The Additional Task of an Internal Advisor


By Hans Bool


The internal advisor can be a specialist of any field in (the) organization. The accountant is one of the most common examples we all know. The accountant prepares the financial figures and is more than anyone else up to day with the roundabouts of the organization.

Other (internal) advisors you often find are:

• Internal communication advisor
• External communication advisor (PR)
• Internal control
• HRM
• ICT
• Security and Risk
• Tax and legal
• Marketing or Sales
• …

If you look at it, the advisory role could pop up in any area of specialism. And this quite normal because for each of the above mentioned areas your organization would want to know things like; “what is the competition doing in this area, what are market trends we need to track,” etc… Then it is possible to concentrate such a role to a single function (FTE). This -– internal advisor -– will then prepare for initiatives that could be commented on and amended by the group.

It is also possible to leave this role out of the official organization, which means that it will have to be done implicitly. The advantage is that everybody can bring in an opinion and that the commitment to discuss certain topics (competition, market trends, etc) increases. The disadvantage is that your organization will probably not learn enough. Each new issue will be handled as unique and may require a lot of effort to communicate and to resolve.

The additional value of the internal advisor is not only that he will select those issues that will affect the team, but prepare for a general way of handling these in the (near) future.

© 2006 Hans Bool

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days.


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