Breaking the Rules of Consulting
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The document outlines ten rules for enhancing decision-making in consulting, emphasizing the importance of tailoring solutions to client culture, promoting youth in the consultancy field, and shifting mental maps to inspire new perspectives. It advocates for simplicity in processes, humility among consultants, and the rejection of outdated reporting methods, while cautioning against bad clients. The overarching theme is to focus on delivering value that significantly impacts client performance.
Breaking the Rules of Consulting
- 1. Breaking Rules in Consulting
- 2. Breaking Rules Enhancing your decision making...in just 5 minutes A Futures Coaching initiative www.futurescoaching.com
- 3. #1 Avoid perfect As a naïve consultant, I always use to try to give clients a 'perfect' solution... only to see little actioned In fact, I should have been tailoring the solution to the client's culture and their ability to impement An optimised solution is a customised solution An explorer wants a wind up radio, not digital wizardry
- 4. #2 Promote youth As a 22 year old in my first consultancy, I made a (truly awful) client presentation after just 3 months: I learnt from the 'fall' and I got better Typically, in French consultancies, people are still 'juniors' at 35 & talent is wasted Go with youth & let them make mistakes; your confidence will be repaid
- 5. #3 Radicalise tendering Tenders are tempting: clients at least have a budget However, they often come with an incumbent & a commoditising mentality Unless you want to destroy your margins and integrity, they only way to win a tender is to be radically different from the crowd
- 6. #4 Shift mental maps Clients take decisions when they see the world differently For me, a key consulting task is to transform mental maps; to get to an 'aha' moment Once an omlette is made, you can never return to raw eggs
- 7. #5 Keep it short Most clients haven't the time, the energy nor the organisational stability for long-term processes Keep steps short, keep processes containable Deliverables from one project can always feed in to the next
- 8. #6 Go outside We tell clients to network, crowdsource, open source – then use internal consultants for our thinking Break the rules by using outsiders to bring new perspectives And clients love the agency/experts/clients mix
- 9. #7 Be humble My first lesson as a consultant: clients often used me for reassurance, for political purposes or because of resource gaps – but NOT due to a lack of know-how Key insight for consultants, be humble; what you are providing is unlikely to be über wisdom PS. Humility also means listening well!
- 10. #8 Bad clients stay bad I've been incredibly lucky with sensational clients Occasionally a bad client pops up: the ones who distrust consultants and 'keep them in line' by beating them up One logic says, hang in there since over time you can win their trust but my rule says: once a bad client, always a bad client
- 11. #9 Reject reporting Old style consulting: take brief; internal work programme (with take out meals at 11pm and at weekends); reporting; go down the pub to celebrate New style: discuss brief; collaborative process which involves client in solution; interactive workshop(s) to leverage the findings into business decision making
- 12. #10 Work on what matters It's easy to produce lots of output; it feels right to work long hours; it's rewarding to be creative – but ultimately what matters is what makes a difference to the client's performance Add value by adding value And do so in a way which is credible, reliable and trustworthy
- 13. Enhance your decision-making join forces with
- 14. What is Futures Coaching up to during May 2012? Helping reinvent the supermarket proposition Preparing an international innovations project for a industrial global brand Building a Key Note for NGO Fundraisers in Geneva Pitching to build an international development strategy for a major European agency Participating in a brand positioning workshop in Jakarta Networking in Singapore Researching banking technology trends Pitching some new book ideas to Pearson
- 15. LONDON • PARIS Website: www.futurescoaching.com Blog: http://futurescoaching.typepad.com Email: chris@futurescoaching.com