In a recent blog, we wrote about some of the key matters management and leadership should consider in advance of engaging a consultant. In this second of three related articles, we explore the factors that can influence the outcome of an active project and identify the cadence of a typical engagement to highlight opportunities for alignment and success. The initiation of any active consulting project begins with some level of discovery, even when the consultant has had prior engagements with a client. It’s important to convene appropriate stakeholders whose perspective should inform the framing of issues and the exploration of solutions at the outset. The kick-off allows participants to review the objectives of the engagement, clarify the scope of the project, align around roles and responsibilities and agree on milestones. Details to be addressed include: determining what data will be necessary to inform the discovery and development of findings, identifying interviewees whose perspective can inform on issues, and deciding how stakeholders will be engaged as project leaders, interviewees, committee participants or decision makers in the work ahead. Depending on the depth and breadth of the project, multiple work streams may be appropriate to ensure both timely and meaningful results. Client leaders and their consulting partners should designate sponsors for each work stream, creating clarity regarding accountability as well as ensuring domain knowledge, subject matter expertise and prioritization of the work is secured. Work streams for different parts of a project may have sequential or overlapping timelines reflecting the dependencies inherent around data availability, decision making requirements or the need to spread out work tasks over time to accommodate organization and leadership bandwidth. To use the example from our prior blog, an engagement seeking to align provider compensation models with the shift to value-based care may require several work streams to accomplish the tasks necessary and to engage enough stakeholders to drive buy-in on both the process and the output produced. The role of the sponsors should be consistently applied across different work stream efforts. This typically consists of assigning tasks and reviewing progress, analyzing data and relevant research, soliciting the input and expertise of affected parties and outside experts; and ultimately shepherding the team forward to develop findings and recommendations for decision makers.