Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

The thing that I miss most about working for a big firm is delivering engagement as part of a team.  Not just any team. But a team of high functioning individuals.  There is a lot to be said for feeling like you are a part of something bigger.  Connection.  There is no doubt in my mind that a consulting team delivers far better results than a seasoned individual.  One plus one equals three as they say.   Also it's common sense to say that a group with a common purpose and mission can affect a system more then one person.  Especially if you are paying them by the hour.  Don't underestimate the value of a consulting team that is focused, high functioning, and has a sense of urgency to work themselves out of a job.  The consultant that's out on an island that is connected to nothing is highly likely to make herself comfortable on the island and continue to search for something to connect with. 

There is no shortage of people willing to offer you an opinion.  If I had a dollar for the number of times people tell me, "It shouldn't be this way...," or "I don't understand why you do it this way...," or "this place is just f*cked up..." I wouldn't even have to think about buying a Powerball ticket.  I'd be on a boat and own an island.  Don't get me wrong. I'm as guilty as the next person in offering up opinions.  Looking back on my career, I've made plenty of assertions thinking that I know what's best without taking the time to understand the "why."  In other words, I've called a baby ugly without understanding exactly what that baby has been through. If you are a consultant or in any type of advisory capacity, don't jump into a mindset that you have to try and offer instant value by proclaiming the advice that my mom can Google. And if you do that, you will end up doing more good than h...

When you are on the other side of the table, there is no shortage of people willing to offer you their advice or opinions. By other side of the table, I am talking about being an "executive" sitting across from the "consultant." After being in consulting for over a decade, I'd always wondered how clients reacted when they were being pitched rates that never seemed to remotely cover the potential value delivered.  Now I know. Being on the other side of the table means that you consistently struggle with organizational constraints and the capability deficiencies that exists within your department. The question becomes how much you are willing to pay to push your way through those constraints and immediately fill those capability gaps.  Consultants offer just that.  They offer smart people (generally) with critical thinking skills (most of the time) that have a single focus (to get entrenched in your organization and continue to sell add-on work)-- [k...

The world of management consulting is filled with great recommendations.  A conversation between a client and a consultant could typically go like this: Consultant: "We've done a thorough analysis and have developed a few recommendations to help you increase profitability. We have a few options for you to consider in order to help make the decision." [Consultant then goes on to list the options.] Client: [After listening to the options] "Those all sound great." [Client proceeds to poke holes in the analysis, presentation, and recommendations] "You know... what would the result be if we combined Option A and B and developed another option..."  In the world of consulting, a client will always turn Options A and B into an Option C. Why this happens, I have no idea. I guess it's the same as me telling you to bet black 10 and green 00 on the roulette table and you end up spreading over black 10 and black 11 in addition to green 0 and 00.  ...

If you stay in consulting long enough, you begin to think that you know everything and can do anything.  It's because consultants are paid to solve problems in unfamiliar environments and at some point along the way, they'll figure it out.  Work across enough industries and solve enough business problems the consultant generalist knows enough to be dangerous about anything.  Imagine if primary physicians thought like this... "Hey-- I noticed that you've been having severe headaches... did you know that I can do brain surgery?"    A common mistake I see consultants make when making a shift from a big firm to a smaller one is that they think that all the big firm collateral and resources come with them. When you work for a big firm, there is a kind of transference that occurs where what you did as part of a leveraged and larger team is all of a sudden something you take complete credit for.  Sold $14 MM worth of engagements in a year? "Yeah, that...

Consultants spend a lot of time giving advice to clients that don't listen.  Just because said client pays the bills doesn't mean that they will heed your advice.  Many times a client will already be set on a fixed set of assumptions and characteristics and your job as a consultant is to either 1.) Justify and rationalize your client's irrational assumptions; or 2.) Be the one to take orders and do the things that your client won't do or doesn't have the time to do.  Those two things alone are pretty lucrative. Stay in this kind of environment long enough and you will begin to feel all kinds of insecurities if you have a conscience.  Questions like -  "Is it my communication style that's not effective enough?; or  " Am I not smart enough and is he or she not respecting me?    9 out of 10 times you will think that it's your fault that the client is not listening to you.  It's why finding the right client is such a blessing....

There's an article on  espn.com  where Kobe Bryant criticizes AAU basketball programs and praises European players' skills.  "AAU basketball," Bryant said. "Horrible, terrible AAU basketball. It's stupid. It doesn't teach our kids how to play the game at all so you wind up having players that are big and they bring it up and they do all this fancy crap and they don't know how to post. They don't know the fundamentals of the game. It's stupid." Kobe comes from an era where the basics and the fundamentals mattered. At it's most basic level, basketball is about dribbling, passing, and shooting.  At least that's what my 4 year old is learning.  What he's NOT learning is how to be on an And 1 Mixtape Tour anytime soon.  In the world of business and consulting, Kobe's opinion and point of view also applies. It's easy to get caught up in the hype of a culture, the charisma of a leader, and the cool perks that an o...

I'm going to date myself and say that I've been using PowerPoint since the early 90's.  Just like kids are transitioning from the PC to mobile devices with very little effort, I transitioned from transparencies to PowerPoint in much the same manner.  It actually became a core competency of mine which is good when you are a management consultant.  We are now at a time where information is more pictures than words-- so much so that cloud services are increasing space size and companies catering to the photography generation are going out of business.  The irony is that you have to simplify the information as much as possible to get your point across and make your story that much more compelling. With this shift comes a whole  set of tools that give you instant gratification and new ways to tell your story outside of the PowerPoint templates of old. I'd recommend getting familiar with, if not immersing yourself in these tools. Otherwise, you'll be the one...

Consultants are everywhere.  There is no shortage of people wanting to give you his or her opinion.  Even the CEO of Deloitte Consulting, Jim Moffatt, says that there are too many consultants .  But as we all know, if there wasn't demand for such services, there wouldn't be the supply.  Just as there are enough people wanting to give advice, there are enough out there asking for an opinion or two.  Whether the advice is heeded or not is a topic for a separate discussion. What separates the good consultants from the so-so ones is that they think about these three questions as they work with clients.  Am I providing value for what I am charging (daily/weekly)? For example, if your bill rate is $100/hour and you work 40 hours a week, what did you provide for $4,000? I would say that a lot of us may struggle with that question which makes it even more important for you to prove your worth day in and day out.   How many productive hours did ...

In the management consultant profession, consultants are paid for 1 of 2 things: to solve problems; or do something that clients don't have the resources or capabilities of doing themselves.  If you stay in the profession long enough, you begin to develop a false sense of confidence -- something along the lines of, "whatever your problem is, I'm sure that I'll find a way to solve it -- I'm THAT smart."  After all, who wants to go the consultant that says, "I don't know."  Sometimes, as consultants, it's actually in our best interest to say, "I don't know." The alternative is that we provide our clients with a half-baked answer that that ends up making a client's situation the same or worse, rather than better.  It's like asking your family doctor to solve an eye problem when the best recommendation would have been to send you to an ophthalmologist.  As you progress though the consulting profession (or probably ...

In Seth Godin's startup school , a lady asks whether consultants are or can be entrepreneurs.  Godin, after clarifying the question, says that almost always consultants are freelancers.  According to Godin, the return on equity is low in the consulting industry. Per one of my previous posts, consultants also trade time for money (see Donkey Strategy .) In addition, the only way to scale is by adding more people which in the long run is sustainable with A LOT of work.  A some point in a management consultant's career, he or she will get what I'll call the "itch."  Whether it's the itch to hang out your own shingle, or the itch to see if you can build a product yourself -- a consultant will get the itch because 1.) He gets tired of telling clients how to do things better without them listening; or 2.) She's just tired of serving two masters-- I'm sure there are many other reasons as well. If / when you get the itch, remember that the gap betwee...

There is a constant struggle between Strategists and Operators.  Strategists wax lyrical frameworks, charts, rigorous analysis, smart sounding assumptions that go into recommendations that will transform the organization.  As an Operator, it's hard to understand what all of that crap means.  Everything with a Strategist is high level -- middle management can fill in the details.  The Operator wants details and wants to understand why any of it is important -- in layman's terms. The Strategist makes recommendations based on logical structuring and fact based thinking.  The Operator makes decisions based on emotion.  The most effective consultants are the ones that can bridge strategic thinking with the emotion of operating at any level.  It's those consultants that effect meaningful change. 

Are you a Consultant or a Contractor?  The Contractor has a skill that is easily commoditized.  The Consultant has skills that can become commoditized with education if he or she does not continue to grow. The Contractor is never on time and does not respect a customer's time. The Consultant lives and dies by meetings and calendars because they respect the client's time. The Contractor shows up, does the job, and collects the check.  The Consultant's job is to deliver value every time she shows up. The Contractor only thinks about the immediate next task in the context of a particular job.  The Consultant thinks about his or her activity in the context of the bigger picture. The Contractor never asks what you are trying to accomplish and why you need his services.  The Consultant always asks about your goals and objectives and should know why you need their help.  The Contractor could care less about a customer's well-being. The Con...

If you stay in professional services long enough, at some point your salary is going to cap out.  For those of us that continue to trade time for money, at some point you are going to run out of time and the market is going to stop paying for you at a certain rate per hour.  It's at that point that companies make up for the cap by offering equity, incentive based variable compensation, or some other benefit that compensates for the fact that you can go no higher in your salary without the company making some margin off of you.  For some that have a "number," they may never reach that cap.  But for the ones that know that the only reason to work this hard is because there is a brass ring or a carrot that could feed Bugs Bunny for his lifetime-- realizing that you've been capped out is a frustrating circumstance.  There is no reason to make professional services a career unless a.) you really love what you are doing and feel what you are getting for your...

Recently, the entire top layer of the company that I work for resigned and started a new consulting company.  As much as I've always wanted to have a Jerry Maguire moment, this is about as close as I've come to witnessing one in real life.  People ask me questions like, "What is going on?" "What does that mean for you?" "What do you think about all of this?"  My response, unfortunately is, "I don't know what to think."  The only thing that I can do is observe and talk to people to see how they are reacting to the situation.  Since the "coup d'état" as I'll call it (only fitting since my origin is Thai), I've observed three sets of reactions from employees and only one reaction from the company's leadership.  Reaction #1, Employee Apathy - Huh? Those guys left. Does it affect me? No? Back to work.   Reaction #2, Employee Self-Interest - The leadership team left! That means more opportunity for m...

You know that consulting services have become more of a commodity when every local, boutique, and big professional services firm has a template for everything .  Software selection? Have template.  Requirements gathering? Have template.  Merger and acquisition due diligence? Have templates.  Strategic growth initiative? Repurposed a couple of templates.  For once, let's not try to fit a business problem into a predetermined template.  Try some original thinking. Try to diagnose the problem. Try to simplify how you get to something valuable without driving yourself through a bunch of non-value added steps just because you have to fill the template out. It will be cathartic. Trust me.

If you are interested in the consulting profession, there is one author that you need to get to know.  You know how there is someone that can articulate what you are feeling or observing in  ways that just makes sense?  David Maister is that guy for management consulting.  Ironically, I was turned on to his book, True Professionalism , by a friend that worked at a competing professional services company.  It's that book that introduced me to the donkey strategy.  To say you made more money by working more is not evidence of immense intellectual creativity. In fact, I call it the donkey strategy. There are many professional services firm today built on motivating their employees on working more overtime (i.e., charging more hours).  If you've been in the business for a few years and want to build, succeed in, operate, or lead a professional services organization, I would create a David Maister library and make these books front and ce...

When you peddle consulting services like they are items on a dim sum cart , what are you really selling?  Like a lot of those dim sum items, are you selling something that sounds good initially, but over time it  tears your organization up?  Or are you selling something that just doesn't look good at all, but you know that someone / somewhere wants it -- otherwise it wouldn't be on the cart?  If you are doing true advisory work, your services are tailored to the client's problem -- provided that you are able to frame the problem to begin with. There are too many "consulting" companies that provide just the right menu items to clients that have already decided that they wanted dim sum for lunch anyway.  For a minute, just back up, look at what you are doing, and say to yourself, "Maybe, just maybe, this client doesn't need to feel bloated and dehydrated for the rest of the day." As great as the dim sum model is as a business model, it fa...

About this time last year, I wrote that clients were not paying me for my advice .  I have a point of view that as a consultant within certain bill rate spectrums, clients are paying you to "do" and not to "advise."  It's the difference between what you pay a guy to put up sheet rock versus what you pay the person doing your interior decorating.  One relationship is very commoditized and transactional in nature. The other relationship is specialized and somewhat personal.  In the local consulting market, companies are offering commoditized service offerings. There are very few cities out there that have enough demand by a specific industry where you can hang up a shingle and make big firm money.  Therefore, you have to provide a series of offerings, generic in nature, that apply ubiquitously across multiple companies and multiple industries.  Unfortunately, because you are now a commodity, whatever expertise you may have is now ...

If and when you plan to enter the management consulting profession, there is one author whose books are a must read - David Maister.  He has a way of describing the inner workings of the industry in a way that just makes sense.  True Professionalism  was the first book that I read at the recommendation of a friend.  Maister broke down everything that I needed to know about consulting in such a way that I experienced the HSE (Holy Sh*t Effect). I'm now listening to The Trusted Advisor on audible.com.  There's a lot of lip service out there from companies claiming 1.) that they are consulting companies; and 2.) that they have aspirations of becoming "trusted advisors." Unfortunately, #1 is an embellishment to recruit people and #2 is exactly what it is - aspirational.  According to Maister, there are four types of relationships: Vendors  Technical Experts Valuable Resources Trusted Advisors You can think of this as a progression a...