Consulting Cove
(intro here)
Favor Strategic Work
There are two flavors of consultant: the expert and the strategist.
The expert consultant is hired to solve a pre-defined problem with which their skills match. An Azure on-prem-to-cloud database admin consultant has mastered the transition from local SQL instances to the Azure cloud database suite. When expertise is minimal in the company or there is a tight deadline the expert is called to save the day.
The strategic consultant is hired to aid a transition. At the core may be a project like a database transition to the cloud, but the strategist starts while the business is still wrestling with implications.
If you’re an expert, you need a concise description of your expertise. Recruiters need to identify exactly what you’re best at to match you to the right work, and the CEO needs to trust that you have the skills to accomplish the work. Outside certifications are welcome.
If you’re a strategist, you need a broad level of trust. There are more unknowns than knowns in the early stages of a transition and the CEO needs to trust that you’ll deliver more value in that liminal place than you’re billing. They need to believe you’re a quality ally that will do more than offer “expert advice.” Tom Kritchlow calls this “stewardship.”
NOTE: Don’t get too wrapped up in this dichotomy. A strategist still needs enough skill to aid in the implementation. If there’s only early strategy work then I’m offering “expensive advice,” but I can add value for the length of the project if I’m part of its implementation. Does this mean I need to have mastered Azure cloud transitions, as in my example? Perhaps not if the challenges of implementation are non-technical.
Strategic Stewardship
Think of stewardship as a form of leadership. One that acknowledges things will change along the way for better or for worse, therefore demanding agility over adherence to a predetermined plan. Many individuals who work in alliances or collaborative endeavors act as stewards almost naturally. If you are used to continually calibrating the goals of a project with the constraints of your context, you are practicing stewardship. If you maintain a constant state of opportunism and a willingness to pivot when progress on the current path is diminishing, you’re a natural steward.
Stewardship goes farther than putting in the right answer at the right time. If it were that simple people would have done it themselves. It’s the cultural change that requires an outsider.
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The problem is just below the surface - you're hired to change their company **in a way they've so far been unable to change**.
Foster Trust
One way for a strategic consultant to foster trust with strangers is to develop a body of work. You’ll need passion in the subject to fuel the energy you’ll need to produce a massive body of work. A corpus shows you’re deeply invested and signals your integrity. You become a less risky individual to bet on.
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The energy evident in a body of work is the most honest signal about it that makes people trust you to do things for them.
A second way is to hold strong opinions in your work corpus. Unambiguous points of view help build a sense of trust because readers know my voice and what I represent. For every person who disagrees and doen’t proceed there’s another who trusts my involvement more because I have a voice.
Thirdly, find a way to work together. Host a workshop at a fixed price. Offer to host a DBS group with the leadership. The purpose isn’t to solve any problems or to offer all the training needed but to give both parties an idea of what it will be like to work together.
What Strategic Consultants Do
Communicate Ideas
- encompass complex thought with diagrams
- models make complex ideas sharable
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Tailor all models to the business. Don’t bring in generic models (though you can start there).
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It’s mostly their ideas. You’re synthesizing and organizing what’s present to give clarity and spur action.
Speak Truth
- compensating feedback happens when the root problem is not addressed
- vanity metrics obscure true performance
- flowcharts expose waste
- Be direct. Consultants have a unique perspective, so share it.
Assist Transition
- Almost all consultations require some organizational change. These transitions are challenging and a consultant helps oil the tracks.
Tools of the Strategic Consultant
- Business Model Canvas (startup)
Tip Jar
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Don't give the context work away for free. In fact, do the opposite - charge more for it than your regular work.
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If we want our work to be useful, we have to anticipate the most important dilemmas they will face, determine what information would be most helpful in resolving those dilemmas, and then [explicitly design any analysis strategy around meeting those information needs](https://medium.com/@iandavidmoss/weve-been-thinking-about-measurement-all-wrong-e3b51c46a792). And if we really want our work to be useful, we have to continue supporting decision-makers after the final report is delivered, working hand-in-hand with them to ensure any choices made take into account not only the newly available information but also other important considerations such as their values, goals, perceived obligations, and existing assets. **In short, knowledge providers need to be problem solvers first, analysts second.**
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Only by trying to make the decision without all the information can we determine what information we actually need.
Quotes for thought
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You're an idiot. There are thirty thousand people working at Google. If everyone as far down the food chain as you could get their ideas made it would be chaos. The system is explicity designed to prevent your individual ideas from mattering one bit.
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A failure mode for employees is striving for work to happen in the official channels - to wait for the meeting to talk about the strategy, to wait for the email chain to pitch in. This desire to make work "official" means many employees are uncomfortable talking about their work on the way to the coffee shop or in the hallway between meetings.