The writer is looking for a proofreader. Candidate needs experience proofreading documents with technical analysis and citations. Experience with tax, legal and financial materials helpful, but not required. Timing is immediate, and I prefer to be contacted by phone at 405-701-2846. Steve Ledgerwood
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The writer is looking for a speaker or consultant who has an enterprise-wide customer satisfaction system that they can train the top 80 leaders of a Fortune 800 company to implement. He is not looking for just a speech with some points. Ideally, he is looking for a system that can be implemented internally and externally in an organization. This will be a global adoption of single system that senior leaders can drive in each division and geography.
He also needs a speaker or consultant who specializes in the area of customer satisfaction/service. He would prefer that they have a book on the topic, their work was research backed, or they had implemented their system organization-wide with other companies. It would be a plus if this person had significant business accomplishments in this area or performed in high-level Fortune 500 executive roles in the areas of service, training, or strategy.
For either position: Contact Koby@TheExpertCompany.com (Koby Fleck)
(Note: This is a public service of Alan’s Blog. All parties are expected to perform appropriate due diligence. Alan does not endorse nor support any party involved, and has no financial interest or involvement in the transactions. Do not contact Alan or any site other than the email address indicated.)
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aI’ve become convinced that the consulting profession is better off with no licensing or national recognition at all.
I understand this is heresy, but it turns out to be pretty smart business. One of the great advantages of consulting is the ease of entry. You don’t need a bushel of credentials, a pile of money, or even an office. You just need your smarts. And those smarts are all that sustained a great many currently top consultants when they began in the business.
Consultants bemoan the fact that attorneys and accountants are duly “authorized” by passing certain tests and being certified by the respective states in which they apply to practice. But those admittances to the bar or earning of a CPA designation include some fairly dismal practitioners from good programs and bad. Belonging to the state bar doesn’t mean that you’re providing clients with superb legal services. CPAs are sued for making rather major errors all the time. Coaches today are urged to be certified by one “university” or “boot camp” or “wizard” or another. My question, of course, is: Who certifies the certifiers? Most excellent consultants have also been coaching for their entire careers. Did we miss something, other than the tuition fee for being “certified”?
Empirically, there is no evidence that excellent consultants are at all harmed by operating in a system that affords anyone the opportunity to hang out a consulting shingle. (When I wrote “Million Dollar Consulting” in the early 90s I pointed out that a palm reader on the boardwalk in Atlantic City has to conform with more regulations than does a consultant operating in Atlantic City—or anyplace else.) The last thing we need is a bureaucracy throwing impediments in front of nascent careers and hurdles in the path of successful ones.
I remember offering my services once to an arts group in Providence seeking free consulting help for non-profits. I thought they’d be overjoyed. Instead, they insisted that I attend 10 weekly sessions on consulting. When I explained my background and track record, the bureaucrats (who couldn’t find their way out of a parking lot without help) told me that “you’re not a consultant until we say you are.” And thereby went my help down the road.
We don’t need that attitude in this profession. We need bright people, unencumbered by silly and arbitrary rules. (Some of the worst people in this profession, ironically, serve on boards of consulting chapters. All the good people are too busy consulting with their clients to serve on these boards, and the ones who do are often petty and selfish. Their belief seems to be that no one should be any more successful than the least successful person in the organization! Apologies to the exceptions.)
I salute any consultant who develops himself or herself by engaging in continual learning, and if that’s done with the help of an organization, conference, collaboration, or any other structure, fine. I think we all also know that any string of initials after our names in this business means zero to potential buyers. What they want to know is how smart you are, who is referring you, what intellectual capital you bring, and what your track record is.
Let’s stop trying to shoot ourselves in the foot by seeking licensing, certifications, approvals, DNA testing, or blood samples. Let’s exploit the wonderful opportunity of this profession by being the best we can, every one of us, by our own terms and by those of our clients.
I mean, do you really want to be admitted to the bar so that you can charge $250 an hour?
© Alan Weiss 2007 All rights reserved.
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I’ve been waiting for a return phone call from the general manager of a Porsche dealership which has offered the loan of a Boxster for the ballet, where I am on the board. I’m also a good customer of the parent car company within which the Porsche operation is located. Annoyed that the general manager has not called me back in two days, I called one of my contacts at the parent.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he told me, “Bill is unavoidably tied up. He’s had to spend the last two days in a ‘better communications’ training class.”
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I’m suggesting here in this public forum that everyone must sign up for Prehabilitation (Prehab) so as to avoid the more costly Rehabilitation (Rehab) which seems to have become de rigeur for all kinds of transgressions, real and imagined.
Not unlike absolution, Rehab has been used for problems with drinking, substance abuse, interpersonal ineptitude, bigotry, racism, lewd behavior, and purchasing the new Vista operating system. It’s costly and time-intensive. Paris Hilton is being jailed for 45 days, a huge loss to society. Rehab might have required 30. But effective Prehab, well, that would have merely been part of her life experience and prevented the ensuing unpleasantness. (If they didn’t lock her up for that television show, how can they lock her up for driving without a license?)
Prehab is atonement in advance. You have the regrets in the bank. It’s sort of like those machines in mall lots that enable you to pay for parking ahead of time, so you don’t have to wait in line later.
I’d suggest that Prehab simply be a course taught in the school system, thereby avoiding the need for precious discretionary time being washed away. Prehab would allow someone to acknowledge in advance the error of their future ways, e.g., shouting racial epithets at cops is wrong; beating your spouse senseless is a tad over the top; blaming your kids for your marital inadequacies is somewhat misplaced; drinking until you are even dumber than when you’re sober and driving into a crowd is poor etiquette.
In the somewhat likely event that these transgressions actually eventuated, you would merely present your Prehab card to the proper authorities. I realize this could be abused, so I’m recommending that it take the shape of a coffee card from the local donut place, and it is revoked if it’s punched, say, 48 times. I think that’s a nice balance between draconian penalty and public menace.
What we want to avoid are the repetitive trips to Rehab, which cast doubt on one’s discipline, as well as their tolerance for chirping birds and health nuts. I thought Imus was bold not checking into Rehab after his racial remarks (as he had in the past for alcohol and substance abuse) but he did go on the Reverend Al Sharpton’s radio show, which is Rehab on steroids.
In any case, give it some thought. A Prehab experience and lifetime card could be the answer to the multitude of public figures embarrassed by the rest of us paying attention to their public transgressions. The IRS allows you to pay estimated taxes during the year in order to avoid a painful “hit” later on. Insurance companies sell annuities that pay you back much later, when you need the cash.
Prehab is just a way to make sure we focus on true celebrity and not overrated character.
© Alan Weiss 2007 All rights reserved.
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I addressed an evening class of graduate students last night as a favor to the professor. Nice people, international, attentive. But I felt they were stunned when I explained how consultants operate and what the benefits are of this profession. It struck me once again that no one “studies” to be a consultant. We all wind up in the profession having traveled back roads or been washed up on the shore. The closest you get to an academic regimen is the legion of MBAs who are gobbled up by the “Big Four,” which are much more like auditing firms than consulting firms.
I think it’s for the best. The thought of thousands of theoretical academics teaching insanely complex models and pontificating on techniques they’ve never actually used and which would never actually work (just read some of the books being published) would probably kill the profession as we know it.
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I always loved reading the legendary Peter Drucker, because he used opinion and fact interchangeably, never seeing reason to discriminate between the two. My kind of guy!
Consulting is about a single issue: Improving the client’s condition. The physician’s admonishment to “first, do no harm” is simply not good enough. You don’t deserve to be paid for simply not screwing up. You should only be paid if your client is demonstrably better off after you leave than the client was before you got there.
When I ask candidates for my Mentor Program how their clients are better off after they leave, many can’t answer the question! That’s the starting point. And, that’s your value proposition.
A client is improved solely when output improves. That is, results and outcomes are better according to agreed-upon indices, whether scientific or anecdotal. You can measure sales improvements, but you can also readily observe whether meetings are shorter or questions are handled better in a presentation. If it’s not observable, it’s not important in a business improvement initiative.
The degree of that improvement justifies a fee. Hourly billing (and all time-based billing) is inherently unethical because the consultant is paid best when present the longest, yet the client is served best when the issue is reconciled most rapidly. Think about it. Is a client better served when an opportunity is exploited in 10 days or in 90 days? Consequently, which approach is more valuable, the one which produces the outcome in 10 days or 90 days? Yet, with time-based billing, the consultant who lingers and obfuscates for three months is rewarded for the lethargy.
The reason so much resistance occurs over “fee” and “price” is that consultants don’t focus on value. They focus on methodology and time. The only issue of importance to a client, however, is result. (I’m talking about true clients, not human resource people or trainers, who are consumed with methodology, boxes of materials, head count, and faddism. They are to organizational development what a stegosaurus is to agility and nimbleness.)
Consultants are either solving problems and restoring performance to a prior norm (problem solving: low value) or raising the standard of performance to new heights (innovation: high value). In either case, the outcomes are clearly visible and measurable, scientifically or anecdotally. A training program, focus group, outdoor experience, audit, redesign, ad nauseum, simply represent methodologies and inputs. They are, in themselves, not of value. Only the results they generate are of value. Yet most consultants create a fee based on the degree, duration, and frequency of the delivery mechanism and methodology.
A “strategy retreat” may be priced at $15,000 by a facilitator or “strategist,” yet the result of the new strategy that presumably flows from the retreat is probably worth millions to the client. How can the fee for this be less than six figures? (Because the consultant is considering what can be charged for the weekend, not the result.) “Recommendations” and “clarity” and “consensus” are worth nothing, unless higher profit, greater market share, enhanced repute, and less stress, to name just a few results, emanate from them.
A consultant is a partner with a client (someone who can sign a check for the consultant’s value) to achieve predetermined business improvements, which can be observed and measured in the environment. If that’s not what you’re doing or intend, then I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re not consulting.
And that’s a fact.
© Alan Weiss 2007 All rights reserved.
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Welcome to the first entry in my new blog here at www.contrarianconsulting.com. You’ll find the rules of the blog, our policy on postings, and a wide variety of resources in the accompanying menus and links. My purpose here is to stimulate and provoke so that consultants can improve their professional and personal lives. I’m not here to win friends and influence people. If you’re seeking unrequited love and absolute approval and validation, get a dog.
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