Monthly Archives: October 2007

“The Last Supper” required quite a bit of da Vinci’s time to paint—about three years. The Goldberg Variations demanded a couple of years from Bach. The Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson took four years between publishing “An Army At Dawn” and his current best-seller, “The Day of Battle.”

Proposals take about 45 minutes to write, if you have the information to include in them. An hour with an economic buyer is probably sufficient to obtain that information. That would mean that if you met with the buyer this morning, you could have the (Fedexed) proposal in his or her hands tomorrow morning.

The longer you wait, the more bad things can happen. I’ve never had a buyer say to me in the interim, between points in the business model, “You know, I’ve been thinking, and we should triple your fee,” or “I’ve found another five projects for you to work on.” Instead, obstacles pelt like hail from the skies: There has been a merger, an acquisition, a divestiture, a surprise in technology, another alternative (to you), a change of personnel, a shift of priorities, an unexpected competitive inroad, a new regulation, turnover, a UFO landing.

When you wait, more bad things happen than good things. Consequently, why wait? Consultants wait for three unacceptable reasons:
1. They have no sense of urgency.
2. They are seeking perfection.
3. They fear rejection.

I have a habit of telling people in my Mentor Program that a magazine or Internet article can be written in 45 minutes. Most argue that it takes at least a week. I have the majority down to two hours. Tell me who’s closer to the truth, my pragmatic assessment or their self-delusions?

Clients will see urgency and responsiveness in your sales process as evidence of what they will receive in your consulting process.

We are after success, not perfection. You will NEVER have all the information you need, so go with what you have. There is nothing so unneeded as a needs analysis.

Rejection is never personal, but if you go into a relationship trying not to be rejected you’ll be like the athletic team trying not to lose (instead of trying to win). You will lose.

Confederate general and raider Nathan Bedford Forrest was said to explain his success with, “I get there firstest with the mostest.” (This is contested, since Forrest was an educated man, and may have really said, “I arrive first with superior power.”) In any case, the faster you move, the more you will tend to pre-empt others and gain the advantage.

Stop procrastinating. MOVE. There is no capital investment in speed. There is only your volition. This IS a race, so you might as well get good at it.

And it does take only 45 minutes to write an article.

© Alan Weiss 2007. All rights reserved.

If Raquel McNabb awoke last night to find her husband, the outstanding Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, Donovan, running down the hall, she shouldn’t take it personally. McNabb was probably dreaming that New York Giants’ defensive linemen were still pursuing him, and they may well have been.

Last night at the New Jersey Meadowlands, the Giants’ defense spent the evening chasing McNabb up, down, across, and into the field. They chased him during plays, in his head, and right into the dressing room. At one point, his fumble resulted in a defensive touchdown.

A great deal of this was due to abysmally poor coaching on the Philly sideline, where they apparently believed that Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora was actually supposed to line up in the Eagles backfield, because that’s where he spent most of the night. The rookie tackle, Winston Justice, filling in for an injured starter, and assigned to throw 300 pounds in Umenyiora’s direction, was about as effective as Katie Couric trying to get a word in on Al Sharpton. It is not meant to be.

The problem was that the Eagles’ brain trust provided no justice for Justice. They gave him no help in the form of a back or guard to assist in blocking the locomotive that was Umenyiora, who went on to record an astonishing six sacks of the quarterback, a franchise record.

All night the Philly head coach, Andy Reid, risked his star quarterback’s life because he kept expecting something different to happen even though he changed nothing. That is worse than insanity. That is dumb-ass stupid. That is malfeasant.

In the wide world of consulting, we find similar woeful leadership, which decries the incompetence of the workforce while doing nothing to improve it or lead it better. We find poor resource allocation, poor bench strength, and poor timing. The Eagles’ defense played well—the final score was only 16-3, and there were opportunities available until the final few minutes. But there was no help coming for the Eagles’ offense from the team’s leadership. The Light Brigade was charging into the guns, and it was a glorious sight.

But of course, they had no hope. As Alfred, Lord Tennyson, recorded to begin his epic:

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Yes this was only a football game, but it featured the ineptitude of leadership. And we’re only dealing with clients and organizations, but they, too, often wither because of the ineptitude of leadership.

You have to change the game plan. If you’re not suggesting that as a consultant, then it should be you out there, trying to stem the rushing Umenyiora. That might just change your approach. Because if he doesn’t kill you, eventually the quarterback will.

© Alan Weiss, 2007. All rights reserved.

Many years ago, United Airlines told its reservations center (when human beings were still taking all reservations) that the primary strategic objective was superior customer service. Hence, agents were to carefully explain to all callers the options for fares, routing, use of frequent flyer miles, etc.

Sounds like a sane strategy being communicated to tactical levels, right? Wrong. United measured the effectiveness of the call center based on number of calls process per agent, per hour. See any cognitive dissonance there?

Police officers are often given quotas for tickets, especially in dry municipal revenue periods, which results in unfair and haphazard enforcement of everything from parking limits to speeding laws. No public school teacher I’ve ever encountered has been measured on the basis of student achievement, in the classroom or out of it. Usually, they are measured by how many days they live. Tenure is based on getting older, not getting better.

When you consult with organizations (large or small, complex or simple, for-profit or non-profit) there is a limited number of dynamics to examine in your analysis (this is heresy to those I call “convolutionists”). One of those is how people are measured.

I’ve consulted with consulting firms which evaluated themselves and their people by the number of proposals generated, NOT by the acceptance rate or business acquisition. Consequently, they developed a huge “back room” of drone-like employees chugging out proposals the was a factory outside of Shanghai chugs out black smoke. Ironically, and laughably, the boiler room proposal people found themselves “more successful” than the sales force because they were exceeding the proposal goals although sales weren’t closing!

When you enter a consulting engagement, determine whether the organization is failing to measure the important performance, and whether it is measuring unimportant performance. People respond to measures. Those police officers will find violations if they are behind quota. Those United Agents could have cared less about providing alternative routing data as they neared the two-minute standard to end the phone call.

Sometimes you can design a small change in the metrics of the organization which will startlingly and abruptly change the behavior you need changed. The “convolutionists” who want to launch their 14-step model and cite everyone from Likert to Lincoln won’t like this, but don’t worry about it.

Just call it “intelligent design.”

© Alan Weiss 2007. All rights reserved.