David A. Fields Consulting Group For the better part of two decades you entered a new course of formal education every year.
That annual ritual probably ceased after you received your degree(s). Would reviving it elevate the success of your consulting firm?
Absolutely.
Outside your consulting firm’s doors, tens of millions of students are eagerly or fearfully entering a new term of classes.
Ah, back-to-school. Time for computer discounts, suburban streets choked by school buses, and parents alternately weeping, cheering, then weeping again as their children depart for kindergarten, high school, then university.
While many professions, including doctors, electricians and even most barbers, require continuing education, ongoing education is completely voluntary in consulting.
There’s a darn good likelihood that you and your team have not enrolled in many structured learning programs over the past few years.
A dose of education, which involves a meaningful investment of money, time, and effort to learn something new, confers many benefits that will boost your consulting firm’s success.
The Benefits of Ongoing Education
Keeps Your Brain Malleable
Education can literally improve the plasticity and physical health of your brain.
Your sharper, more flexible brain develops superior solutions for your clients and imagines more creative, effective ideas for building your firm.
Stretches You
Researchers have found that education will enhance your health and happiness if it pushes you past your current comfort zone.
Stretching and strengthening your thinking—whether on topics directly related to your area of expertise or wholly unrelated—augments your ability to understand your clients’ situations and envision paths to deliver higher value.
Challenges Your Thinking
The best education reveals information you didn’t know and disputes many ideas you’ve been accepting as truths.
These bold affronts to your worldview force you and your consulting firm to adopt new ideas and formulate new connections between concepts.
They are the intellectual fertilizer from which breakthroughs and thought leadership sprout.
The very thought leadership that will attract clients, overshadow competition, outthink AI, and justify premium fees.
Makes You More Interesting
Education is interesting.
Okay, maybe 7th grade Social Studies wasn’t interesting, but education is stimulating when it challenges you and ties to your vision of your better future.
It fans your sparks of excitement, curiosity, and engagement.
Potential clients notice.
They sense when a consulting firm is staffed with intrigued, inquisitive, fascinating people.
All of which makes you and your team more Likeable and Trustable consultants—the type of consulting firm they want to hire.
AI has made it easy to design your own structured learning program. Be careful, though—you’ll be learning from the average of everything ever posted, and AI will confidently teach you all manner of nonsense.
It’s worth the investment to learn from a human expert.
What do you think about scheduling a structured learning program for you or your firm?
Text and images are © 2026 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.
I think it it’s important for consultants to have certifications and subject matter training. It enhances real and perceived value, fills knowledge gaps, and justifies hiring implementation teams from your firm, not just one-person strategy engagements. Current certifications also tend to make “super-senior” consultants look younger on paper.
Interesting points, Jon. In technical consulting, such as implementation of a particular software platform, clients do frequently look for certifications. In most other areas of consulting, certifications hold less sway and have less value. However, keeping up to date and investing in learning beyond what you pick up on projects is worthwhile no matter what type of consultant you are.
Looking younger on paper is a good one. As a “super-senior” consultant myself, I’d welcome a certificate that would make me look younger in person! 😉
Thanks for jumping in with your point of view, Jon.
If you want to be a thought leader, current trainings and certifications won’t help you rise above the crowd. Write articles about what you’ve learned, case studies, whatever, like David does. When you have enough articles, weave them together into a book. Self-publish. Give it away for free on your website, like Seth Godin did with “Ideavirus.” Thought leadership increases your value to clients and customers.
That’s what I did with Agile Process Innovation.
Be a thought leader, not just a thought repeater.
Solid suggestion, Jay. Becoming a thought leader is a natural extension of continuous learning. One add-on to what you’re saying: plenty of consultants loudly proclaim their leadership without putting in the work to truly understand if they’re leading in the right direction. Studying what others do (and giving them credit) is part of achieving valuable thought leader status. As is hands-on experience, of course.
I’m glad you shared your experience, Jay!
The most relevant learning program for us would be elevating our sales capabilities. Your solo practice accelerator class from a couple of years back gave me the incredible foundation to build on and I have been on the continuous learning mindset since then. A sentence I found fascinating from a famous sales guru is “You are not YEARS away from getting what you want; you are SKILLS away from getting what you want.”
What a great way of thinking about gaps and progress, Shankar! Love that. Also, good on you for building on what we covered at the Solo Practice Accelerator. Your dedication to growth and improvement is an inpiration.
I appreciate your jumping into the conversation, Shankar.
David, this really resonated. I’ve been noticing how much of my best thinking lately has come from reading outside my field—psychology, sports, photography, leadership, decision-making—and then asking, “What here travels?” What underlying principle or human capacity can cross from one domain into another?
Your idea of intellectual cross-pollination gives language to something I’ve been experiencing: sometimes the most useful insight about your own field comes from looking somewhere else entirely. Thanks for widening the lens.
Outstanding, Joe. For so many of us consultants, part of the fun is connecting disparate dots. Pulling from an experience in an airport to solve a problem in a school, or leveraging a bag of chocolates to solve, well, any problem. (Or something like that.) I’m impressed with your breadth of reading. It will serve you well, for sure.
Your sharing will inspire a lot of other readers, Joe. Thanks for chiming in.
To quote an old quote “When your are green you grow and when you are ripe you rot.”
So stay lean, mean and green! That is the best way I have learned to increase your value to yourself and your clients.
Wonderful, Tom. That’s a new quote for me, and I like it. Thanks for adding to the library!