Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

Bring it! - Tony Horton P90X Lately I've spent my fair share of time working into the early hours of the next morning. The senior consultant that works with me probably thinks I'm slow. But the reality is that after meetings all day, the only time I can get stuff done is at night. Because of this ritual of late night working, I get wrapped up in all of these infomercials on a nightly basis. If you watch them enough, eventually you'll get convinced to buy something -- I swear it. I think I've had dreams about P90X and the joy it will bring when I am ripped after 90 days. Too bad I eat like the world is going to end tomorrow. Anyway, I've always had this problem of starting something that could transform my life and never finishing. Tony Robbins, P90X, Insanity, Getting Things Done-- you name it, I half-ass do it. Not something worth advertising, but I'm going to blame the inconsistency of my job and how I can let it consume me. I mean seriously-- to establis...

"I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about." -Oscar Wilde After 10 years in the management consulting business, you would think that I would have deep content knowledge and expertise. As I look through my resume of experiences that describe my roles and results on engagement after engagement, I realize that my consulting experience is a smorgasbord of experiences.  I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. The reason that I got to thinking about this is that I was listening in to a webinar conducted by three extremely knowledgeable supply chain experts. As I listened to them, they used their past experiences and expertise from 20+ years apiece in the supply chain field to have a very informative discussion that demonstrated that they really knew what they were talking about. As I listened, I thought to myself, "Would all of my experiences add up to a point where I could have that kind of conversation with people that really ...

People expect good service but few are willing to give it. - Robert Gately When I actually had the time take a vacation, I remember going to the Ritz Carlton Reynolds Plantation . As soon as I hit the property and pulled up, I would be greeted in a cordial manner, the bell men would ask to take my bags, and they would give me directions to where I needed to go to check in. When I walked up to reception to check in, the hotel staff person checking me in would be extremely gracious. And if / when I asked a question requesting something, they would respond, "Certainly." At the end of it all, I felt obliged to tip everyone. Good customer service goes a long way. Lately, and this is probably me, I've noticed the customer service sucks almost everywhere else. I'm working in Baltimore, MD now and I swear that everyone in every industry in that city has been trained to do the bare minimum when it comes to serving others. ...

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: 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 ...

Within my firm there are groups of communities to promote networking , relationship building, and professional development. There is an Analysthood for those Business Analysts that came straight out of school. There is a Sr. Consultanthood for those Sr. Consultants that we hired from B-school. There is even a Managerhood for those consultants that have been with us for a while and are the next generation of Sr. Managers / Partners / Directors. So why isn’t there a Sr. Managerhood? It’s almost like once you get promoted – all of the mechanisms to connect yourself with others like you and make you successful disappear. I remember one time when a partner invited all of the sr. managers to a dinner to try and promote a sense of camaraderie. It didn’t quite work because 1.) we knew the partner didn’t really care about what we did – he was just trying to check the box because he probably got dinged for lack of people development; and 2.) everyone looked at each other as competition to get t...

I'm a Jersey Shore fan. It's not a guilty pleasure. I'll flat out admit that I'm a fan. I even have the Jersey Shore app for my iPhone. I'm even contemplating making my team stay at the client site on a Thursday because "The Situation" is going to be at a local bar downtown. For those of you that hate the show, hear me out. There are a number of things that can be applied to our daily lives that I believe will make our days more productive and purposeful -- ok, I'm reaching with that word. Here are my top 3: The art of self promotion. It only takes once to remember a nickname such as "The Situation." It's a simple introduction and not easily forgotten (although I'm sure a lot of you wish you could). Each one of us - as we develop our personal brand - can only be so lucky as to come up with a one or two word moniker that will stick with others. I'm going back and forth between two names, "The Catastrophe" - because ...

Today I said a few words to my client that in hindsight sounded totally ridiculous. "I'm making a day trip to Phoenix [from Baltimore]" The flight is a little over 5 hours. Round trip, it's a standard working day- 9 hours. So technically, it's not really a day trip unless you count the full 24 hours. I've officially lost my mind. I'm going from no snow to snow to desert to snow and then back to no snow. If I don't get sick, it will be a miracle. Weekly trips with this many segments like this are not common for me. But I have to think of my reasons for doing this. The first is that I volunteered for it in order to fill in last minute for a colleague of mine at a conference.The second is that I get to talk about supply chains and developing talent - something I don't do enough of. The third is to indirectly get our brand name out and drum up some leads. From the firm perspective my priorities should probably start with #3. I used to think that...