Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

I'm reading Carol Dweck's Mindset  which talks about how the frame of mind that we are in contributes to our ability to succeed and reach our potential.  What strikes me is that I went from an environment where people acted like they wanted to grow to one where I think people feel like they've already reached their limits.  I'm not talking about growth from a revenue or salary perspective. I'm talking about growth from an intelligence, skills, and capabilities perspective. Which environment would you say is more demotivational?  Rewind even further where I came from an environment where I never felt that I had reached my full potential.  Would you say that this was environmentally driven or my own personal construct?  The consultant in me would say that it's both. (Never talk in absolutes, remember?) I would say that by getting out of an environment that continuously promotes healthy competition and personal / professional growth - my personal co...

It looks like 'relatability' isn't a word. If it was, it would be the title of this post. Part of being a good leader, or even manager, is having the ability to relate to people at any level of the organization. Being able to relate to me simply means, " You've been where I've been before and / or I can tell you understand where I'm coming from."  In the consulting world, most consultants go through the same progression. The person that is a Partner today was a Business Analyst or Sr. Consultant at some point in his or her career. Of course there are exceptions, like the direct admit guys from industry. But in general, the higher ups have all been through the same rite of passage. That's a start of being able to relate. What I've learned is that when you are able to relate to someone, everything else becomes easier because now you have earned a certain level of trust. I think that there are leaders (more often than some) in this world that...

There is something that I figured out. One fundamental thing defines effective and successful management consultants. They care.   They care about delivering quality work. They care about team members. They care about clients well-being and success. They care about the success of the company they work for.  They care about mentoring others.  The list can go on.  The one thing that they don't care about is themselves more than any of those other things. There are firms out there that confuse exploiting someone's intellect and skill set with running a professional services firm. If you are being exploited then shame on you.  If you are the one doing the exploiting, then I applaud you. You've figured it out.  To everyone else out there, just care. Everything else will fall into place. 

For the longest time since I've gotten off the road, I've been struggling with the fact that my clients don't really listen to anything that comes out of my mouth that can be construed as advice. I used to think that it was me and my communication ineffectiveness.  Even though that may be part of the equation, it occurred to me that this isn't what my client is paying me to do.  My client is paying me to do things. My client is paying me to update project status reports, get the right people together in a room, schedule invites via MS Outlook, put deliverables together to make sure that we are compliant, and take on other activities that fall in the "almost a  knowledge worker" category.  If my client wanted advice, he or she would pay the money and rate required to get advice. Therein lies the question,  can you provide true management consulting / strategic advice for Walmart prices?  I think the answer is kind of, but not really. A Porsche will al...

One of my very first clients was Alticor. For those of you that have never heard of Alticor, you are probably more familiar with one of their core businesses, Amway.  One of the first things that you learn when working there is to never ever refer to the business model as a pyramid scheme.  The correct term is multi-level marketing.  By definition, m ulti-level marketing (MLM) is a marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of the other salespeople that they recruit. (Taken directly from Wikipedia).  In a local market, I think there are a lot of "consulting" companies that operate in this multi-level type of model.  The reason is that of the three types of consulting (expertise, experience, and efficiency), the easiest one to generalize and commoditize is efficiency-based consulting.  In other words, it's easier for the sales force to sell it and recruit othe...