April 2023

Consulting, A Young Person’s Game?

by Alan Culler | Apr 29, 2023 | Consulting

Consulting, a good start.

Consulting is an early career choice that allows smart, resourceful people who have mastered sounding confident to find responsibility beyond that available in other industries. Consulting firms recruit from top undergraduate universities, business schools, and other graduate institutions, looking for “smart, nice, analysts with legs.”

Firms want smart, analytical people because client problems are challenging. They want nice people because no one wants to work with jerks. And they want people “with legs,” who before they walk, figuring out problems above their training and pay grade. They hire people with amazing potential, who rise to management more quickly than most.

Consultancies know how to find such people. Case interviews demonstrate thinking ability. Multiple interviews with people at various levels determine “fit,” code for “nice.” Questions about failure demonstrate speed-learning. and uncover the most important qualification of new consultants, insecurity. Firms want people who can sound confident, but nurse imposter syndrome, thinking that their achievements are less than others believe.

Consulting firms hire insecure analysts because they work harder.

Some candidates seek these high starting salary jobs to pay off student loans, or just as a good start to a business career. Even if you wash out, a consulting firm is “a good place to be from,” and many of the larger firms outplace alumni with good companies.

But is consulting a career “with legs, i.e., one with a long life cycle?

Trajectory of a consulting career

Consultants move through distinct phases:

Newbie—–Yeoman———-Old Hand

Newbies do the work. Yeomen do the work and manage people, clients and project deliverables. Old Hands do some work, manage people (selection, promotion and mentoring), manage client relationships, and acquire new client relationships (i.e., “sell,” though very few consultants like that word).

The job changes radically between levels. Many firms, certainly the larger ones, have rigid promotion/deselection decision points in a consultant’s career. This was called “Up or Out,” but has been softened to “Grow or Go.” Newbies who can’t perform or don’t want to manage leave the firm. Yeomen who don’t learn to sell leave the firm. Of course there are exceptions. If everybody “really likes” you and you do great work at your level, you may stay, but pay raises slow and the cohort you were hired with leaves or is promoted.

Many people leave consulting for careers in industry, or academia or non-profit services. Some leave big firms for smaller firms or become independents to maintain the “everybody does everything, all the time” feel. Some suddenly find themselves at the Yeoman to Old Hand transition unprepared. They haven’t thought about the role and how to excel at it.

This post is to help junior consultants plan to be Old Hands.

Different Old Hand jobs

When I was a young consultant, I aggressively rejected planning for anything with the word “Old” in the title. “Hope I die before I get old,” sang Pete Townsend in The Who’s song “My Generation.” So to be clear, an Old Hand might be twenty-eight years-old, or even younger, if you are tall, have some gray hair, and a “presence” that people describe with words like “gravitas.”

Remember an Old Hand’s primary job is to feed the firm, attract new clients, or sell. To be safe, avoid the word “sell” and use phrases like “build new clients relationships,” or “begin service to clients.” Also some Old Hands are offended by the suggestion that they don’t do work or manage. Of course they do, but new client acquisition is critical. There is always some work ending that must be replaced for the growth and health of the firm.

In my experience there are three Old Hand client acquisition roles:

Business Development Executive (BDE). This is a direct sales role, the classic “rainmaker” of professional services.. The Old Hand who fills it may have come up through the firm’s ranks or may be an experienced business to business sales person with a track record big ticket sales. The BDE is exceptionally good at listening to a problem description and framing a consulting project that might solve the problem.

Thought Leader (TL) This role includes research either by the firm or an academic partner. TL’s research becomes a service offering. Years ago Jon Katzenbach of McKinsey uniquely reconceptualized teams as performance units and Frederick Reichheld correlated customer recommendations to loyalty. Thought leaders attract new clients by writing, publishing and speaking about their innovations.

Trusted Advisor (TA) This role is an expert or coach role for people who buy consulting services. The TA may have come up through the firm. The may have retired and sit on boards of companies or teach at a University, but clients and colleagues seek them out. They listen and recommend new work for the firm.

A BDE acquires clients through a sales calling process. A TL acquires clients through applied expertise. A TA acquires clients through a long term relationship. Any Old Hand’s job may include one of these roles or all three depending on the capability of the Old Hand.

Growing into these roles involves planned capability development.

What is a capability?

First, some definitions:

Skills are physical or mental actions or processes that get better with practice and can be applied to a problem.
Knowledge is information that can be applied to a problem either as background or specific problem related expertise.
Competency is a combination of knowledge and skill that has been learned and successfully applied to a problem.
Capability is a competency, reinforced by individual or group processes, used repeatedly such that a person is “known for it”

To build capabilities involves learning new knowledge, practicing skills, applying these competencies to problems enough to have consistent success at them.

Old Hand role capabilities

Here are three capabilities of the Old Hand role:

Framing a project. – Client’s hire consultants to solve a problem they can’t solve themselves.
- Grow or stop decline of revenue,
- Grow of arrest the decline of profit, or
- A “people problem.”

(All business problems are people problems and all problems have revenue or profit implications. Are we hiring, keeping the right employees, suppliers to deliver for customers and shareholders? Are people organized well with sound work processes for efficiency [profit] or effectiveness [revenue]?)

Framing a project means learning enough to form a hypothesis about what might be causing the problem and what the solution might be. The diagnosis phase will confirm or disprove your hypothesis, but you frame diagnosis work. The client may tell you what they think the solution is, but you must cast the diagnosis wide enough to confirm or deny these hypotheses.

Adaptability and Innovation – Observe a “new” problem, that many clients have – “Teams, hmmm -people seen to be crowing or complaining about teams, I wonder . . . “ –then conduct research, develop a service offering, adapt it to multiple clients. This becomes a way to feed the firm

Building long term relationships -This capability involves seeing potential in clients or colleagues and being extraordinarily helpful when asked. Perhaps you can be helpful to everyone, but most Old Hand Trusted Advisors are extraordinarily selective about with whom they connect. “Choose wisely and five clients can feed your firm for your lifetime, “ an Old Hand at a well-known boutique firm once told me.

Old Hands need all these capabilities. However, Business Development Executives make Framing their first priority. Thought Leaders make Innovation their first priority. Those who choose the Trusted Advisor path focus on Relationships.

BDEs may also build knowledge in an industry to give them access. TL’s make build connections with researchers and business professors, Trusted Advisors may build relationships at the Board of Director level.

Planning which capabilities to develop and when increases Old Hand career longevity.

How long can an Old Hand work?

How long one expects a career to last is something few think about before fifty and in consulting that may be too late. When I was twenty I imagined I’d retire at fifty; I worked till I was seventy. I might have worked longer, I still look young for my age. However my business came from referrals. Existing clients referred me to their peers and I got to the point where my clients retired and some died. What might have changed this?

Focus on getting clients younger than you are.

Most consultants start out working for older clients, but if over time they cultivate relationships with supporting managers then as senior client retire they will be in good position. Trusted Advisors are often quite good at seeing potential in younger managers or board members and extend the period that they are helping companies.

Thought Leaders can have greater longevity.

Consultants that work into their nineties, Drucker, Deming, Schein, are almost always thought leaders who have published best-selling or multiple books. These works, enhanced by new editions, seminars, and speeches, are an evergreen source of new clients. Often thought leaders develop a “Center” or an “Institute,” to continue their research with younger staff that extends and markets the content of the Center.

Form Partnerships

Hiring public relations, speakers agents, telemarketing providers or training Yeoman project managers and others at your firm can keep an Old Hand contributing longer..

Consulting doesn’t have to be a young person’s game.

With a little late stage career planning Old Hands can work as long as they want to work. Of course, there is more to life than work and some other activities are more fun and rewarding.

Crazy ‘bout an Automobile*

by Alan Culler | Apr 21, 2023 | Living

My First: Tank

My first summer at Oyster Harbors Caddy Camp I was thirteen. I was slow to learn and reluctant to work, but with help of an older caddy, I finished strong and was voted “Most Improved Camper.” I learned to hustle, earned respect from the caddy-master and older caddies and earned $250 net after the $45/week room and board, more than the other “first years.”

My second summer didn’t go as well. I expected to pick-up where I left off, but everyone was new and starting over wasn’t easy. Then I got hit in the head when a lady hit a five iron shot into our foursome. I lost a week, while they woke me constantly to “make sure I wasn’t dead,” the staff’s joke about checking for concussion. Next I got bronchitis. I went home for two weeks, where I would have gladly stayed, but the camp was still charging me $45/week. So I went back and really hustled to dig out of the $135 hole created by lost time.

I netted $50 for the whole summer. Maybe my dad felt bad for me. He wanted me to learn to work, which I did, but even he was annoyed when the camp made no concession for injury and illness. Mr. Antonini, from Dad’s work, sold me my first car for $25 – “running – not worth much. He doesn’t want to junk it.”

It was a 1953 Dodge Coronet four-door sedan, with a 241 cubic inch Red Ram V8. Later, as I learned what a gas gauge was by hand-pushing the car, I called it “Tank.”

Tank was two-tone turquois and white with a brown plastic and fabric interior. It had a Gyromatic transmission, a cross between stick and automatic, where you used the clutch for first and third gear, but shifted between first and second and third and overdrive by releasing the gas pedal.

I was fourteen, so for two years I just took the engine apart and put it back together and gave our driveway a coat of rubber, popping the clutch and “peeling out.”

The summer I was fifteen my dad bought a new car. He taught “the boy about buying a car” and I had some input to selection of the 1963 Pontiac Tempest, black with red bucket seats, and “four-on-the-floor, (a four speed manual transmission with floor mounted gearshift). It also had (optional) seat-belts, my idea, “like race-car drivers.”

I got my license on my sixteenth birthday. My father taught me how to drive when I was twelve, and had me practicing parallel parking on our 30% grade driveway for years so when the instructor had me parallel park on a hill at the end of my test, I aced it.

“Great!” The trooper said, “Let’s go back and write this. . . Watch it!” Elated I enthusiastically started pulling out and almost crashed into a car coming up the hill. I hung my head.

“Would you rather have your license of your life?”

“My life.”

I was resigned to taking the test again. But the trooper took pity on me and gave me my license with a stern warning to look before pulling out. Now almost sixty years later, I still do, (mostly).

I drove the family car. I had a job and saved to insure my car. Then I wrecked the family car, learning about the snowplow skid on front-wheel-drive cars. Seat belts saved my life.

“Put your car on the road,” Dad said.

I did and began my love affair with car-owning freedom. I drove to school and hung out in the gearhead parking lot, until someone called the cops to roust us.. I drove to the beach and learned about vapor lock where the fuel boils in the carburetor and the vapor prevents gas from getting to the cylinders. I traveled with cooler ice and a towel to cool the carb.

I learned that $2 tires from the Gulf station’s used tire rack were worth the extra buck over the $1 ones. I learned that power-line right-of-way paths aren’t good for car exhaust systems and not to “go parking” on woodsy dirt roads after a big rain. I observed the white smoke of a blown head gasket is different from the black smoke of an engine badly needing a valve job.

And I learned that even old friends like Tank, age to where it just isn’t worth the money and time to do major work on a $25 car.

Red Wing

Then along came Red Wing, a 1957 Dodge, red and white fin-car with a hemi V8, before it was called a hemi, and a pushbutton Torqueflite transmission. The car was huge.

“Why look at this back seat! You could just lie down on it,” she said, but she never did.

The name Red Wing came from my mother’s friend from whom I bought her. I took stick about the name, which described her red fins not Detroit’s hockey team, but these were days of the Esposito and Orr Boston Bruins and few believed me.

Red Wing and I drove everywhere: school, work, dates, ski trips, beach trips, just-because trips. I was still on a “Cinderella pumpkin license,” not able to drive after midnight until eighteen.

I mostly obeyed that rule, except once. We went to see Ellie and Les in Ogunquit Maine and I asked my father to stay so I wouldn’t have to drive after midnight.

“No.”

My friend Ben and I were changing Red Wing’s left rear tire at about 12:30 a.m. when the army of State troopers and National Guard drove up. We were sure we were busted, but they drove on to quell the Hampton Beach New Hampshire riots, Labor Day weekend 1964.

I sold Red Wing for almost what I paid for her and went to college where I had no car and drove a Vespa to my ice cream factory summer job the next year.

Family Cars

I didn’t get a car again until 1970. Married then, I bought my first 1967 Volvo 122 red, a fun car to drive. My then wife learned how to drive on that car, but before her test I made her drive with my mother in the 1967 baby blue VW bug.

“Why.”

“Because they’ll fail you on your language alone!”

Ultimately Kirsten bought her own car, a red 1965 Volve 544 turtle-back and I bought another 122, dark green with saddle brown leather seats.

In 1977 we bought our first new car, with our first car loan, a silver 1977 Honda Accord. My father-in-law, who had been WWII US support troops for the RAF in the Burma War was disgusted.

“I fought those bastards for four years and now you’re buying cars from them.”

The Little Samurai sloughed off his insults and I sold it along with everything else we owned to go to business school in London. The 1971 Morris 1100 Mark II we bought in the second year made many trips with our by then three children – still no car seats. I thought a trip to Bath would take an hour because that’s what it took on the train. I didn’t realize that the British Rail 125 was so named because it went 125 miles per hour – oops.

When we came back I bought a used ’79 Honda Accord, which a Pittsburgh truck ran over teaching me that whiplash is real. I replaced it with a new silver Accord. Family cars weren’t named.

My Hot Rod

The 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais International Series, Quad Four with four-on-the-floor, black on black with spoiler was called “Alan’s hot rod” by others.. I ordered it through the GM supplier program when GM clients gave me grief about my “rice burner.”

I drove the Olds for ten years. My son learned to drive on it and used it while I travelled with the stipulation that he drove me to and picked me up from the airport and left me with a full tank of gas. I’m told that Zac learned about gas gauges being hand-pushed out of the Fort Pitt tunnel by a friendly motorist. I gave him the car for art school graduation and my friend Anil and I had an excellent adventure driving it from Pittsburgh to Seattle. Zac learned that maintenance cost and new artist income don’t mix and donated the hot rod a year later

Car Again?

My second bride and I moved to New York City and didn’t own a car for seven years until we moved to New Jersey. I then bought a silver 2003 BMW 530I, which I named Brunhilda after the Valkyrie. When she was eighteen years old I finally let Brunhilda go to a new home and bought Die Liebele, the dragonfly, a 2018 BMW 330ix, her name a reference to the E90’s light-darty steering and turbo-charged acceleration compared to the E39’s limo-sports-car ride.

That’s my history with automobiles. Like many boomers I grew up with cars. I still prefer cars to trucks, even SUVs. Unlike many where I live I haven’t yet succumbed to electric vehicles. I’m a late adopter and will probably buy a hybrid first and that only after we stop producing electricity with coal.

American culture is built around the automobile. We have road trip movies, songs, TV shows and cartoons where cars talk and many car ads, though automotive advertising spend dropped from third place in 2017 to eighth in 2022.

I love cars, love the freedom. As this piece shows my life has been lived with, if not defined by, cars. I enjoy driving, though long road trips are less fun now that my bladder and back insist on more frequent relief than they used to require.

However I do wonder what my life would have been like if I lived somewhere where public transportation was available like it was in New York City. What if we lived in a country that had invested money in high-speed rail service, or one that built its highways like Germany, on a deeper bed, with more cement and less asphalt, so autobahns last longer.

Do you think that it’s possible for the United States to change its love affair with the automobile?

Should we even consider it?

* “Every woman I know is crazy ‘bout an automobile” song by Ry Cooder

Time to Improve

by Alan Culler | Apr 16, 2023 | Leading

Farm Radio

In the late 1980s I did projects for a firm that sold national spot advertising on thousands of radio stations across the United States. The firm’s salespeople would call on media buyers to pitch stations they represented for campaigns for which radio was a part of the advertising plan.

Of course, radio advertising was, even then, a decreasing share of advertising campaigns. So the firm created another sales force to call on media planners, agency client account executives and even advertiser marketing directors to sell the idea that radio was a viable part of the marketing mix.

One part of this effort was farm radio. I was asked to help the national farm radio rep. “Farm radio?” I was completely clueless.

“Farm radio,” Lloyd explained in his West Texas drawl, “is what the farmer wakes up to at 4:00 a.m.. It’s what he listens to on his tractor radio at 4:30-5:00. It’s what’s playing for 15 minutes at 11:15 when he comes in for lunch and at 5:45 when he’s washing up for dinner. The programming is mostly local crop market prices and weather, but there’s an occasional news piece if a supplier has a new product or there’s a bill in the legislature that affects farmers.”

Farm radio was a part of the programming of radio stations of all formats country, rock, news talk, but it was definitely the “red-headed stepchild” department. Programming and on-air were usually given to the most junior person or the one who should have retired ten years ago.

Problem was farm radio was starting to attract big advertising dollars. Equipment makers like John Deere, big seed companies, big fertilizer companies, banks and investment firms were discovering that farmers didn’t read magazines or watch TV, but they did listen to farm radio.

Lloyd’s idea was to document farmers’ media use and to improve the quality of farm programming, with a “weekly fax newsletter” that on-air “talent” could just read.

My engagement was to research farmer media usage and then to help Lloyd and his tech guy Emmet, set up the infrastructure for a weekly broadcast fax.

Talking to Farmers

This was classic market research. We did some interviews and sent a survey. We built an interview and mailing list getting names and addresses from the radio stations, (yeah, snail mail – it was the 80s) and sent a survey. We did some telephone interviews, but quickly learned that getting a farmer on the telephone (pre- wide-spread adoption of cell phones) was hard. I could however make an appointment with a farmer’s wife and drive out to see him. The farmers I talked to were mostly men, but not all.

The interviews were tough to schedule. The ones we got were often because of relationships at the radio station. They were fascinating. I had one sixtyish guy take me under his wing early on.

“Ya know, a farmer isn’t a farmer. We’re all different. First a farmer is defined by his crop. A corn farmer is different from a soybean farmer, uses different equipment to plow, fertilize and pick. Cotton farmer? Man those guys have it rough. Weevils come along and completely wipe you out before you can turn around. You can pick cotton by machine now, but still the best way is by hand and that is hard work. Course most family farmers like me learned to rotate crops, have a field fallow, but the corporations don’t really do that.

Next a farmer is defined by his land. Some soil is easy, some ain’t. Sometimes wind blows your topsoil and fertilizer away, no matter what trees you plant as a windbreak. A hill farmer’s different than a valley farmer, A river bottom farmer? That guy’s a gambler. He plants in the best soil there is, but one in three years gets washed away ‘cause he farms a flood plain. The good years he has the best yield and when he’s flush you see ‘im in Vegas, Bad years he’s always optimistic. ‘Next year,’ he says.”

For anyone who grew up on a farm this information would have been old news, but this forty something year-old suburban kid drunk it in. I used it to shape survey questions.

I did interviews in Texas, Mississippi, California’s central valley, central Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, and Indiana. I came to understand just what a tough business farming is. Your product is dependent on the weather avoiding insect pests and bacteria and fungi. It is hard all-consuming work and even if you do everything right there is no predicting market prices. If you had a great yield year and everyone else did too, market price is down and you barely break even.

A Farmer’s Time

One of the last interviews I did was recommended by a Chicago radio station manager. The farmer grew multiple crops and had been quite outspoken about “getting chemical ads of television.” It seems like the fertilizer and pesticide companies were running 60 second TV spots in prime time on Chicago stations hoping to reach Illinois farmers. Unfortunately the “pounds in the ground” visuals were reaching a lot of other people too and his work was being interrupted by newsmen and environment protesters. He was an advocate for using radio to reach farmers.

“No farmer I know has time to watch sitcoms, so they’re not reaching buyers and the pictures they show are from huge corporate farms with little regard for the land. So why do I have to spend time explaining that to the media and these kids who come to my farm carrying signs.”

From the point of view of our research these quotes were pure gold. I did feel a little bad for him. He had a big family farm, passed to him from his father. His brothers weren’t interested in farming. Of his kids, only his daughter was interested. They had a crew and hired seasonable labor. His wife worked on the farm too and she arranged the interview. Seemed like they worked all the time.

“Bill will only have twenty minutes to talk with you and you’ll have to break it off because once he starts talking he can’t shut himself up. He’s in the barn. Remember -twenty minutes.” I assured her I would shut down after twenty minutes.

After about fifteen minutes, a blue pickup truck with an orange “I” on the door screeched up outside the barn.

Bills said something under his breath that may have been a cussword. He didn’t look happy.

A twenty-something in a white checked short-sleeve shirt and freshly pressed chinos bounded from the truck carrying a big manilla envelope and a clipboard.

“Hope this is still a good time, Bill.” said the young man eagerly looking at me.

“Did you clear it with, Marge, Andy. I’m pretty sure I asked you to clear your visits with Marge..”

“Well. . . no. Actually you said you’d be available today and I drove up here from Urbana. We were gonna talk about what we been working on at the Extension. We were gonna talk about some new methods.”

“New Methods? Bill exploded. “Son, I can’t talk to you about new methods. I’m only farmin’ Half as well as I know how NOW.”

By this time Marge had arrived to shepherd the university ag. extension worker back to the house. Bill and I finished up with pleasantries and my promise to send him any of his quotes before we used them. I don’t know if Bill found time to talk to Andy that day or if Marge scheduled him for another time, but I often thought of this conversation when I worked on continuous improvement (CI) initiatives.

Time to Improve

Leaders and the consultants who sell continuous improvement projects are often a little like Andy, fresh-faced true believers in a new and better way of doing things. These leaders and consultants often look at a long time horizon in planning change.

“By this time next year we’ll be able to take twenty percent of waste from the system.” It’ll save everyone time so we can focus on some new things.”

Further exacerbating the problem, leaders often pick their “go-to” people to start learning new methodology. These people are always the recipients of new tasks because they are hyper-conscientious and “find a way to get it done.” In organizations like these you often hear the cliché “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.”

As a consultant I heard reactions like Bill’s, “I don’t have time to improve,” frequently. I advised leaders to take on time saving work first. One exercise we used CI teams addressed this issue directly. Collectively they listed current workload and categorized responsibilities.

Tasks we can stop doing – (even temporarily).
Tasks we can reassign or delegate.
Time-suck processes where if we took out waste it might free up time.

Some leaders resisted. They wanted to work on improving “big stuff” first. Often their “go-to people” understood and convinced them to free up time to improve.

Now if I can only apply this disciple to my own to-do list.

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Coaching Skills for Consultants

by Alan Culler | Apr 10, 2023 | Consulting

**“I’m a consultant, not a coach!”**

He said this with a sneer dripping off the word coach that you could smell across the room.

The problem was we were not really hired as consultants, at least not as he was defining a consultant. We were hired to teach a client coaches how to support continuous improvement (CI).

Client coaches attended advanced CI training and coached projects run by the business units. Each client coach was assigned a “consultant coach” to help them with difficult problems.

This “consultant,” an independent contractor, was ignoring his client coach and doing calculations, taking measurements, running experiments. In short he was ingratiating himself with the business unit leader and undermining the client coach and the project.

“Work is getting done and Tony (the business unit leader) loves it” the “consultant said obstinately.

“Yes, but nobody is learning anything,” I countered.

This was one of many painful conversations. He was better at all the things he was doing, but he couldn’t understand that his role was to teach not do. Ultimately, this consultant had to be removed from the project.

In fairness, many “expert” independent consultants are hired as an “extra pair of hands” to do a difficult task. Competency transfer isn’t an expectation.

So What is a Coach?

A coach is someone who helps and individual or a group develop competency (knowledge and skill), helps them learn in the context of a goal.

There are all kinds of coaches, singers vocal coaches, acting coaches, life coaches, spiritual guides, the tech help desk, executive coaches, change coaches, book publishing coaches, and so on.. They all teach (or help you learn) in the context of a goal.

Many people have an understanding of what a coach is from sports, Knute Rockne of Notre Dame football, John Wooden of UCLA basketball. Sports coaches often have the reputation of being motivational “ass-kickers.” These coaches have the advantage of working with top players with a crystal clear goal, “winning.” Sports coaches at top levels may not use much positive feedback; they can leave that to the cheering fans.

Business coaches use positive feedback more. Whether a manager or a consultant, these coaches take the “player” “as-is” with limitations and may clarify the goal as well as shape performance to achieve it. A business coach may also have to help move from competency to capability by adding review processes and other support structures to maintain competency.

My first management training had a half day of “coaching and counselling”. Coaching in the definition of this course was helping people perform better. Counselling was problem solving with difficult employees. I imagine that there are still managers who practice coaching as a part of their job, but many organizations hire external coaches.

Why Do Organizations Hire External Coaches?

Companies hire third party coaches for many reasons:

Development – managers don’t have time to develop their people and companies hire coaches to help individuals or a level or a class of employee (e.g. middle managers).
Team development – to help a new department form, set goals, conflict, etc.
Succession planning –to help evaluate and develop leaders to the next level.
As part of a change effort – to learn and practice new what is required in a changed environment.
Remedial development – for individuals or teams experiencing difficulties

An entire business coaching industry has sprung up. There are individual coaches and coaching companies. There are many books, coaching models, and coach training and certifications programs.

Some consultants have decided to earn a living as full-time coaches. I never wanted to do that, but I came to believe that at a minimum consultants should learn coaching skills because coaching characterizes most senior level client relationships. The vaunted “Trusted Advisor” consulting relationship at the CEO level is a coaching relationship, unfiltered feedback and goal-centered leadership development.

What Makes A Good Coach

I have read enough testimonials about coaches (in sports, theatre, music, etc.) to recognize certain themes:

“Coach believed in me”
“Coach was right there at just the right time with the right piece of advice”
“Coach kicked my butt when I needed it, picked me up when I needed it.”
“I brought some skill, I did the work, Coach showed me what work to do.”

In my view good coaches have a strong similar set of core values. Coaches have knowledge and skill in what they are coaching. A Bill Belichick (New England Patriots coach) who had never seen a football wouldn’t be very effective. The coach may not be the best ever in the game, but what they have is the ability to transfer competency. The best coaches evaluate the player, determine what is needed and deliver motivation and a learning at the right time. They also understand the coaching process.

Core Values

Most good coaches have underlying values and beliefs: Core Vlues skills and competencies make for a good coach

A desire to be helpful
A drive to deliver the goal
An abiding belief in the content they are coaching and the person being coached to deliver the goal

Good Coaches are

Focused more on others, less on themselves
Authentic – they say what they mean and mean what they say.

I can think of successful coaches who don’t have one of these values, but they have a strength in the other values that overcomes that deficiency.

You can’t train values. You can’t train the specialized content knowledge and skill You select for those attributes. You can train coaching skills around a coaching model..

A Simple Coaching Model

There are many coaching models, all with clever acronym names, OSKAR, GROW, STEPPA, CLEAR, ACL, etc. The model I used was taught to me by Alan Moore, a Glaswegian Scot, and one of the gentlest souls I ever met. I worked with Alan on several continuous improvement initiatives in the oil and gas industry.

I like Alan’s model because it is simple and easy to understand. Engae client-agree approach -demonstrate -Feedback and support

It is sequential, and a good conceptual framework on which to hang knowledge and skill.

Engage the Client
- Prepare before engaging
- Respond to a request / Create a request
- Build rapport
- Ask questions about goals
- Listen with empathy
- Speak only when your knowledge will help learning.

The important element of engagement is the client’s choice to engage and learn.

Agree direction and action plan
- Contracting – client wants and needs, coach offers and requests (One on my requests was that the client act on the agreed actions.)
- Securing agreement on approach
Demonstrate and Observe
- Balance telling and asking
- Clearly explain purpose, process, and expected output of activities.
Support and feedback
- Giving space to learn
- Being available as a sounding board
- Being helpful, direct, specific, and check for understanding when giving feedback
- Model non-defensive, respectful, action-oriented behavior when receiving feedback

Coaching is a learning intervention. If people (Including me) always learned what they need to it would be a much better world. Coaching doesn’t always work.

I had major disagreements with one boss. We each felt a lack of respect. He hired a coach to teach me “how to talk to him respectfully.” I suggested the coach facilitate conflict resolution with us both. My boss declined. The coach resigned.

Ultimately I went to see my boss’s office and closed the door. We “cleared the air’ and things were better for a while, but I then I stepped on his toes again and he stomped on mine and I left the company.

Fully half the problem was my ignorance and arrogance, but not all of it. Coaching didn’t work.

When Coaching Doesn’t Work

The biggest breakdown is in engagement stage and the biggest part of engagement is the client must choose to be coached. Here are two categories about why coaching might not work.

The client isn’t ready

Adults learn what they choose to learn, so if the board “tells” a CEO that he needs to be more “empathetic,” when his entire career has been built on drive and not tolerating inaction, then this CEO may not be open to a “softly-softly-make nice” coach. This is one point of Marshal Goldsmith’s book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Find a goal, a purpose for people to change and underinvesting in the “why” may lead to failure.

The Coach isn’t ready

Perhaps the problem the client faces isn’t one the coach hasn’t faced before. Perhaps the coach didn’t do research on the industry, or accepted another person’s assessment of the problem. Maybe the problem is beyond the scope of the coaches capabilities, as when a client wanted to talk about his marriage and I recommended that he consult with a trained psychotherapist.

So coaching doesn’t always work. The hard part is lack of outcome control; the client must act.

So Why Should Consultants Learn Coaching skills

If a consultant learns coaching skills, I believe it increases project sustainability because the client has learned and is therefore more likely to act to maintain results. So most change programs can be enhanced by coaching.

It may increase consultant promotability. I mentioned earlier that senior relationships are coaching relationships. Partners at big consulting firms may have two or three such relationships.

It may improve the image of the industry. Consultants are often described as “having an opinion on everything without the benefit of experience.”. Coaches typically listen more and that may help perceptions.

Haircutters and Me

by Alan Culler | Apr 1, 2023 | Living

My haircutter history

When a was a curly tow headed two-year-old my hair drew a lot of attention. I’m told I was not happy with my first haircut. I bawled uncontrollably when my father took me to his barber shop, which amused the barber. They finally gave me a cookie to shut me up. No, I don’t remember it,. My father did what he always did; he took pictures.

My father recounted my inauspicious beginning haircut story at family gatherings. Then my mother told another “heartwarming” tale about a young boy’s first trip to the barber with his grandfather whom he idolized.

“The barber asked him how he wanted his hair cut and he said, ‘just like Grampa!’ His grandfather was bald as a cue ball except for a fringe over the ears. And the barber, the mean thing, did it”

Everyone thought this hilarious, but I became secretly terrified of barbers. I remember barbers asking me how I wanted my hair cut and my father saying “high up on the side and back with enough to comb in the front.” I either had no opinion or it didn’t matter much.

When I was about ten the flattop crewcut was in style. I tried and tried, but no matter how much Pomade I used, my head was too round and the front too curly to ever create the fresh-trimmed hedge look.

When I was a teenager Edd Byrnes played “Kookie” on the TV show “77 Sunset Strip.” “Kookie,” Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers had longer hair swept back on the sides into a “DA” in the back (a hair style named for a duck’s posterior). I so wanted to be Kookie. I’d let my hair grow until I got the “Alan it’s time to get a haircut’ from my parents.

The minute I was in the barber’s chair it seemed that no matter what I said I was still Ray’s boy, :”high on the sides and back with a little to comb in the front.”

I went to college in a small town in Kentucky. There was one barber shop on Main Street with two sixty-ish barbers.. When I first went It was a weird experience. It was a Saturday and there were men hanging around talking. I sat an waited. After several guys who came in after me were called to a chair, I asked how long the wait was and was told to “wait my turn.”

I learned that people in town didn’t much like the college kids. Dorm-mates advised me to go mid-morning on Tuesday. The barbers weren’t any nicer, but with no one else in the shop they didn’t keep you waiting.

Neither barber listened at all to what I asked them to do. It waws like being Ray’s boy all over again with one difference. My hair has always been thick and curly. One way to deal with that as a cutter is to use thinning scissors, a kind of scissor that has teeth like a comb that cuts alternate chunks of hair. That allows the cutter to make thick hair more “manageable.” The problem is that the hair is of different lengths so about a week later all these ends stick up and the haircut looks like crap. After a couple of these experiences I asked the barber not to use thinning scissors.

“Are you telling me how to do my job, son?”

“No, sir. It’s just that the thinning scissors cuts unequally and it grows out funny.”

“Then you should get your hair cut more often, son.” This cracked the other barber up.

But he didn’t use thinning scissors. He used a straight razor cutting diagonally to layer the hair, which turned out to be worse.

My sophomore year, I was cast as one of the knights who kill Thomas Becket in T.S. Elliott’s “Murder in the Cathedral.” I was required to grow my first beard.

My beard was slow in coming in and I’m blond so it wasn’t noticeable at first, but one Saturday I went for a haircut, There were catcalls as walked in the door.

I said I was “growing it for a play.”

One of the guys hanging around started sashaying around with limp wrists.

When I finally reached the barber chair the barber pointed to the shaving cream and a straight razor to howls from the room. He finally cut my hair without thinning scissors, but it wasn’t a pleasant visit.

My sophomore roommate Jack, a lanky city kid from Covington across the Ohio from Cincinnati. listened to my complaints and next time took me to his barber shop. It was a black barber shop owned by E.O. Jones with the kind of atmosphere later portrayed in the movie Barbershop.

E.O. had no trouble cutting my wavy hair, listened and cut as I asked with no thinning shears or razors. E.O. told stories and everyone in the barbershop audience cracked up. He also played the drums at the Green Street Church of God, the Blues Brothers movie-like church where Jack took me to services. E.O. took Jack and me under his wing and cut my hair for the rest of college.

In the seventies I experimented with many different hairstyles -long hair down my back with-belly-length beard, tight curled BeeGee permanent to go with my plaid bell bottoms. Then I got “into business” and did the whole “Dress for Success” neat trim through business school. In London I went not to barbers, but to the same hairdresser as my wife.

I found that hairdressers who cut both women’s and men’s hair were

More likely to listen to what I wanted and
They were better at their job – better cutters.

When I moved to Pittsburgh I went to Mico, a guy who cut my wife’s hair. Mico was a really good cutter and we had lively conversations. Mico cut my hair for fifteen years and we still keep in touch.

Mico is a storyteller, and I found a common-sense wisdom in many of his stories. I wrote some of his stories down. Now forty years later, he has given me permission to publish some of those stories in my upcoming books.

I moved to New York and went to a guy who was a good cutter, but all his stories were about the celebrities he knew. It wasn’t the same experience.

When we moved to New Jersey, Billie and I tried different salons and finally decided a stylist named Maureen. When we first met, Maureen rereferred to herself as a “Jersey Girl,” I suspect that fifteen years later she wouldn’t use that phrase. We laugh and talk for the forty-five minutes. She knows all about the houses we’ve owned, my children and grandchildren. I’ve heard tales of her daughter growing from Santa letters to graduating from college, and her friend who is a stunt man and body double for a Hollywood star. Maureen’s husband is my optician.

When I had my fall in 2018, Maureen came to our house to cut my hair when I couldn’t walk and after the surgery gave me the tough love advice that got me to quit whining and refocus on physical therapy, “Alan, you’ve got one job right now. Don’t fuck it up!”

Lessons from haircutting

I have been blessed with good haircutters and experienced the other end of the spectrum for comparison. Haircutting is a personal service, a luxury. There have been times in my life where I didn’t have the money for it and cut my own hair . . . badly.

But I have had years where every three or four weeks, I saw the same haircutter. I developed a loyalty to him or her. I had a relationship that was more than a business relationship.

I’ve been thinking. What can I learn from these relationships that might apply, not just to luxury personal services like hair-cutting, house-cleaning, and tailoring, but also to professional services, like accounting, law, and consulting, to teaching, and even to managing people. How can being a good haircutter make us better at our jobs?

Here are my thoughts:

Develop capability: First and foremost you have to be good at your job. I had loyalty to Mico and Maureen because they were good cutters. That capability bought forgiveness if a haircut didn’t work out right.

Listen to what your “client” wants. Sure you can “recommend,” even forcefully explain what they might try, if you have a track record of listening.

Be authentic. Bring your whole self to your work. Tell your stories, ask about the clients stories. Put personal value into the relationship.

Have fun. There will be days when you won’t feel great about your work. There will be days when your “client” isn’t having the best day, but on average the sense of fun in your job, in the relationship adds value. Shared laughter is relaxing – a release.

It seems there are lessons everywhere, if we are open to them, and you can also get a good haircut in the bargain.