Category — out of the box

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.

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 ...

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.

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 ...

For the next days, I’ll change format for the Killer Consultant and deliver more, but much shorter articles. If something catches your attention, let me know, and I’ll see if I can dig into that topic deeper then.

When dealing with different people on a professional basis all the time internally and externally, it helps tremendously to have a basic understanding of what type of personalities your are dealing with. Knowing how the other "ticks" gives you an advantage – you can anticipate actions and reactions and better interpret why that person does what he or she does the way he or she does it. There are many personality-profile systems out there, made for exactly that reason – and of course to enable one to have a better understanding of oneself.

Introducing the DiSC model. I was introduced to it by one of my favorite podcasts – Manager Tools. The DiSC method assesses personalities in four dimensions (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientious), thus you assign the type that a person has the highest affiliation with (I, for example, think I am a "high I", without having been professionally assessed).

On the Manager Tools website, you find a great cheat-sheet PDF on How To Use The DiSC To Be More Effective Every Day. I found this useful without having had any further insight to the DiSC methodology (for example, on why the "i" is in low caps), because this cheat sheet gives you a short description of the character, so you can match whoever you are thinking of at least roughly with a type.

What is it good for?
When dealing with someone is a challenge for you, try matching them with a DiSC type and reflect on what their motives might be, and how you might be able to approach them differently to make working with them more pleasurable and effective for both sides. I tried this with one person already – they were a "high d", and by adapting the way I confronted them in meetings, things changed for the better almost instantly, without changing the content that was exchanged.

More Inf0?
Of course – you can start at the Wikipedia page or go to DiSC profile, which seems to be "the" site to get profiled – though I have not checked that out yet.

Boy, that took more than 2 minutes… but hey, what can you do

For the next days, I\'ll change format for the Killer Consultant and deliver more, but much shorter articles. If something catches your attention, let me know, and I\'ll see if I can dig into that topic deeper then. When dealing with different people on a professional basis all the time internally and externally, ...

This is something I learnt from a friend in the industry who had to deal with a client situation gone bad, and on a small scale, also something that experience has taught me many times.

Short version:
When things get tough, keep notes of what is going on, so when the sh** hits the fan, you can back up what you say.

Longer version:
While everything is humming along, you might be taking the occasional note – scribbling “mail report to Ted” on a piece of paper that is your impromptu ToDo-List for the afternoon, for example, or putting yourself a reminder in Outlook. When the project gets in crunch-mode (i.e., you are under stress, and everybody else is), though, many people stop keeping notes. And when in real trouble (e.g., the customer is angry because a deadline was missed, there was a misunderstanding, you are accused of having stolen their lunchbags), people stop taking notes altogether and fall back to reactive-mode.
This is a bad thing. The worse the situation get, the more accurate your notes need to be. I am not talking about prose here. This is not a hidden procrastinators’ heaven. I am talking about keeping a logbook, on paper preferably. Here’s why:

• Under stress, you might forget something you needed to remember. Keep it in a list. Mark it done when it is done. It gives you security, and it makes you reliable.
• When a colleague tells you something that might be important later, like “the customer always spells easy as ‘eaZZy’. They like it that way. Please stick to this in all documents” , note it down. Otherwise, it is forgotten after five minutes, and only gets back to you in the night when the final presentation needs to be sent to the client.
• Note done what you agreed on with your team members and the customer. For meetings, there are meeting minutes (hopefully!), but for the quick 30-second call to confirm a fact, there might not be. Write down who you talked to, when, and what was talked about / agreed upon. This is a life saver. It is a much better thing to say “Bob, I am sorry that you expected me to make the analysis until today, but in our call on wednesday afternoon last week we agreed that it would have no real added value and decided to not include it” than “Bob, are you sure this was still in scope? I am sure we talked about that and agreed not to do the analysis sometime in the past!”
• When you sense that big trouble is ahead – lets say, the customer has been irate and angry for a week and threatens to call the whole deal off, and you think that your Vice President might not be amused at all – you might want to go even further and note more details down, like the delivery of documents and who was on the client site when. Of course, this borders on paranoia… as I said, when big trouble is ahead. Especially when things get really tough and you go into litigation (this does happen, unfortunately), you better know what was said and done.

I know. You have your ToDo-List in Outlook. Or in a textfile. Still – Keep a little logbook. Treat yourself with one of those fabled Moleskines, if you want. Write. Things. Down – and the worse the project gets, the more you should jot down. It will save your precious behind sooner than later.

This is something I learnt from a friend in the industry who had to deal with a client situation gone bad, and on a small scale, also something that experience has taught me many times.Short version:When things get tough, keep notes of what is going on, so when the sh** hits the fan, you ...

I am normally not into cross-posting on different sites, but hey, rules are there to be…. no, I won’t say it! Afterwards all you remember is “hey, on KillerConsultant they said it would be alright to bend rules!” No, friends, it is not that easy. Also, what does your client say when you admit that you actually have time to read a website? Seriously.
Anyhow, I wrote the following for my private site, but thinking about it, this might just be interesting for you KC guys as well. Here goes!

Yesterday night I found out about Randy Pausch. Randy is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who delivered (and recorded) two very interesting speeches. One is called “Time Management“, in which he talks about very practical tips on how to get more things done in life. This is not a theoretical talk – it is very down to earth, it is full of things you can directly apply yourselves. The other talk is called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams“. In this talk, part of CMU’s “last lecture” series, he talks about how he managed to achieve his childhood dreams, and how one can work towards that – or help others achieve their dreams.

The “last lecture” series at CMU is asking the speaker to imagine – if this was the last lecture he or she gave before they died, what would they talk about? For Randy, he needs no big imagination. Randy gave this speech knowing he will most likely die from the cancer he has in the next few months. He already knew that when he gave the speech on time management as well. Don’t shy away now! His lectures are incredibly funny. There is no darkness and sadness in them. All this frightening fact really does is make the speeches more intense. For me, on the receiving end, it feels like an incredible gift Randy has given to us. He even made the last lecture a book – how awesome is that!

When you watch those lectures, you wil realize what a fighting spirit Randy has. Not surprisingly, he is still alive, still fighting hard, still making the best out of the days he has. On his personal website you find a summary of all the things I just introduced to you, as we as updates on how he is doing.

So what can you take from that?

1. The lecture on time management will give you many good tips for every day effectiveness. Take for example the clues he has for being short and concise on the telephone. I am sure all of you have experienced that – you get on the phone, you need to clarify something quickly, or make an arrangement – and the person on the other side thinks that you definitely have time to discuss yesterdays soccer results and whatnot. Randy’s advise is to set a clear agenda in the beginning – “hi Bob, I’m calling because there are three things I want to clarify with you” – and get out of the call once the agenda items are ticked off. His version of “there are students waiting for me” can easily be converted to “I have to dial in to a telco” or “I have a meeting to attend to”.
   Of course, you might want to be a bit more elaborate with your todo-list than Randy tells you to (where are context and projects? Phew, REALLY!) and not rely on post-its for planning – greetings from GTD!
2. It is not doing things right that will get you where you want to get – it is doing the right things. In the second lecture mentioned, it is about going for your dreams. You can only achieve that if you actually know what your dreams are. If you do not know where you are headed, most steps you take will be in the wrong direction. So this is about the grand perspective of things, where instantly the (also recommended by Randy) 7 Habits of Highly Effective People come to mind. That book by Stephen Covey is, in my opinion, the ultimate companion to GTD. When you actually know what you want to do with your life, having “focus” instantly has a much deeper meaning. And be careful what you wish for. It might just come true.

Too philosophical?
Boring?
Right for you?
Guys, I love everybody coming here and reading.
Help me make it better – leave a comment, tell me what you think, what you like, what you’d like to see changed. Thanks!

I am normally not into cross-posting on different sites, but hey, rules are there to be.... no, I won\'t say it! Afterwards all you remember is \"hey, on KillerConsultant they said it would be alright to bend rules!\" No, friends, it is not that easy. Also, what does your client say when you admit ...