Last week, my colleague Lindsay Quinter and I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the Association of Internal Management Consultant‘s Annual Conference. This intimate, 3-day gathering in Orlando provided a chance for internal consultants to share best practices and wrestle with common issues around team structure, operating model, project prioritization, and funding model.

Not sure what an “internal consultant” is?  Much like an external consultant, an internal consultant works in an advisory capacity to teams across their organization to create strategic vision and planning, lead change, improve the performance of the company, and tackle major initiatives. They bring the same specialized management consulting expertise that an external consultant brings, but with the added knowledge and organizational expertise of the company they are embedded in.

One of the sessions at this year’s conference was a comparison of funding models for internal consultants. Internal consulting groups can be funded by their companies in a variety of ways, including corporate funding, allocations from business units that use the consultants services, and even for fee-for -service. Each option has its pros and cons and the session was a lively discussion of the various options and befits associated with each. Lindsay has put together her notes from the session into a concise visual explanation. Caution: these are only from our notes from one session.

We probably got a few things wrong…but a tool like this is great way to present information for structured conversations and refinement. So, take a look and if you agree or disagree–drop us a line and let us know how you see funding for internal consulting groups differently.

If you want to know more about our session, The role of visual explanations in strategy development, we’ll be doing encore presentation webinar on Wednesday May 17.