Ego Trippin'

Like I always say, there's no 'I' in "team". There is a 'me', though, if you jumble it up.
- David Shore
 
I believe that this profession will consume you if you let it. You can get so caught up in solving other people's problems, your travel schedule, your points, your miles, and the endless amount of time staying relevant and self-promoting that pretty soon the only friend you have is yourself.
The sad part is that the things that will bring you down to reality include a serious illness, a family member or close friend getting sick or close to dying, or something else personal hits you extremely hard.
 
To that point, if I were king for a day (or week), I would take a small group of consultants and apply principles that I've read from the following books:

1. Drive, by Dan Pink which explains Motivation 3.0. I'm a simple person. I would throw metrics out the window and work off the belief that consultants will sell and deliver work to fulfill a sense mastery, autonomy, and purpose.
2. Tribal Leadership, by Logan, King, and Fischer-Wright. I would lead and work with consultants that put the values and purpose of the organization over themselves.

I would like to see how one group based on 1 and 2 above compares against a group that follows the traditional if - then model. An example of the if-then model is -- if you hit your sales and managed number, then you get to continue down the path of partnership.

This week just started and I've already had too much of myself. Part of that is because in the consulting profession, you are the product and you have to continually promote the product. But this comes at a cost which includes the development of many inflated egos and a culture of one-oneupmanship as sr. managers jockey for the limited spots at the partner level.

My advice is this --(if you are a consultant) Don't get lost in your own legend. When you need a reality check, talk to your friends. To them you are probably the guy that is crazy to wake up at 4:00 in the morning to catch a flight to a place with over 3 feet of snow only to get to come back home on late Thursday nights, spend the next 48 hours trying to cram a personal life in, only to do it all again the next week.

Not that there is anything wrong with what I do. However, those two books give me hope that organizations are beginning to embrace a different philosophy of management and leadership. The reality is that maybe this is one of those situations where things are all find and dandy in a book - but apply it in practice and it's just not realistic. That may be the case. However, I do not think it would hurt to give a small group practitioners  a shot at working under a different model to see how they do.