Stop Planning, Start Piloting: Effectual Thinking for Boutique Consultancies

Let me tell you about our dirty little consulting secret: we're all framework junkies. Every time we discover a shiny new model, we get that familiar rush - that "this explains everything!" high. Then we spend weeks trying to cram the messy real world into our beautiful new box.

That's the dark side of our love affair with standardization. Those neatly packaged ideas become cognitive prison cells. Before you know it, you're twisting reality like a pretzel just to make it fit your precious diagram. Been there, done that, got the methodological scars to prove it.

Here's a radical thought: what if we flipped the script? Instead of starting with frameworks, start with the messy, stubborn, gloriously ugly case studies from the real world. Collect enough of these unruly specimens, and then - only then - ask "Which model actually makes sense of this chaos?" It's like building a map after you've actually explored the territory, not before.

That's what makes effectual thinking different (and why I'm writing this series). It's not another framework to add to your consultant's toolbelt - god knows we have enough of those. Instead, it's something far more valuable: a pattern that emerged from watching real founders build real businesses in the wild. Not in boardrooms or business schools, but in the trenches.

This approach offers something immediately useful: methods to test services without overplanning, ways to experiment affordably, and techniques to grow your practice through validated learning rather than rigid frameworks. It's about matching how successful businesses really develop, not how they're portrayed in consulting case studies.

Try to read this like another consulting recipe, and you'll miss the whole point. Trust me, I learned this one the hard way.

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The Origin Story (And Why We Should Care)

The story starts in 2001, when Professor Saras D. Sarasvathy dropped a bomb on the entrepreneurship world. But unlike most academic theories cooked up in sterile labs, this one came from the trenches. She hunted down a near-complete list of expert, repeat entrepreneurs from 1960-1985 who had started multiple ventures, who had run companies for a decade or more, and who’d produced durable outcomes. The sample wasn’t a bunch of hobbyists: these were the people VCs and media singled out as exceptional.

There was one big surprise finding: when these experts faced a new venture problem, they didn’t start with fancy five-year plans. Instead, they did something far more pragmatic: they looked at what they had - skills, connections, reputation, whatever small assets they controlled - and started running experiments, building partnerships, and pivoting their way forward. Sarasvathy called this approach effectuation. I call it the antidote to the goal-obsessed planning we've been force-feeding our clients.

Here's why you should care if you're running a small consultancy: you can't afford the luxury of endless planning. You need clients now. You need to learn fast. And you need to make sure one wrong move won't sink your ship. That's why effectuation isn't just another interesting theory - it might be the most important idea you'll encounter this year if you're building a practice with limited resources.

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The Elephant in the Room: Why Isn't Everyone Doing This?

If effectuation is so powerful, you might be wondering what I wondered years ago: why isn't every consultant doing this? The answer reveals a lot about our industry - and why this approach is pure gold for smaller practices like yours and mine.

Let's start with the elephant wearing the MBA cap: education. Look, I love business schools (I studied at one), but they're factories of causal thinking. Partners at big firms speak the language of five-year plans and ROI projections like it's their mother tongue. And who can blame them? Their clients - especially procurement teams and CFOs - demand detailed roadmaps and fixed budgets. "Trust the process and see what emerges" is about as appealing to a CFO as a random number generator.

Then there's the way big consulting firms are built: billable hours targets, utilization metrics, annual planning cycles. The whole system is designed to stamp out variation and uncertainty. Try suggesting "let's run some experiments and see what works" in that environment, and watch the partners' faces turn interesting shades of pale. Their business model depends on junior consultants delivering standardized work - it's how the margins work. Messy discovery and improvisation is way harder to scale.

There is also the reputation angle. Many boards and senior partners I’ve talked to have this mindset of seeing experimentation as too risky. They argue their clients expect certainty, and that’s simply easier to sell a modeled ROI than tell them we're going to “learn as we go." And you know what? They're not entirely wrong - for their world.

But here's the beautiful thing: this isn't your world. You're not carrying the weight of a century-old consulting brand on your shoulders. You don't have an army of junior consultants to keep busy. You're nimble, independent, and free to work in ways that actually match how successful businesses really get built.

It’s not the goal of this article, but if you're curious how to make effectuation palatable in big consulting firms (maybe you're working with one), here's what I've seen work. Package your experiments as "de-risking pilots" (they love that term). Create proper-looking artifacts like decision memos and dashboards. Set clear budget boundaries and decision gates. Basically, make the experimental look predictable. But that's a story for another day - let's get back to how this actually works in practice...

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How It Actually Works: Causal vs Effectual

So what does effectual thinking look like in practice? Let me introduce you to two consultants whose stories will make this concrete.

Picture two consultants starting their own firm. First, there's Alice (you probably know an Alice - maybe you are one). She's doing everything by the book. Revenue targets? Check. Customer acquisition costs? Calculated to two decimal places. Detailed execution plan? You bet. "I'll develop my service offering, land the right clients, build a team, and scale," she announces confidently. This is causal logic - the comforting belief that we can predict enough of the future to plan our way to success. Spoiler alert: the market rarely reads our plans.

Then there's Bob. He's been around the block a few times and plays a different game entirely. Instead of crystal-ball gazing, he starts with what's real: his skills (battle-tested), his network (carefully cultivated), and whatever modest assets he has in hand. He runs small, affordable experiments, builds alliances with people who can help, and keeps his radar on full scan for market opportunities. This is effectual logic - the pragmatic acknowledgment that while we can't predict tomorrow, we can definitely work with what we have today.

I must have used the kitchen analogy hundreds of times to explain that to clients. The causal cook (Alice) decides "I'm making carbonara tonight," writes a shopping list, and heads to the store to get exactly what they need. The effectual cook (Bob) opens the fridge, spots some eggs and bacon, and thinks "What delicious thing can I make that someone would happily pay for right now?" (And let me tell you, I've seen some surprisingly successful consulting practices built exactly this way.)

Sure, both approaches can put food on the table. But here's the reality for small consultancies: you're not running a Michelin-star restaurant with infinite resources. You're more like that creative chef who needs to make rent next month. You can't spend six months perfecting your menu, and you definitely can't afford to stock every exotic ingredient "just in case." Starting with what you have - your skills, your network, your current tools - lets you get cooking faster, learn from real customers (without breaking the bank), and adapt your offerings based on what the market actually has an appetite for.

Let's get practical. Sarasvathy's five principles aren't just academic theory - they're the operating system that makes effectual thinking work in the real world. I've seen consultants transform their practices using these principles, so I'm going to break down exactly what they mean and - more importantly - how you can put them to work starting tomorrow.

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Working With What You’ve Got

First up is the Bird-in-Hand principle - or what I like to call the "work with what you've got" rule. It's deceptively simple: start with who you are, what you know, and who you know. Sounds obvious, right? But here's the thing - most consultants do exactly the opposite. They dream up fancy offerings they'll need months to develop, while ignoring the gold mine of experience, methods, and relationships they already have. I've watched countless consultants have their "aha moment" when they realize their next client opportunity is probably sitting in their LinkedIn connections right now, not in some future capability they haven't built yet.

In practice, this means building your first offers around the assets you already control - your battle-tested methodologies, your hard-won sector reputation, your network of warm contacts who actually return your calls. Don't overthink this part. A quick inventory of what you've got is all you need to start testing offers tomorrow, without spending a dime on new capabilities.

Let me tell you about my first stumbling attempt at this "work with what you've got" principle. I sat down one morning, armed with coffee and good intentions, thinking I'd catalogue my consulting superpowers. The exercise left me with a list so thin, it practically whispered “impostor syndrome” in my ear. I was doing exactly what I warned against earlier - focusing on all the frameworks and capabilities I needed to build instead of what I already had.

Then a mentor gave me some advice I'll never forget. "Stop writing a wish list," she said, "and start writing a have list." She made me spend an hour listing only things I'd actually done - problems I'd solved, tools I'd built, people who trusted me enough to pick up the phone when I called. No aspirational stuff allowed.

That exercise changed everything. Turned out I had enough "raw materials" to start three different types of client projects right away. Not the fancy transformation programs I thought I needed, but focused offerings that solved specific problems I'd already solved before.

The interesting thing was how quickly this shifted from theory to practice. Within two weeks, I'd put together a "minimum viable pilot sprint" using just my existing network and tools. Was it perfect? Hell no. But it was real, and it generated actual client conversations that taught me more in a month than a year of capability building would have.

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Small Bets, Smart Risks

Next up is the Affordable Loss principle - my favorite antidote to those wild "hockey stick" revenue projections we consultants love to make. Instead of asking "How much could I make?", start with "What can I afford to lose?" Trust me, this mental flip changes everything.

When you cap your downside on each experiment, you can run lots of them without risking the whole ship. I'm talking about quick pilots like two-hour diagnostics priced just high enough to ensure the client's serious, or one-day workshops delivered at cost to get your foot in the door. It turns consulting from a high-stakes poker game into a series of small, smart bets,

The hardest lesson I learned about small bets came from a project that nearly sank my practice in its first year. I was about to land what seemed like a dream client - you know, the kind that makes you want to clear your calendar and go all-in. I spent three weeks crafting the perfect proposal, building elaborate material, the whole thing. When they kill the whole thing after the second meeting, I realized I'd just gambled a month of runway on a single roll of the dice.

That experience forced me to get radically practical about risk. I started treating every new client engagement like a scientific experiment: what's the smallest test I could run to learn if this would work? I remember my first "micro-pilot" - a two-hour strategy session priced just high enough to ensure the client was serious. The deliverable was a single-page action plan. Not exactly the comprehensive transformation roadmap I would have proposed before, but it worked. The client got immediate value, I got paid, and most importantly, I learned exactly what they really needed without betting the farm.

Now I have a simple rule: every new offering has to pass what I call the "lunch meeting test". If I can't deliver meaningful value in the time it takes to have lunch with someone, I'm probably overcomplicating it.

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Building Your Partner Network

Now comes my favorite part - the Crazy-Quilt principle. Think of it like assembling a world-class jazz ensemble. Instead of trying to be everything to everyone (a rookie mistake I've made more times than I'd like to admit), you start bringing together virtuosos who complement your own expertise.

I'm talking about bringing in that brilliant data engineer who can turn your insights into dashboards, or that UX designer who makes your deliverables look like a million bucks. These aren't just subcontractors - they're partners who can co-deliver pilots with you, split the rewards, and open doors to new clients.

Here's what nobody tells you about partnerships: they're actually better market validation than any customer survey. When a skilled professional is willing to invest their time and reputation alongside yours, that's the market telling you you're onto something real.

Let me tell you about how I stumbled into the power of partnerships. I was struggling with a client project that needed technical expertise I didn't have. Instead of turning down the work, I reached out to a former colleague - a brilliant data engineer who'd gone independent. Over virtual coffee, we sketched out how we could join forces to find useful insights from the client data.

That first collaboration taught me something important about partnerships: they're not about formal agreements or fancy revenue-sharing models. They're about finding people whose work makes yours better, and vice versa. The data guy and I never signed a single document. We never met outside of Zoom. We just agreed on a simple split and got to work. That project led to three more, each one better than the last.

Now whenever I spot a gap in what I can offer clients, I don't immediately try to fill it myself. Instead, I think about who in my network might already be brilliant at that thing. This is how I’ve built my “rolodex” - a UX designer who makes my deliverables sing, an CRM consultant who can implement what I recommend, a veteran sales coach who brings credibility in industries I'm still learning. Each partnership started with a simple project, not a complicated agreement.

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Turning Surprises Into Opportunities

Enter the Lemonade principle. Every consultant has war stories about projects that went sideways, but here's the million-dollar question: what did you do with those surprises?

Most consultants try to forget their awkward moments. The smartest ones treat those "weird" client requests and unexpected problems like gold mines. I've seen entire practice areas grow out of what started as a client asking "Hey, while you're here, could you also help with...?"

The trick isn't just making lemonade from lemons - it's turning that lemonade into a scalable product line. That random request you got last week might be pointing to a gap in the market that nobody's filling yet.

The best service offering I ever developed came from what initially felt like a project going off the rails. A client hired me for strategy work but kept pulling me into operational problems. Instead of steering them back to my carefully planned approach, I got curious. Why were these "distractions" so important to them?

Those unexpected detours turned out to be gold. While my competitors were selling high-level strategy work, what clients really wanted was help with the messy reality of getting things done. I started paying attention to these "interruptions" across all my projects. A pattern emerged: clients would hire me for one thing but really want help with something adjacent they were embarrassed to ask for directly.

This changed how I work with clients entirely. Now I treat every unexpected request or mid-project pivot as market research in disguise. Some of my most successful offerings started as "scope creep" in other projects. When three different clients ask for the same "favor," that's not a distraction - that's the market telling you what it actually needs.

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Taking Control

Finally, we come to the Pilot-in-the-Plane principle. You can't control the market, but you can control how you show up every day. I learned this lesson the hard way during my first market downturn as an independent consultant.

I remember the exact moment it hit me. I was sitting at my desk, staring at my pipeline dashboard - a spreadsheet that had gone from comfortably full to alarmingly empty in just two months. Instead of doing something about it, I'd spent the last three weeks reading market reports, adjusting financial models, and convincing myself I needed a "better strategy" before taking action.

The truth was, I was hiding. Every morning I'd tell myself I needed just one more day to "figure things out." One more analysis, one more framework, one more perfect plan. Meanwhile, I wasn't calling clients. Wasn't writing. Wasn't showing up in the places where work actually happens. I was doing exactly what I tell clients to avoid - trying to predict the future instead of creating it.

The wake-up call came when a trusted client called to check on me. "Haven't heard from you in a while," she said. "Everything okay?" That's when it hit me: I'd been so busy planning for uncertainty that I'd stopped doing the basic things that had built my practice in the first place.

So I started with the basics. Every morning, I'd reach out to three people in my network - not to sell, just to check in. I created a simple quality checklist for every deliverable, no matter how small. I set up regular feedback conversations with clients, not just at project end but throughout our work together. None of this was revolutionary, but it was controllable.

Here's what surprised me: the more I focused on these controllable elements, the less the market uncertainty mattered. Clients started referring me not because I had perfect market timing, but because they trusted my consistent delivery. Partners wanted to work with me not because I could predict industry trends, but because they knew exactly what to expect when we collaborated.

It turned out that being the pilot of a small, reliable plane was far better than being a passenger on a bigger, fancier one that might or might not reach its destination. This principle isn't sexy - it's about showing up every day and doing the basics well. But it's what turns a collection of client projects into a sustainable practice.

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Putting It All Together: Service Development

Now that we understand the principles of effectual thinking, let's see how they transform one of consulting's biggest challenges: developing your service offerings.

This is where our framework addiction typically hits hardest - we either fall back on copying established models or lose ourselves in endless market analysis. But effectual thinking gives us a better way. Here's how to apply everything we've discussed to build services that actually work:

Step 1: Start with reality, not dreams. Remember that asset inventory we did earlier? Pull it out again. But this time, look at it through the lens of "What problems can I solve right now with these tools?" Don't worry about fancy packaging yet - just identify the concrete ways you can help clients today.

Step 2: Create your pilot offerings. Design 2-3 micro-offerings that deliver something tangible in 1-3 sessions. I'm talking about focused deliverables like:

• A one-page strategy roadmap that clarifies priorities
• A decision-ready diagnostic that solves a specific pain point
• A prioritized action list backed by your experience

Price these smart: high enough to show you're serious, low enough to make decisions easy.

Step 3: Bring in the A-team. This is where that partner network comes in handy. Grab your best technical or industry partner and co-design a pilot offering. Better yet, get a friendly client involved in the design process. They bring the real-world context; you bring the methodology. It's amazing how much better services become when they're built with partners and clients, not for them.

Step 4: Listen like your practice depends on it. After each pilot, capture three critical data points:

• What specifically did the client value? (Not what they say they valued - what they actually used)
• Would they buy more? (Get specific about what and why)
• Who else needs this? (Get a warm introduction right then)

These aren't vanity metrics - they're your go/no-go signals for scaling services.

Step 5: Build only what works. Here's where patience pays off. Don't create that polished service brochure until you've run at least three successful pilots. Don't standardize processes until you've seen patterns emerge naturally. Let the market tell you what to productize - it's smarter than we are.

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The Real Promise of Effectual Thinking

Look, I'm not going to sell you some fairy tale about effectual thinking being your guaranteed path to consulting riches. It's not a shortcut, and it's definitely not another fancy growth framework to memorize.

What it is, though, is something far more valuable: a battle-tested way of building a consulting practice that actually works in the real world. It's about making bets you can survive, learning from every move, building a network of partners who amplify your impact, and turning those "oh crap" moments into opportunities.

If you're running a small consultancy right now, juggling limited resources and searching for your next client, this isn't just theory - this is your playbook. I've watched too many smart consultants try to play by big-firm rules and struggle. But I've also seen the ones who embrace effectual thinking turn their small pilots into thriving, sustainable practices.

The choice is yours: you can keep waiting until you have the perfect plan, or you can start working with what you've got right now. I know which path I'd choose.