The Art of the Referral Workshop attendees in Newport:
Left to right: Barry Cope, Kevin Pare, Jean Oursler, Phil Symchych, Kathy Kingston, Bill Lee, Alan Weiss, Mitch Tubin, Dave Balch, Phillip Werenfels, Linda Henman, Scott Edinger
We will have a complete video for our home study page available in the next two weeks or so.
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I was asked in Melbourne, as I’m asked almost all the time, how I can generate so much material in so short a time. I publish several newsletters, columns, articles, videos, podcasts, and book portions on a monthly basis. In addition I handle the usual 80 emails a day, and appear on AlansForums.com at least three times a day. Oh, yeah, and then there’s this blog. Yet I work far less than most people.
My facetious response is that I strive for volume and not accuracy. A truth that is equally uncomfortable for people, however, is that I have two basic techniques to generate enormous volume:
1. I plan my work in advance.
2. I NEVER self-censor or self-edit. I don’t second-guess myself.
Can my writing be improved? Sure. Would it make a significant difference for my point and for the reader? No.
My past guests at my Thought Leadership Workshops: David Maister says, “You know what has to be done. The problem is you don’t do it.” Marshall Goldsmith says, “What got you here, won’t get you there.” (In other words, change your habits to reach new levels.)
I’m telling you to seek success and forget about perfection.
Here’s a radical thought. Write an “appointment with yourself” in your Filofax (or whatever calendar you use) to write an article, or blog entry, or position paper, or part of a book at a certain time on a certain date. Keep that “appointment” sacrosanct, as if it’s with a client. Eventually, schedule three or four a week, and you’ll find yourself producing prodigious amounts of material.
Stop procrastinating. Stop saying you’ll get to it when you have time. Stop telling yourself you can’t decide what to write (content) or where to put it (vehicle). Just write it and place it anywhere.
I hope this is of help, because I’m not rewriting it.
© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.
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We’re three days into the Consulting College, and here are some of the “keepers” from the group:
• Speed and brevity are essential for success.
• Extraordinary growth does not result from doing more of the old, but from changing the nature of how you do things.
• High buyer commitment accompanied by fees which are too low create a self-defeating sale, and leave money on the table you can never, ever recover.
• You should be diagnostic in your marketing phase but prescriptive in your delivery.
• Creating a trusting relationship MUST precede conceptual agreement and proposals.
• You are far better served with a limited list of highly qualified prospects than a massive list of random names.
• It is completely consistent to move to higher fees AND lower labor intensity concurrently (e.g., retainers, licensing, etc.).
• Audio, video, and text combinations should be used in marketing on the web, including your own site and blog, as well as platforms such as iTunes and YouTube.
© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.
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As consultants, we have to guard against the insidious dynamic of “not being able to win enough.” It’s often an external stimulus: “Nice sales job this year, but of course you didn’t break that record set in 1988.” Or: “It’s wonderful that Stanford accepted you early admission. Your cousin, Rachel, did that with Stanford AND Harvard, remember?”
However, this is often an internal issue, especially with people whom we coach. When Jim Collins’s fine book appeared, everyone was talking about going from “good to great,” but very few knew what that meant, or how they’d know when they made progress toward “great.” Remember Michael Hammer and “reengineering”? Everyone wanted to “reengineer,” though few would know it if they tripped over it, and some probably believed it meant running a locomotive.
When coaching clients say they want to be “extraordinary leaders,” “outstanding managers,” “state-of-the-art financial experts,” or “world class strategists,” ask them exactly how that condition would differ from their current one. I just completed my second annual Thought Leadership Workshop for two dozen people, and one major issue is: What are the traits that describe and typify a thought leader? With that knowledge you can tell what you should be achieving and measuring.
Do you want to be regarded as the top consultant in supply chain management? Or does your client want to be acknowledged as the finest sales executive in the industry? What would that look like and how would others know?
If you don’t pursue that level of specificity, you wind up in tendentious discussions about “best” and “ahead of the curve” and “innovative.” But those contribute to an amorphous mess if you can’t really specify what the “best” would be compared to “non-best.” When you are specific—with yourself or with your clients—you create the environment for clear objectives, crisp metrics, and obvious value, and concomitant high fees.
You can also discriminate among the important and not so important. A pharmaceutical firm needs world-class chemists, but probably not world-class accountants. The book that you write doesn’t have to be a best-seller, but only has to get you into a few dozen key new clients.
TIAABB: There Is Always A Bigger Boat. Don’t pursue grandeur for its own sake. Pursue reasonable growth goals. If you do that consistently, you’ll be in a very comfortable boat, with the wind and spray in your face, and others in your wake.
© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.
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The 2011 Thought Leadership Workshop is now completed, with David Maister as my guest, following Marshall Goldsmith last year. (The 2012 session is October 22-24 in Palm Beach—contact me for participation or use my web site. I have 15 seats available, that’s all.)
Here are my most vivid recollections from the beach:
• Tell people what you think and what you believe will help them, prescriptively. Don’t struggle for consensus.
• The ideas don’t have to be new, they have to be pragmatic and immediately applicable.
• Use multiple media: books, articles, blogs, newsletters, speeches, interviews, video, podcast, teleconferences, and so on. Broadcast your message.
• Use metaphor and symbolism to emphasize and create memorability.
• Understand your own “sweet spot” (what you’re superb at helping others accomplish) and identify the support factors that emphasize varying aspects.
• Thought Leadership can be research-based, or anecdotal, supported by examples and evidence.
• “Hang out with” and interact with other, recognized thought leaders.
• The term is vulnerable to cliché. I like to think of “results leaders.”
• Thought leaders evolve and change and are public figures who are accessible.
• One of the truest tests is longevity, with evolution of intellectual property.
• Intellectual property isn’t supposed to be hidden under a mattress. If you’re afraid of it being stolen if you broadcast it, then your claim to it is tenuous.
More to come.
© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.
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(This is a summary of just one day of my Thought Leadership Workshop currently underway at The Breakers in Palm Beach. The notes are from Andrew Hollow, attending from Australia, who is a member of the Mentor Hall of Fame, and who posted these on AlansForums.com.)
Thought Leadership Summary by Andrew Hollo
Today we had David Maister join us for the afternoon, so these points combine Alan’s and David’s sessions:
1. If you meet resistance, don’t just give up, you have to make your point MORE strongly: either the idea, its instantiation (the conversion of an idea from the abstract to the concrete), its monetization or its exploitation.
2. The shortcut to determining whether my TL offers value is asking: (i) what’s a condition that needs to be improved? (ii) what’s the need that I can create? and (iii) what’s my response to this?
3. Focus my TL on my great clients. Then, my past clients. Next, prospects, recommenders and knowledgeable strangers.
4. Success trumps perfection (yes, again!) – From Alan: “People don’t examine a body of work closely; all it does is builds credibility”
5. A TL at the top of his/her game distills an accumulation of tested, repurposed, accessible IP and earns the right to express it didactically and assertively (viz. “The Consulting Bible”)
6. From David M:
- “Forget the big piece (i.e., the book). Write articles. After a year or two you’ll have 20 – 30 pieces which have been widely distributed and which you can assemble”
- “TL is not about originality; it’s about being the person they want to speak to about a topic”
- “A TL writes as if THIS is how he’s (already) running his life”
- “Train people to get used to me as a source of ideas”
- “Get a reputation as someone who shares content, not as someone who obsessively keeps ownership”
- “Tempt and seduce: give them (your audience) somewhere to go”
- “If you’re doing ANY marketing in consulting, you’re an idiot” (e.g., building databases of prospects is nearly always a less effective substitute for actually LISTENING to clients, preferably current clients with unmet needs)
7. David referencing Neil Rackham: As a Thought Leader, you won’t get directly to ‘powerful people’. Instead your TL will reach ‘receptive people’, who will put you in touch with ‘troubled people’ (those “whose ox is being gored”) who can help you reach ‘powerful people’.
8. The most potent TL is “what no-one helps you learn” (In David’s case, this was how to sell – when you have an over-developed intellect but an under-developed personality i.e., many accountants, lawyers and consultants).
9. You don’t where opportunity will come from. So write. And speak. And do both a lot. And don’t worry WHICH talk, or which article, or which book will generate the big lead.
10. Thought Leaders attract people who are attractive to other people.
11. Practice performing as a Thought Leader: high energy presentations; self-deprecation balanced with healthy ego; engaging and interactive with your audience; seemingly limitless content.
12. TL is as important as actual consulting: “What you do with your billable time is your income; what you do with your non-billable time (i.e., TL) is your future”
Two-thirds of the way there – another great day tomorrow.
Over and out.
Andrew Hollo
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“Reinvention” can quickly become a bromide and buzzword. But I’ve found reinvention to be key to my career, especially when it’s ahead of the curve (or creating it’s own curve). We discussed this at the Million Dollar Club and elsewhere, and here’s a quick diagnostic to help you proactively consider it.
I’ve developed 8 areas of reinvention which are affected in varying degrees by three major dynamics. Consider radical change (“a sharp right turn”) in those areas where you can achieve the highest impact. Here’s the graph:
……………………..Societal Change Technology Economy
Beliefs
Expertise
Processes
Content
Market
Affiliations
Clients
Distribution
For example, if you converted part of your practice from wholesale (corporate) markets to retail (individuals) whom you reached with remote means (teleconferences), you would be reinventing your market to take advantage of the technology, volatile economy, and growing belief in being your own boss.
Another example: You begin working with non-profits as a new client base, since they are having tough times raising funds (economy), by creating new ways for them to reach prospective donors (technology), with a marketing message about the importance of communities helping themselves (social change).
Too many consultants try to guess at what “the next big thing” will be. Why not create it yourself with some discipline and analysis?
© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.
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What is “intelligence”? I don’t believe it’s equivalent to IQ, which often simply reveals who takes certain types of tests better than others (and if you’re at all exposed to Mensa, the self-described “top 2 percent,” you’d think the members had acquired the answers to the tests).
Intelligence is reflected by success, not necessarily solely or even primarily financial success, though one would think that the more success you enjoy the relatively more you’ll be compensated in your particular career pursuits. But what creates a person of better than average intelligence?
It’s certainly not merely education, because I attended a fine school, Rutgers, that educated a great many people but didn’t contribute much to the intelligence on some because the individuals were busy refusing to learn. (They believed, with some degree of proof, that they merely had to pass certain tests, not realizing that the greater test of life didn’t have an answer sheet that could be cribbed or notes that could be copied.)
In observing, coaching, and helping to develop people globally for 30 years, my “model” looks like this:
AI = A + L + V x S
Applied intelligence equals awareness, plus learning, plus volition, multiplied by speed.
Awareness means Scope of Processing
• Sensory skills
• Discrimination
• Perspective
Margaret Wheatley points out in Leadership and the New Science that “consciousness” is related to the extent that information is processed.
Learning means Degree of Integration
• Synthesis
• Versatility
• Prioritization
This is the ability to take processed information and “attach” it to your frames of reference, priorities, and talents, creating new knowledge.
Volition means Immediacy of Action
• Optimism
• Resilience
• Risk taking
This is the drive to apply the learning immediately, not to “wait for the right time,” and to create opportunities to apply it to improve performance and results.
Speed is the rapidity possible in each of the three areas
• Judgment
• Sense of urgency
• Relevance
This measure includes increasing speed as the processes are internalized, and seeking success, not perfection.
Each of my bullet points can involve specific skills building, coaching, and practice.
My experience is that intelligence should be measured by relative success and is dependent on these factors, all of which are learnable and coachable. While some people have “gifts” (e.g., the ability to play the piano by ear or write quickly and expressively), the norm is for pragmatic skills development, which means we have to understand the process.
Anyone can improve their intelligence with the correct steps and discipline.
© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.
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What many of you really need….
Used with permission, © Jim Hines 2011 (www.jimchines.com).
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From out 2011 meeting notes:
How Do You Sustain A Seven-Figure Business
• Leverage your momentum. Use client stories with permission. Aggressively seek referrals.
• Build on strengths. Seek new markets, new offerings, new clients—and expanded work around current clients—based on core competencies.
• See the client as a person, not an entity or “business.” You’re dealing with a person, not merely a representative of the organization.
• Have passion about what you do, not about making money or “building numbers.”
• Reinvent yourself continually, and help your clients reinvent themselves.
• Ask, “What IS a high quality client relationship?” and then adhere to those standards.
• Help others and you’ll help yourself.
• Think of the fourth sale first. How can this become a long-term client?
• Gravitas plus relevance equals trust. Produce intellectual property, build your brand power, become a thought leader.
• Personally, improve your visibility in the marketplace with your most valuable potential buyers through gravity, publishing, speaking, the web, and brand power.
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