you to introduce your staff before they start their sales pitch. They’re so excited by their product!
They won’t wait for you to introduce your organisation and what you do. They won’t ask you what your priorities, achievements & challenges are. They’ll just start presenting. They finish and I thank them and promise to reflect on it with my team. No timeframe. End of discussion!
Unless you are Microsoft, Oracle or SAP, don’t do it that way. Learn about the organisation first. Many serious govt organisations do annual work plans. Ask for that first. The work plan will be clearer and more detailed than the cryptic labels in the annual budget. Start there!
In conclusion, identify who you want to work for. If it’s a serious agency with a serious DG, they probably won’t have the money to pay you initially. Let them get to know you and they will find people that can pay you well. Don’t pitch letters in blindly. Do your homework first.
Finally, find out the key problems that they are trying to solve and try and understand it fully and how you can help. Focus on solving problems, not just on offering training. Train as part of delivering solutions. This integrates you into the agency’s work. Good luck. End!
