Every lean consultant sounds credible in a sales meeting. The vocabulary is standard, the case studies are polished, and the confidence is professionally maintained. The way through is not better judgment of presentations, it is better questions: ones whose good answers cannot be faked because they require having actually done the work. Here are nine, with the answers that should reassure you and the ones that should end the meeting.
History: three questions about the past
1. What did you run, and for how long? You are listening for line responsibility: a plant, a value stream, a department, with people and numbers attached, held over years. A career made only of projects about operations is a different profession. Red flag: a biography that goes from business school to consulting without ever owning a Monday morning.
2. Show me a standard you left behind that is still in use. The deliverable of good lean work is a changed system: standard work, a functioning review rhythm, trained people. Strong practitioners can show artifacts and name the person who still owns them. Red flag: deliverables that are all analyses and roadmaps, authored for steering committees.
3. Tell me about an engagement that failed. Everyone senior has one. The good answer names their own contribution to the failure and what changed in their practice afterwards. Red flag: failures that are entirely the client's fault, or the claim of none.
Method: three questions about the work
4. What will you not do? Serious practitioners have a defined edge: they turn down work outside their depth, and they narrow your scope rather than widening it. Red flag: your problem happens to be exactly what their universal method addresses, whatever your problem is.
5. How does this engagement end? The answer should contain a measurable target state, a handover to named internal owners, and a date. Red flag: endings described in terms of phases and renewal options.
6. Who exactly does the work? In leveraged firms the seller and the deliverer are different people. Insist on meeting the person who will stand on your floor, and put their name in the contract. Red flag: resistance to naming, or a team sheet where seniority is concentrated in oversight roles.
Commercials: three questions about the money
7. How is your fee tied to the result? Outcome-scoped fees, agreed against a defined target, align incentives. Day rates align presence. There are legitimate day-rate cases (open-ended advisory, interim capacity), but a scoped project priced only in days should prompt the question why. Our rates guide has the market numbers.
8. What happens if the fit is wrong in week one? Wrong fit happens to good people. The professional answer is a swap or an exit, cheap and fast, agreed in advance. On Lean Competence this is contractual: a first-week-fit guarantee with a no-cost swap. Red flag: fit risk answered with process language rather than a mechanism.
9. What do we own when you leave? Standards, training materials, data, working files: yours. The improvement capability should demonstrably live in your people, and the consultant should be able to describe how they made themselves unnecessary. Red flag: dependency by design, including tools you must license to keep using your own improvement system.
Using the questions
Two practical notes. Ask questions 1, 4 and 7 before any presentation is shown; they change the meeting from performance to conversation. And weight specificity over polish across all nine: the operator who answers with names, numbers and one visible scar is the profile that moves plants. If you would rather not run this gauntlet across a market of confident websites, that vetting is the thing our network already did: around 3% of applicants pass it, which is what a 24-hour shortlist is made of.
FAQ
What is the single most revealing question to ask a lean consultant?
"Show me a standard you left behind that is still in use." It requires delivered, sustained work and a client relationship good enough to know the standard survived. Nothing in a pitch deck can substitute for it.
Should I check references before hiring a lean consultant?
Yes, and ask the reference one question above all: what is still in place today? Improvement that evaporated after the consultant left is the most common failure and the least visible in case studies.
How many consultants should I compare?
Three is enough when the vetting questions are hard; twenty is not enough when they are soft. A curated shortlist beats a broad tender for scoped operational work.
Are certifications a reliable signal?
Belts and certificates verify training, not operational history. Treat them as neutral. The nine questions above measure what certificates cannot.