Client Bashing? Stop.

Client Bashing? Stop.

by | Feb 16, 2025 | Consulting

“Can you believe how stupid?”

“I know. You’d think they’d see the obvious . . .”

I was in a small group of twenty-something consultants complaining about our client. I’m embarrassed to say I was in my fifties, but I was joining in. Suddenly a founding partner of the firm, seventeen years my junior, joined the group.

“Permission to not client bash?”  he said quietly.

“Oh. . . point taken,” said I sheepishly. I had delivered this message to teams before, but I had backslid into a client bitch session.

Client bashing happens much too easily in consulting, for many reasons.

The “curse of knowledge”

You are hired to help solve a problem. You use the obvious methodology, which you’ve used before, and you wonder how anyone else wouldn’t know that. That’s called the “curse of knowledge;” once you’ve learned something you forget what it was like not to know it. Clients may never have been exposed to zero based budgeting, or whatever specialized knowledge you are peddling. They may be too immersed in the day-to-day and miss what you see as obvious. That doesn’t make them stupid. They just need your help. And you know what? That’s why they hired you.

Insecurity

A senior partner explained the MBA recruiting criteria to me.

“We are looking for smart, nice people, who are just a little insecure. You have to be smart because clients have difficult problems. Clients and the team must like you, so it helps to be nice. We look for those who are a little insecure, because they work harder. This is a tough business which requires people to power up to deliver results.”

Sometimes imposter syndrome, smart people who are insecure and ‘power up’ to compensate, leads to what is perceived as arrogance. Consultants who have learned enough about a business to sound intelligent, may stop listening, or worse privately demean their clients.

Noblesse-Oblige-less-ness

Sheldon Cooper, the main character of the Chuck Laurie television comedy “The Big Bang Theory,” is a genius. We meet him as a Cal Tech theoretical physicist who went to university at twelve, and got his PhD at eighteen. He is almost completely devoid of social skills and completely obnoxious. Sheldon has been the smartest person in the room his whole life and has unmistakable disdain for lesser beings. The twelve season show milks the comedy of his much too slow humanization. There are far too many Sheldons in consulting.

Despite the smart-nice-insecure recruitment specification consulting hires too many Advance Placement, Ivy-Tech, Rich and Famous or RaF wannabees. These folks are not just imposter syndrome arrogant they are the genuine article. They really do believe they know better, do better, are better, than everyone else. Some of these folks, like Sheldon, get humanized as they age. Some do not.

I could go on, but the reasons for client bashing are less important than the effect.

Client bashing impedes service

It took me a while to understand that consulting is a helping profession, like medicine, or psychotherapy or social work. Clients have a problem, not enough revenue, too much cost, or people stuff, – you know, messy-motional-humans getting in the way of a well-engineered technical paradise. Clients ask for help solving the problem, which is a good thing, because as American psychologist Carl Rogers reminded us, “help that isn’t asked for isn’t perceived as help. It is interference.”

This brings us to the first problem. Often the boss asked for the help and the people below him didn’t. Oops. So consultants arrive ready to help people who don’t want the interference. Bash, bash, bash.

Carl Rogers also said, “it is impossible to help someone you don’t like.” He advised “find something about your client that you like.”

The converse is, when you are bashing your client, you are deeming them unworthy of your help. Why would you “serve’ someone you considered unworthy of your service? You would be unlikely to do your best work.

Bashing the client sets up an adversarial relationship. In your mind, they are less, and you must win, and get the credit, rather than helping the client to win, even if they claim to have “done it themselves.”

RIF, Rightsizing, POP

In the 1990s I did a lot of reengineering work. Reengineering was just business process improvement, but it took on a mystical ethos due to the book of that name by Michael Hammer. The firm I worked for was hired for huge projects. We’d arrive with a large team of smart, nice, insecure young people and take over a client’s organization for a year.

Sometimes these projects were run to teach the client process improvement. In those projects there was a large client team, lots of team training, and the organization was left more efficient and productive.

Sometimes the consulting team did most of the work. On those projects, I observed the project leader often promised a specific reduction in force, (15% RIF). They talked about euphemisms like “rightsizing,” or POP (people off payroll). There were no revenue growth goals; marketing processes were never looked at.

In the first kind of project client bashing was minimal. There were real improved business results, some revenue growth, some cost reduction. Downsized people were treated fairly and often redeployed elsewhere in the company. When the project was over, there was often a goodbye party where the client teams sent consultants off with thanks.

In the second kind of project, client bashing was the order of the day. There were often union actions and lawsuits. Sometimes there was virulent “resistance” and on more than one occasion violence.

Correlation is not causation. So the client bashing is probably a symptom. And who is to say where the adversarial relationship began, with the consultant, the hiring client, or both.

When you need people to change, bashing them isn’t service, and in my observation isn’t a success strategy either. If you find yourself tempted to client bash, stop, and repeat:

First, do no harm, be helpful where asked, focus on outcomes and process.

 

 

Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates, and Their Mentors is the story of a consulting career where I learned these values. Click here to learn more.

SUWI or SUWOI?

SUWI or SUWOI?

by | Feb 7, 2025 | Leading

I’ve been thinking about Shakespeare’s play Hamlet recently. Though I trained as an actor, I never played Hamlet. Hamlet is a young prince of Denmark, grieving the loss of his father, and feeling vaguely uneasy about the fact that his mother married his uncle Claudius so soon after his father’s death.

“Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables” he jokes with his friend.

For those who never read, nor saw Hamlet, let me give a quick synopsis.

Distraught young Ham is told by the ghost of his father, King Hamlet I, that Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, killed him, “Murder most foul, ” by pouring some poison in his ear. Claudius then married young Hamlet’s mother Gertrude. For the next three hours, like many a young university student, some CEOs and journalists, Hamlet ponders too much of all sides of what is known and unknown, the seen and unforeseen consequences of various strategies. Ham stumbles about the stage stuck in anguished inaction. In the end, Ham and most of his friends and family end up dead, very pricey justice.  At the conclusion, young Norwegian prince Fortinbras, who has the “bias for action” gene that Hamlet lacks, arrives with an Army to avenge the death of his father King Fortinbras I, killed in a duel by Hamlet I. Everyone but friend Horatio is already dead. Sad.

There is quite a lot of other psychodrama in the play, including Ham’s inability to confront either his uncle, nor his mother, his inability to return the love of the Lord Chaberlain Polonius’s daughter, Ophelia, who suicidally drowns in a creek. Ham also sends several innocents, friends Rosencranz and Guildenstern,  and Polonius and son Laertes to perhaps undeserved deaths.

There are several instances where Shakespeare comments on how people shamelessly ingratiate themselves to power. Early in the play Hamlet mocks Polonius.

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By th’ mass, and ‘tis like a camel indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.

Later in the play Hamlet mocks Osric

Osric  I thank your Lordship; it is very hot.
Hamlet  No, believe me, ’tis very cold; the wind is northerly.
Osric  It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.
Hamlet  But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.
Osric  Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry,

Remembering these scenes, sparked a memory of a new executive’s speech to his team.

“Don’t feel embarrassed if you suck up to me. I like it. If you meet a leader who tells you that he or she doesn’t like to be flattered, RUN AWAY, because they’re lying to you. So suck up. Yeah, suck up as much as you want.

But let me share something I learned at MIT. There is a difference between SUWI and SUWOI.

SUWI is sucking up with integrity. Yeah, you say nice things to me. You tell me you like working with me. You put a little smiley face on bad news,  if you know what you believe and don’t shy from TRUTH.

SUWOI, on the other hand, is sucking up without integrity. You accept and parrot everything I say. You always flatter me. You say things to me and then snigger and bitch in the hallway. You have little or no relationship with the truth and your behavior and your espoused beliefs are so far apart you cease to espouse your beliefs out loud.

Let me be clear, SUWI is not required, but it is OK with me, SUWOI is definitely NOT OK.”

People laughed.. There seemed to be less tension in the room. And SUWI and SUWOI became a little inside joke in the leadership team. People would preface difficult news, “In order to avoid SUWOI, . . .” or “definitely SUWI, I want you to know”. . . when they gave a genuine compliment.

It is hard to speak truth to power. This was one leader’s way to avoid the Polonius and Osric trap of agreeing with the leader even on the most trivial of opinions.

Leaders need truth tellers around them. There are still a few leaders, who don’t want that. There are some leaders who are fine if you give them the truth in private, but dislike open contradiction. These leaders may be in a precarious spot or they may be insecure.

There are some leaders who will punish disagreement, no matter the circumstance or whatever SUWI trappings you hang around it. If you work for one of those leaders, RUN AWAY. They are too absorbed in their own personality to see that you are a person, different from them, with any kind of boundaries.

But for everyone else, suck up with abandon, but suck up with integrity, SUWI rules.

Language—Story—Writing—AI (?)

Language—Story—Writing—AI (?)

by | Feb 2, 2025 | Living

Writer

“Would you like to write this with AI?”

I am asked this question, by LinkedIn, WordPress, and several other writing tools and sites where I publish my writing. As I skip the AI button inside my head is an existential scream:

NO! I’M TRYING TO BE A WRITER DAMMIT!

I call myself a writer and I do write a fair amount, no great American novel (yet), but ruminations on wisdom I have stumbled upon and share. I have self-published one book Traveling the Consulting Road, and am getting close on a second Change Leader? Who Me?  Still, as my defensive self-talk might indicate, I’m a little insecure in the writer title, but I definitely don’t want computer code doing it for me.

“Here honey, Let me tie your shoes.”

“I CAN DO IT MYSELF!”

I have always been a storyteller. It is a talent (or affliction) I inherited from my father who could spin a yarn to the delight (or annoyance) of many. I’ve discovered that not everyone has patience with my natural communication mode.

“STOP! We don’t have time for one of your stories,” said Kerry, the twenty-five year old consultant who viewed it as her job to keep the old process guy moving. (I was not even fifty then. I hate to think what Kerry would say now.)

Let’s face it, I like words, spoken or written. I think words are what makes us human. I’ve been thinking about human history embodied in the progression: Language—Story—Writing, and the various technologies that have changed communications.

Language

There is no contemporaneous report of how humans learned to talk. There are various theories about the development of language:

  • The continuation of the gestures we see in animals today. Our ancient black lab is very good at communicating when she wants to eat or go out.
  • A unique event in our evolution, specific DNA gene that spontaneously mutated.
  • Some divine creation event.
  • Some social event like collective labor that produced a rhythmic song – “(Hoh! Ah!) (Well don’t you know).That’s the sound of the men, Working on the chain, ga-ang (Hoh! Ah!)”

We may soon have more idea. The FOXP2 gene has been identified as controlling the development of speech in children. Perhaps by analyzing DNA from the oldest hominid remains we may find the point where FOXP2 develops. Or perhaps we will be left with Buonarotti’s Sistene finger touching moment.

When did language show up? One or three hundred thousand years ago? Dunno

Whenever we came up with the first words, it is apparent that they evolved into stories.

Story

In caves in Lascaux and Chauvet  in the south of France, there are some pretty spectacular pre-PowerPoint hunting story illustrations that date to between 17,000-30,000 BCE. Many early stories are an attempt to explain things, like why we all use different words. In Genesis II in the Bible is an old story that exists in many cultures, The Tower of Babel.

“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. . . .And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven. . . . And the LORD said, Behold. . . . now nothing will be restrained from them.  . . . let us . . . confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

And that is why, in comedian Steve Martin’s words, “cat is chat, dog is chien, hat is chapeau! Those French! They have a different word for everything!”

Different languages created a challenge for trade, and there grew up a lingua franca, a traders tongue, a combination of gestures and signs, which you can still see in markets around the world.

There are creation and great flood stories in many cultures; there are explanations for the sun and stars, and animal tales with morals like Aesop’s “Hare and Tortoise.” Slow, but steady wins.

Once, we lived in oral cultures where elders and shaman storytellers kept history and educated the young. The transition to writing was uneven. In Europe Germanic tribes developed an alphabet, but the Celtic tribes (Gauls, Belgae, and Helvetii) aggressively shunned writing

Hearing a story uses different neural pathways in our brains than reading the same stories. This is partly due to using different senses. Hearing develops in the womb, whereas vision is refined later. Early childhood research shows that children who are read to, read earlier and more throughout their lives. Story is powerful and fun.

Writing

People who study the evolution of writing talk about “writing systems, which usually start with a glyph or pictogram which represents a product and/or a count, on clay tablet cuneiform in Sumer – Hieroglyphs in Egypt- Chinese characters – Mayan ideograms and phonetic glyphs in Mesoamerica.

These early pictogram systems would have been most useful to traders and tax collectors. So it should be no surprise that the earliest alphabets were developed by the Phoenicians purple-sailed galley traders from Tyre and the Sumerian empire. These alphabets represented the sounds of speech -The Phoenician and Aramaic right to left represented consonants. The Greek left to right, added vowel sounds and cursive writing where one letter flows to another. The Latin alphabet built on the Greek.

Writing began as a specialized skill, practiced by the very educated, or professional scribes. In  1452, moveable type and the Gutenberg press, destroyed the scribe trade, democratized writing, and ultimately led to Palmer method cursive penmanship instruction, wherein I never earned above a ‘C’ in school. For a while in millennials education, the ubiquity of typing, stopped schools teaching cursive writing. Some are reinstating it now.

Research using electrode-net caps and MRIs has found that handwriting uses different neural pathways than listening to a story, and also different from reading. The synapses are strongest with cursive writing, stronger than printing and much stronger than typing. A stronger signal leads to a deeper pathway, and better memory. I discovered that when I took notes by hand, I could sit down and type a lecture or an interview almost verbatim. When I tried to do that by typing, I couldn’t remember more than about forty percent.

Handwriting, as bad as my penmanship has become, helps me. I often begin writing by handwriting an outline, and first sentences of each section. During times of transition, a handwritten journal helps me move forward. Whenever I am stuck, too many things to do and unable to prioritize, I always find handwriting it down helps me see order and the path.

AI

Now, AI wants to write for me, and I ain’t having any of it..

As I understand it, generative artificial intelligence works like our autopilot brain works, what Daniel Kahneman calls System 1 in Thinking Fast and Slow. System 1 scans all available data looking for patterns of behavior and then frequency gambles (In the past, Alan has turned right here 80% of the time, turn right). We use System 1 most of the time and that’s efficient.

AI has a much larger dataset to work with, because it’s trained on everyone else’s writing and so probably puts out copy that is clear and grammatically correct. I admit I may not always do that, but my writing is me, not a homogenous amalgam of everyone, assembled by computer code.

My mother the mathematician, used to decry my use of calculators. “Don’t use those things, Alan. They rot your brain.” She could do compound interest in her head and I catch myself pulling out my phone to divide by ten.

I’m left wondering about the progress (or rot) of the human brain. What did we lose in transition from oral to written culture? What did we lose from scribes to printing? (Have you seen the Book of Kells?) What are we losing as we type rather than handwrite? And what might we lose to AI generated text?

Maybe we’ll just start over.

 “Word, Dude! Reminds me of a story. Say, is anyone writing this down?”

The New Leader Opportunity

The New Leader Opportunity

by | Jan 26, 2025 | Leading

“Business is NOT a democracy!”

The CEO had raised his voice. I wouldn’t have said he was actually yelling, but his face was a darker shade tending toward red, and he was definitely speaking louder than he had been moments before.

My colleague, a consulting partner, was explaining that there was considerable disagreement with his post-acquisition integration plans and not just from the acquired company. This news did not please him, which caused him to so forcefully state his view of business governance.

The partner paused briefly, and then said quietly, “it is true that business is not a democracy, but it still requires the ‘consent of the governed.’”

Now it was the CEO’s turn to pause. He exhaled. His clenched jaw relaxed some and he enunciated clearly, “Fair point. . . . continue.”

The partner continued and ultimately we were engaged in a post-acquisition integration restart project, which featured the combined leadership team making decisions about which businesses would be left alone, which spun off, and which would receive additional investment. Staffing, the issue that had caused the dissent, followed those decisions. The CEO was sanguine about the outcome, but I think still believed that people should have just done what he told them to do.

I recognized the “consent of the governed” phrase from the US Declaration of Independence, but it turns out to be older than that, June 15, 1215 to be exact, the Magna Carta. The English King John affixed his seal to a document written by his barons, facilitated by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, which gave people rights to have input into laws that governed them, and justice “equally” before those laws.

Business is not a democracy, but lack of input and perceived injustice can still cause people to vote with their feet, either dragging them or using them to walk out, taking critical knowledge and skill with them.

The New Leader Opportunity

Acquisitions are one new leader opportunity. Suddenly you are leading a whole new group of people and if you treat them as the “spoils of victory,” you will make acquired company staff aware of their feet. You will also telegraph to everyone else how little you value expertise.

Anytime you lead a new group of people it is a new leader opportunity. The opportunity communicates how you value followers, or don’t. Unity, input, transparency, and fairness are watchwords.

Sometimes new leaders come from inside the organization, sometimes they are hired from the outside, but often they are put in the role to make a change. This is most visible at the CEO level. Jack Welch was promoted from the GE Plastics division to replace Reg Jones; Lou Gerstner was hired from RJR Nabisco to replace John Akers at IBM. Both had board mandates to radically change their corporations. However, any new leader can come from inside or outside, and almost always those that do the hiring expect that something will change. Understanding that expectation is the first step for a new leader.

The Why

At the CEO level there is often a decline or lack of growth in revenue or profitability or both that moves the board to act. Sometimes at lower levels, there is a lack of improvement, or innovation, or there are some people issues driving the change.

A new leader must understand and explain why people should choose to change.  What has changed with customers, competitors, technology that necessitates doing something different? And why not changing is not an option.

“Because I said so” rarely worked with my children, but it definitely doesn’t work with adults. Nor do the corollary statements ‘we bought you,” the “boss or board says so,” or any other “my way or the highway” sentiments. People may comply, in the short term, but they will also become aware of their feet.

Insight – Action – Results

This is the model I used to frame change. Insight is the data behind the why. Action is what we do more of, less of or differently. Results are the outputs we are trying to achieve. It is simplistic. For most changes, there will be breakdowns between insight and action, as people take different times to understand or act. There will be actions that don’t produce the desired result and “back-to the-drawing-board” moments. But a leader must frame what we are trying to do and why and engage people in the how and when.

The Who

Rarely do the same people who got us here, get us there. Oh, it is possible that the status quo folks will seamlessly become the passionate converted to the new vision. But frequently, those who lead the new change will be those outside the existing power structure. It’s why Jim Collins made the first step of Good to Great, decide “who’s on the bus. This is the essence of John Kotter’s “guiding coalition,” from The Heart of Change.

So who is on the bus? My list of criteria includes people who: :

  • Have internalized the “Why” of the change.
  • Are true problem solvers who invest the time to define and analyze a problem, not just suggest solutions before having the facts.
  • Have extraordinary communication skills – looking for clarity over eloquence, and simplicity over sounding smart.
  • Others listen to. (This often has nothing to do with positional power, but everything to do with competence.)
  • At least one person who immediately jumps to the “worst case scenario.” This is your risk assessor, your seer of unintended consequences. You don’t want a whole team of doom and gloomers, but one or two people with this view – and a sense of humor – can help avoid disaster.

Wasting the Opportunity

Often, you get one opportunity as a new leader, to attract followers, to engage people and help them choose to change. If you waste that opportunity, badmouthing, berating, and blaming, it is hard to come back. If you act unilaterally, or fail to have empathy and gratitude, the only people who follow will be those who want something from you. And no one will tell you when you’re blowing it.

Feedback and Accountability

Reward the people who give you the “straight skinny,” the people unafraid to say “the emperor is naked.” Even King John, who was not known to be a good king, agreed to clause sixty one in the Magna Carta.

Clause sixty-one gave the barons the right to appoint twenty-five barons ” to keep, and cause to be observed with all their might, the peace and liberties granted and confirmed to them by this charter.” The barons would give the violator (including King John) the opportunity to correct a transgression. If not corrected the barons could take the offender to trial.

King John, perhaps the worst king in Britain’s history, agreed that he was not above the law and could be held accountable. He didn’t live up to it, but others have since.

So business is not a democracy, but it does require the consent of the governed and some accountability beyond stock options and bonuses.

Untangling the Mess

Untangling the Mess

by | Jan 19, 2025 | Consulting

He was introduced to us as “Charley, an old-time key logger,” an introduction that seem to both amuse and annoy him.

“Thanks, I guess, Carol, Did you really have to put in the “old-time” bit? These folks can see I’m old just by looking at me.”

“Oh, sorry Charley,” Carol from HR laughed, blushing a bit, “But I hope he tells you some stories about being a jam-breaker.”

Charley didn’t look like a lumberjack. He was about five-nine, slight of build, and lean in a hard sort of way. He was bald with the gray fringe buzz-cut short except for a little forelock which stood straight up about three quarters of an inch in what might have once been a crew cut.

There were about ten of us in the group, contract facilitators of what were called “quality circles,” for a forest products company. This was our half-day orientation to the business, a multi-slide show with various speakers, to be followed by a small school bus tour of some facilities.

I don’t know why I instantly liked Charley, but I think I wasn’t the only one in the group who did. His face glowed of working outside with deep smile lines. I thought he must be over seventy. Maybe he was younger, but I was in my thirties, what did I know?

“Well,” Charley began. “most of those stories are what a male cow leaves in a field. Nowadays, most all product moves by truck, but when I started, way back with the cavemen, much of it went into rivers. There were logjams and some of my early training was as a jam-breaker. I might have actually had the title of ‘key logger,’  but the idea that a guy could show up in a pick-up and point at a log in a jam, say ‘that one,’ and drive away while the crew pulled it and all the logs flowed downriver is pure Disney. Most of what I did, was stop dumping logs upriver and make sure no one was standing on the jam when it broke.

There is an analogy though, to what you folks will be doing here. Our improvement efforts depend on information from guys at the mills, and field surveyors and logging crews. They’re going to have complaints, and identify problems. Some’ll suggest solutions. Your job is to untangle the mess, to see the connections, and the stuff in the way, like the old-time key loggers used to do.”

Charley went on to orient us to the business, to show us slides of logging sites and roads, of raw product sawmills and pulp mills and manufacturing facilities for paneling and composites. He spoke for about an hour, handed out a glossary of terms and took some questions. He was a lot more interesting than the accountant who followed him.

The first session I facilitated was a disaster. The session process we were given, was as Charley had described it, three questions: complaints, problems, solutions. In a three hour session I never got out of complaints. Evidently, other facilitators were having the same problem. Someone suggested starting with “What’s working well?”

That made a huge difference in the mood of the groups and facilitators were actually able to get to some solutions.

By the third of the six sessions I evolved four questions:

  • What is happening that should be happening?
  • What is not happening that should not be happening?
  • What is happening that should not be happening?
  • What is not happening that should be happening?

These questions started with what was working well. That placed some perspective on the complaints and problem definition that followed. The “positive” view outlined what was working, identifying constraints for any solutions, so we didn’t break what was working.

Staying with the fundamental question, what is happening, was a fact based approach  and avoided the kind of fact-free speculations that we would call “conspiracy theories” today.

In the rest of my career in consulting, I used these same questions in many contexts. I used them with continuous improvement teams who were having difficulty defining a problem because they had combined many different problems in a tangled mess. I used them in an initial meeting with a division CEO who was unclear what was wrong, but knew it threatened planned results.

Over time I learned to record these questions in this matrix:

What is happening: The Is-Should matrix

This matrix makes the tangled mess visible. It shows that what might seem like one problem is many problems, which may be interrelated, but also may be able to be addressed separately.

I always started with the positive, what is happening that should be happening and what is not happening that should not be happening. I asked “what else?” until we ran out of the category before moving on.

When the tangled mess was complete, I asked which problem was the greatest priority, or had the biggest pay-off or was linked to others so that solving it would help the others. People were often amazed at the clarity it produced and were grateful to be “unstuck.”

 

That felt a little like Charley’s key log stories, not as tangible, nor as cool, but rewarding all the same.

 

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There are more stories and consulting tools like this in Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates, and There Mentors.\ Available on multiple platforms here