“I Used to Be Stupid”

I stole this subtitle from Joe Hagy, of the “Cranky Old Man” blog. It’s the title of Joe’s second book, but it also perfectly describes my writing style. I describe how completely clueless I was at various stages of my life. I made a lot of mistakes.

My first book Traveling the Consulting Road , might be entitled  My Mistakes as a Consultant. My coming second book, Change Leader? Who Me? might be titled My Mistakes Leading Change.

For example, I didn’t understand is that consulting is always about change, and more specifically helping people change.

I know, I know, “Duh!” How could I not get that consulting = change. I mean no one would spend thousands of dollars to maintain the status quo, right?

In my defense, I will say that when I started, no one talked about the work that way. I was actually told, “Don’t use the C-word, “change” scares people.” I remember hearing a client say ”Change? We don’t want to change; we’re just looking for a new market entry strategy.”

These days the marketplace has moved on from the C-word; “Transformation”  is today’s buzzword. When Gemini Consulting began using the word “Transformation” in the mid-1990s, it rarely landed well. “Digital Transformation” is now old hat; everything is about Artificial Intelligence (AI) Transformation.

Why do you want to be a consultant?

The first time I was asked this question by the managing partner of the consulting firm of the firm I interned with in business school, I mumbled something about learning and the variety of the work.

“Oh, so you want us to be an extension of business school?”

I learned to say solving clients’ problems and increasing revenue or profit. I wouldn’t have said then and I don’t think I’d say now, “helping people change.” That might get a different cynical response:

“Maybe you should be a therapist.”

Clients hire consultants to solve, at least, one of three problems:

• Declining revenue, either in real terms or compared to competitors, or
• Declining profit, because expenses have grown faster than revenue or
• People stuff. This might be called reorganization, conflict resolution, “resistance to change,” succession planning, leadership development, post-merger integration, but it almost always comes down to “I want to go here. Why won’t they follow?”

“Doesn’t the people stuff cause declining revenue, or profit?” Well, yeah, but I still found that the frustration clients felt often was hung around “they or them,” their people.

It’s all People Stuff

When I was a booking agent, my brother-in-law quit teaching, went to business school to become a consultant. He moved to Indonesia to put a management accounting system into Pertamina He and my sister traveled all over Southeast Asia and Oceania.

A booking agent I met at a conference, went to business school to become a marketing consultant. She moved to Paris. This seemed like an exciting career. I sold everything I owned and moved my wife and two children to London so that I could go to business school and become a consultant.

I thought I was providing information to clients. In my first few projects I’d collect and analyze data, make a recommendation. I was shocked when some clients didn’t act on the information.

I gradually realized that implementation depended on how engaged the leader and his people were with the work. Arms’ length? The report sat on a shelf gathering dust. Roll up your sleeves and work with the consulting team? Get results.

I went back to school and studied Organizational Development, started becoming a process consultant “helping leaders make strategic change.”

Gradually I understood that business is all about people. Producers, suppliers, customers, shareholders, community, are all just people.

When people make change, they change too.

“It has finally occurred to me that change in this huge organization, comes down to me doing more of something, less of something, or doing something differently. The company won’t change because I change, but it won’t change unless I change either.”

This leader’s epiphany, blurted out near the end of a one-week leadership workshop, had a huge impact on me. Individuals had to change in order for a company to change. I repeated this to other leaders in similar workshops.

Finally a team in one of these workshops got tired of my berating them and said “This includes you, you know.”

I said, “Change Leader? Who me?”

They proceeded to give me some very pointed feedback, about how my empathy was lacking and my sarcasm wasn’t helping. I have worked on that feedback since.

There is a craft to change. Like all craft it requires knowledge and skill or competency. Change craft also requires practice so that competency becomes second nature. It requires systems, processes that support the craft until it becomes a capability.

How can you change people?

You can’t. At least, you can’t change someone else. Change is a choice. We must choose to do more of something, less of something, or do something differently. People only choose to change when they understand the need to change.

That information that I thought it was the consultant’s job to provide? It might be part of the compelling case for change, but it takes a while for people to internalize a compelling case for the company and choose to change themselves.

You can’t force it. An HR Director kicked off a “training” session I was running for middle managers, saying, “It’s my job to change the people or change the people!” The threat wasn’t missed by anyone in the room.

“People fear change,” is a cliché. I dispute that. People don’t fear change. If they did, no one would get married, have children or change jobs, which is what 25% of the people in that workshop did within three months.

People fear loss. They fear loss of income, status, or stability. The biggest loss people fear in change is a loss of autonomy, the right to choose to change. They don’t fear change they fear your change, the one you are imposing upon them.

There are three kinds of change

Innovation, Improvement, Integration are three very different types of change that require different mindsets.

Innovation is sexy. Everyone loves the newness, the creativity, the Big Idea, that disrupts a company, an industry, Life As We Know it. Innovation is about much more that ideas. It involves tedious rigor in evaluation, prototyping and testing.

Improvement is a rigorous process too,  measurement, action, and more measurement. The goal is better, faster, cheaper, where as innovation’s goals are different and useful.

Integration is often what consultants hear from clients. “We need to get everyone singing off the same hymn sheet . . . structure, systems, and processes aligned. Integration is a secondary goal after innovation, or improvement, and is critical post-acquisition when two companies must become one.

Consultants are asked to help with all, sometimes at the same time, which can be an order of magnitude more difficult because the goals are different. People are central to all.

The consultant’s role is to help people choose to change; the consultant will likely change in the process.

Who me? Yep.

 

 

 

   Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates, and Their Mentors is a complete consulting career guide. This book describes what it’s like to become a consultant including how to get hired and promoted, how to start a consulting firm, whether to become an independent consultant, and how to find and serve clients.

   The book includes clear descriptions of consulting frameworks, tools and methodologies in the consulting toolkit to master at various points in a consulting career.

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