Category — out of the box

The idea for this post stems from recent feedback I got on an assignment from the project lead: I showed a high level of energy, but I should have showed more enthusiasm. I chuckled at first – but maybe there is something to it. Let me see if I can find some use for enthusiasm in consulting:

Be enthusiastic to power yourself
Are you thinking self betrayal right now? Well, this is one way to put it. What if you are facing a severe excel-cranking session and all you can do is think “when will it be done?”… and how could anybody ever be enthusiastic about powerpoint slides? That is not the point. The point is that you can influence your reactions. Make it a self-fulfilling prophecy! “This chart is gonna be rock`n`roll when I am done with it!” … “I’m gonna beat some awesome result out of this excel!” … make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. It has to be done anyway – so why not tell yourself that it can be fun? It might work! To prove the point, lets do a little test. For ten seconds now, smile brightly and laugh – regardless of what mood you are in, in almost all cases your body will sense your smile and your laughter and send out an internal happy pill to the brain. By acting as if you were happy, you can induce real happiness…. and that is the mechanics you can use to make your work more fun / less pain, too.

Be enthusiastic to power the team
We are working in a high-stress, high-pace, high-pressure environment, so there is energy inherent in the system. Deliverables need to get ready, the project is moving fast, and so do the tasks. With enthusiasm – or as I put it for myself, outspoken positive energy – you can bring a good spin to all that stress. Does that sound too touchy-feely for ya? I understand. See, it is not about sticking smiley badges on everyones chest. It can be as simple as sharing the image of a desired outcome with a colleague in a positive way - “hey, when we get this analysis done and melt it down to three slides, that will be a killer argument and really opening the clients’ eyes!”. I think that sharing positive images can make a difference in the attitude you and your colleagues have towards the things you work on (which can be tedious tasks sometimes).

Be enthusiastic to power the client
Towards the client, of course, you are the serious and all-business consultant. Still, I have made good experiences with conveying a positive mood. This can easily drift towards promising the client stuff that you are not sure you can deliver on – thin ice, that is. Don’t make promises you are not sure about. They will hold you accountable. Instead, show enthusiasm when delivering results! It is not making your presentation a circus show… but you want to make your results shine. Invest in your presentation skills. Smile. Use your voice. Convey to them the meaning of what you show them, not only the pure content.

At many of my assignments I need a rental car to get from the nearest airport to the client, the hotel and back. The travel policy of my company tells me what class of cars I can rent - but of course, this is just were the game begins: What upgrade can I get for free?

1. Get the plastic
   Every car rental I know of has a bonus card. The standard ones are usually free for everybody and only carry your details, so that you don’t have to provide address, etc. every time you rent. The better ones (”platinum”, “privilege”, etc.) often entitle you to free upgrades. You get them by either simply renting a lot of cars (just a matter of time) or, if you are lucky, your company already has a deal with them, so that you not only get a special rate, but also that desired piece of plastic. Check with your colleagues when you are new - everybody plays this game, so it should not be hard to find someone in the know.
2. Build a relationship to the people at the counter
   This works great when you are renting in smaller airports / train stations / cities, where the crew at the desk of the rental firm does not rotate too much. In the best case, there is always the same person there when you arrive, half awake, on Monday morning. This is your chance! Those at the desk have, most often, direct influence on what car they give you. The hold, so to speak, the keys to your rental luck. Be nice to them. Cheer them up. Don’t be pushy, and don’t force it. The key (again!) lies in making it a positive experience for THEM, so that they can happily reward you with a bigger/faster/nicer car. If not this week, then next.
3. Ask for an upgrade. NICELY.
   The times I got a shiny sportscar while paying for a Golf? That was when the customer before me was a rude idiot who tried to push the clerk at the desk into giving him a big car. Of course, he did not. If I remember correctly, he walked away with a Ford. Serves him right. When it was my turn, we first shared a laugh about that ridiculous guy, and when I gave her my piece of plastic and said that I had a reservation, I just said “something that fits the good weather would be great!”. Her response: “Hm, let me see. Wait a minute!”… off she went to the back office, and when she came back she was almost apologetic - “I am sorry, there was no convertible left… but I think you’ll like it still!”. Let’s just say I was never faster at client side than that day.
   Remember: Asking for an upgrade is perfectly fine. Just be nice and casual about it. And don’t bitch if it doesn’t work - see point two, you might see her again next week!

On a sidenote: I do recognize that it does not matter at all in a real-world-sense what car you get as long as it takes you where you want to go. Still, being a road warrior, it often is a very welcome goodie that makes the Monday-morning routine just a bit more fun.

I am normally trying to keep the KC free from consulting mockery, but this one is just too good to pass. This presentation was recently featured on Slideshare. It is a vivid (and hilarious) example of why it is a good idea to leave your consulting / powerpoint skills at work and not take them to your relationship:

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What do we learn from this?

1. When you do fun stuff on your company’s CI, be prepared for it to hit the street eventually. This one is quite old, so no harm done I guess - but your boss might not be amused at all about your version of this that you just thought of. If you have to do it, don’t use a company template.
2. The author did not use the action title correctly at all… but I think we can forgive this
3. When communicating, you have to adapt to the audience. Leave your consulting talk and your ppt slides at work. Your family and your girlfriend will appreciate it (otherwise - see last slide!)

The “hive mind” scheme is something I am borrowing from lifehacker. The idea: Let the readers decide!

Let’s start the KillerConsultant hive mind with a simple, yet important question.
How do you talk about your job as consultant to friends and family? There are a few aspects to that:

How much to reveal?
We are bound to not disclose details of our engagements by contracts, NDA’s and common sense. So what _can_ you tell? Is it ok to say in which city you are? Do you only state the airport you are flying to? When can you reveal a customer’s name – never, or only when the relationship with your consulting firm is published? When it comes to the type of work you are doing, is it ok to say “I am working in a post merger integration / controlling / marketing strategy project”?

How not to bore them to death?
With all those limitations of what you can tell, how to you make it an interesting story, so that your buddies don’t pity you for the lame job you have? (Given that you do not consider consulting a lame job. If you do, I hope the KC gives you some input on how to change that!) Consulting-lingo is another issue here – do you try to eradicate “deliverable”, “slidedeck”, “key-stakeholder” and all this job-specific vocabulary when explaining what you do to people outside consulting?

How to not make yourself look stupid?
I don’t mean that your friends and family assume you are stupid. But watch their face closely when you have been raving about the latest frequent flyer program for ten minutes, or how you hate this and that airport because you never get good rental car upgrades there… you know what I mean? Consultants’ lifestyle seems to disconnect them a bit from the real world, at least it often seems so from the outside. How do you avoid that?

I am looking forward to your approaches to this!
Of course, you do not need to reveal your real name in the comments if you wish to.

You are striving to be a Killer Consultant. You want to be not only good in what you do, you also want to know stuff about the stuff that you do, so you read a lot of business literature. The latest on Management, Leadership, what have you - and be it only to prowl in front of the VP or the client.
Here’s a tip for you: Once every quarter, slip in a non-business book. A novel. A thriller. A trashy romance, whatever your liking. Borrow the latest Sophie Kinsella book from your significant other, if you’re man enough. Three things will happen:

1. You’ll relax. Those books are made to draw you in and make the cinema in your head go wild in color. So this enables you to actually blend out the outside world (which might be passing by while you are on your way, or on your sofa, or on the hotel bed) - a good exercise for people like you, who are almost always subject to information and stimulation overload (which is not always pleasurable).
2. You’ll get new ideas. While you discover a new story - secret agents, newfound love or a crime, it does not matter - your brain is going wild, and thinks all sorts of thoughts that you have not thought in a while. Certainly, a murder scene tickles your neurons in a different way than an article on commodity good pricing would. In other words, your creativity is boosted.
3. You’ll have more joy in reading business stuff. OK, I can’t guarantee that accounting will ever seem fun for anyone sane. But in my observation, coming from a relaxing read, I am more open towards business literature and can keep up more concentration. It feels as if my brain is not so bored because it got some diversion - maybe this works for you, too.

Now this should be reason enough to go buy the airport bookstore on Thursday or Friday and buy that book that caught your eye a few weeks ago already, but you were too "focused" to pay attention to it.