And Why “Delivery” Isn’t the Finish Line
Written by Teresa Tso
After spending 17+ years helping organizations transform their businesses and operations, followed by a few intensive years on the client side, I’ve returned to consulting with a fundamentally different perspective on what successful delivery really means.
This isn’t just another career pivot. It’s a reimagining of how consulting should work when you’ve experienced both sides: the promises made in boardrooms and the realities of implementation on the ground floor.
That’s why joining Jarvis Consulting Group feels like more than a new role. It feels like alignment. I’ve found a partner that sees consulting the way I do: as a long-term investment in client success, not a quick handover. Together, we’re focused on doing it right - from day one to day two*, and beyond.
*By day two, I mean the period after the consulting team has wrapped up and left - when the internal team is left to absorb, run, and evolve everything that’s been delivered.
The View from Both Sides of the Table
Over the years, I’ve worked on projects of all sizes: from targeted process improvements to $18M transformation programs, across industries like telecom, public sector, and financial services. When I was leading program management for an $18M financial services program with 200+ resources across seven workstreams, I thought success meant hitting milestones, managing budgets, and delivering on scope. The client signed off, we celebrated, and we moved on to the next engagement. Classic consulting playbook.
But sitting on the client side, leading the operations team and managing 12+ HR platforms including People Data for a 9,000 employee organization, I experienced the brutal reality of what happens after the consultants leave. I lived through the "Day 2" challenges that most consulting teams never see.
In one instance, a consulting team delivered a solution that looked solid on the surface but didn’t hold up in our live environment. My team had to step in, roll back code, and rebuild parts of the solution just to stabilize operations. It required time, resources, and effort we hadn’t planned for, all because what was delivered wasn’t built to work in the real-world context of our systems and teams.
The harsh truth? Most consulting engagements optimize for project success, not client success. And there's a massive difference between the two.
Why Long-Term Client Success Must Be the North Star
Traditional consulting operates on a fundamental misalignment: consultants are incentivized to deliver projects, while clients need sustainable outcomes. This creates what some call the "handoff fallacy" - the belief that successful implementation equals successful transformation.
During my time on the clients side, I realized that the most valuable consulting partners weren't the ones who delivered flawless go-lives. They were the firms that understood our business would evolve, our people would resist, and our technology would need continuous optimization. They designed solutions with sustainability in mind, not just technical perfection.
The difference became crystal clear when I experienced it firsthand. The consultants who succeeded long-term were those who asked uncomfortable questions:
What is the client’s actual budget?
What business value will this project deliver?
What problem are we really solving?
Can the consulting team actually solve our problems and transfer the knowledge we need to sustain the solution?
These weren't project risks. They were business realities. And addressing them required thinking far beyond traditional project boundaries.
What "Doing It Properly" Really Means (At Least For Me)
"Doing it properly" isn't about perfect documentation or flawless technical delivery. It's about building organizational readiness for the life that happens after go-live.
Over the course of 17+ years in consulting, I drove process optimization initiatives that impacted 1,000+ resources and delivered significant cost savings. Those metrics looked impressive in project outcomes, but what mattered more was whether those improvements stuck. Were the implemented solutions still being used and continuously improved later? Were the cost savings sustainable, or just temporary wins on paper? And perhaps most importantly: did the client have the internal capacity, structure, and ownership to keep operating what we built once we were gone?
From the client side, I learned that sustainable transformation requires three critical elements that most consulting engagements miss:
1. Capability Transfer, Not Just Knowledge Transfer
Traditional knowledge transfer involves documentation handoffs and training sessions. Real capability transfer means the client team cannot just operate your solution - they can evolve it. They understand the why behind the what, so they can make continuous improvements and modifications when business needs change.
When I was on the client side, the most valuable partners were those who taught us to fish, not just delivered the fish.
2. Starting With the End in Mind
I've seen too many projects fail because the people who would ultimately support and operate them weren’t involved early enough. When teams don’t understand how a new solution will impact their day-to-day work (or worse, when they feel it’s being imposed without context), adoption suffers.
That’s why alignment with the end users and support teams needs to start from day one. This means bringing them into the process early, giving them visibility into how the solution is evolving, and ensuring they have the opportunity to shape it where appropriate. It means designing with them, not just for them, so when go-live arrives, they’re not only ready, but they’re invested.
3. Organizational Readiness for Day Two
Before proposing any solution, one of the most overlooked (but essential) questions is: Is the organization truly ready for this change? This isn’t about change management in the traditional sense. It’s a practical readiness check that spans the entire stakeholder landscape.
Are the right teams (operations, support, and end users) prepared to absorb the change? Does the organization have the time, capacity, and commitment to adopt, maintain, and evolve what we’re about to deliver? Are we introducing this transformation during a season where the business can actually handle disruption?
If the answer to “Can they live with this and thrive with it?” is unclear, we’re not ready to proceed.
The Day 2 Reality: Where Most Consulting Falls Short
"Day 2" is industry shorthand for the day after go-live, when the project team disbands and the client takes full ownership. It's where most transformation initiatives either thrive or slowly decay.
Having lived through countless Day 2s from, I can tell you that the organizations that succeed share common characteristics:
Internal champions who understand not just how it works, but why it was solutioned that way. They are the ones that were there from beginning to end.
Structures for continuous improvement
Internal teams having the capacity to support the project and rollout with clear ownership
The right internal skill sets - sometimes requiring new roles or teams.
Business sponsors who understands their role starts at go-live, not ends there.
The consulting firms that understand this reality design their engagements differently. They measure success by six-month and twelve-month outcomes, not just go-live metrics.
Aligning Consulting Teams with Internal Reality
One of my biggest revelations from the client side was how differently internal teams and consulting teams view risk, success, and timelines.
Consulting teams optimize for project delivery within defined parameters. Internal teams live with the consequences of those decisions indefinitely. This fundamental difference creates persistent tension that most engagements never properly address.
In my experience, the most successful consulting partnerships were those that truly embedded with our internal teams - not just during requirements gathering, but throughout delivery and transition. The consultants attended our staff meetings, participated in our strategic planning, and understood our internal politics and resource constraints.
This integration revealed critical insights that purely external perspectives miss:
Internal teams have competing priorities that don't pause for transformation initiatives. Successful consulting approaches account for this reality, building implementation plans that work within existing organizational constraints.
Internal teams have institutional knowledge that's often overlooked but always critical. The best consultants don't just gather requirements - they understand the historical context behind current processes and the political sensitivities around proposed changes.
Internal teams will live with sub-optimal solutions far longer than they'll live with solutions they can't understand or maintain. Sometimes the technically superior solution is the strategically wrong choice.
Building Organizations That Thrive Post-Transformation
The ultimate measure of consulting success isn't what gets delivered, it’s what the organization can accomplish independently afterward.
During my time managing business transformation initiatives across telecommunications, financial services, and public sector clients, I learned that sustainable transformation requires building three core capabilities within client organizations:
Adaptive Capacity
Organizations need the ability to modify solutions as business needs evolve. This requires more than technical documentation. It requires understanding the design principles behind solutions so internal teams can make intelligent modifications.
In some of my projects, the most valuable deliverable wasn't the new process flows or technology configuration. It was the decision-making framework that helps evaluate future changes and enhancements.
Internal Consulting Capability
The best clients develop internal consulting skills - the ability to analyze problems, design solutions, manage change, and drive adoption. External consultants should be building this capability, not replacing it.
I've seen organizations become dependent on external consultants for every process improvement or system modification. The successful approach develops internal teams that can tackle 80% of future challenges independently, calling in specialists only for the truly complex 20%.
Continuous Improvement Culture
Transformation isn't a destination - it's an ongoing process. The organizations that maximize their consulting investments are those that view delivered solutions as the foundation for continuous optimization, not the final answer.
While on the client side, some of our most successful platform implementations were those where we immediately began planning the next iteration of improvements. We treated go-live as the beginning of optimization, not the end of development.
The New Consulting Paradigm: Partnership Over Projects
Returning to consulting with this perspective, I'm convinced the industry needs to fundamentally restructure how we engage with clients.
We need:
Embedded team structures that bring together consulting expertise and internal knowledge from day one, not just for alignment, but to co-create with the people who will ultimately support, operate, and evolve the solution. These hybrid teams should carry the engagement seamlessly from design through optimization, with shared accountability.
Continuous capability transfer, not just at handover, but throughout the entire engagement. From frontline users to support teams to business stakeholders, everyone impacted by the solution should have the context, clarity, and competence to move forward confidently once we step away.
Not handoffs. Not just slide decks. Not walkaways.
My Commitment: Consulting That Builds, Not Just Delivers
As I step into this next chapter with Jarvis Consulting Group, I’m committing to a different kind of consulting:
One that puts long-term outcomes before short-term wins.
One that measures success by what clients do after we leave.
One that builds capability, not dependency. Because having sat on both sides of the table, I know that transformation isn’t about what we deliver - it’s about what the client sustains, adapts, and grows.
That’s the consulting standard I believe in. That’s the standard I’ve found a partner for at Jarvis. And that’s the value I’m committed to bringing to every client relationship going forward.
If this resonates with you (whether you’re navigating your own Day 2 or rethinking how consulting should work) I’d love to connect. Let’s build something that lasts!
