Five Ways Consultants Do More Damage Than Good

Buy Karen's Book Here

Karen Phelan's latest book focuses on management consultants and how they can often do more damage than good. --> Bringing in outside consultants can rejuvenate an organization with fresh perspectives, new capabilities, and formerly unthought-of options, but unfortunately many of the large, industrialized consulting practices do just the opposite. 

Here are five ways consultants get it wrong :

1. Focusing on delivering those deliverables – “Deliverables”  is consultant-speak for the end products,  like that binder full of flow charts or the 200-page power point deck, that are contractually required for the huge fees and provide proof of the consultants’ value.  Many consultancies obsess over creating deliverables instead of building capabilities. Worse, those documents usually become obsolete shortly after you print them because they’ve been based on….

2.  Assuming the world is static – Promising optimized business processes is dependent on a static world. How do you optimize something that is constantly changing? Even those 5-year strategic plans become obsolete before they can be executed. Do you really want to execute a plan based on years-old assumptions? Rather than disseminating knowledge or offering options, many consultants recommend one course of action as the right answer or recipe for success. If the world changes, then that answer is no longer applicable. Unfortunately, many consultants require that one solution for…..

3. Constructing command and control functions – Often, a consulting team will walk into a client site and be appalled by the lack of oversight. How can the executive team be so naively trusting that their employees will do the right things? That prompts a major effort of implementing command and control functions where every employee and every action is monitored and measured, hence stifling innovation, flexibility, and engagement. Many companies fall for this rigid system because the terms “management by objectives” and “performance metrics” have become part of the management theory lexicon. And much of this jargon exists because consultants are so good at ….

4. Propagating management consulting gobbledygook  – This takes the form of the indecipherable jargon,  a quadrant chart with cute animals, or a formula that calculates shareholder satisfaction.  The only thing this gobbledygook succeeds in doing is to distort thinking, either by boiling down complicated human systems to an x-by-y plot or by disguising what is actually happening by calling it something else, ala right sizing.   All this gobbledygook is a result of consultants …..

5. Seeking fame and fortune as thought leaders – While consultants are rewarded on client satisfaction, the real money and recognition comes from being a thought leader and creating a trademarked model that brings both royalties and renown.  The problem with thought leadership is that it is not usually derived from extensive real-world experiments or years of data gathering.  If you call thought leadership what it really is – it’s making stuff up in your head and getting other people to follow it – then it’s obvious that the impressive sounding methodologies only look good on paper. 

A little raw, perhaps, but there it is. Thoughts?

Five Great Advantages that Startups Don't Take Advantage Of

Buy Peter's Book Here

Peter Cohan has started several profitable companies and is also a venture capitalist who knows what startups have to go through to get established. In his latest book, Peter discusses how startups can take advantage of various factors to launch their businesses.

For this blog entry, Peter shares Five Great Advantages that Startup CEOs  Don't Even Realize That They Have:

1. You have the ability to attack big competitor vulnerabilities.

A big market is big because there are huge competitors who are likely dominating it. You might think that those big companies will do anything to defend their market share, but you would be wrong. They won’t cut price below their costs because that would threaten their quarterly profits – which would crater their stock price.

Since you have virtually no costs, you can sell your product at a much lower price than they do and still make a profit. If you start to gain market share, the big company won’t match your price unless they can cut their costs enough to preserve their currently fat profit margins.

2. You can lure top employees and talent

I don’t know anyone who actually liked working for a huge company because they often feel like powerless drones whose work has very little personal or professional meaning and mainly benefits a handful of people who don’t even know they exist.

This means that your start-up has a chance to lure some of the best talent –even though you won’t be able to pay high salaries. People crave the chance to do work that they find personally meaningful and work with other people who feel the same way. If you can convince talented people that your start-up can create that kind of profound meaning, they will gladly give up a chance for a high salary in a big company. Your offer of stock options or equity won’t hurt either.

3. You have a steeper learning curve.

Big companies take a long time to make decisions because countless bureaucratic obstacles have to be overcome before a big company can introduce a new product, raise its prices, lower its costs, or go after a new market opportunity. And as long as it takes big companies to make decisions, it takes them even longer to implement those decisions.

But a start-up can go through seven such learning cycles in the time it takes a big company to complete one. This means that your start-up can get much smarter than a big company about a new opportunity because it can get prototypes to customers, find out fast what works and what does not, and adapt to what you’ve learned.

4. You can tap your network to get needed resources.

People and other leaders are much more willing to help out gifted and inspired start-up CEOs than to lend a hand to corporate power brokers.

If you have a track record for winning, then the people in your network will want to give you their time and money (some more of each than others). If you need help making a marketing plan, raising capital, deciding who to hire and fire, which company to acquire, getting customers, forging partnerships, or designing products – people in your network are there to help.

5. You have the ability to take market share by delivering far more value.

If you’ve picked the right market opportunity, big companies have set the bar pretty low by giving customers a product that is priced too high and does a mediocre job of meeting their needs. But because they dominate the marketplace, they have little reason to do better.

Your start-up is poised to deliver them much more bang for the buck by finding a problem that is causing that industry’s customers great pain but that no other competitor is solving, and figure out a way to solve it while charging a lower price. Then people start coming to you instead. (Remember the pain of video rental late fees and having to drive back and forth from Blockbuster? Netflix did.)

These five start-up resources only look like nothing to a big company. But if you’re an entrepreneur worth your salt, you’re already exploiting them to scoop up that big company’s customers with a spoon.

Five Ways Scenario Planning Can Help Social Action Groups

Buy Adam's Book Here

Author Adam Kahane was a leader of the groundbreaking Scenario Planning Team for Royal Dutch Shell, the energy company, -- widely credited as the originator of scenario planning. In his latest book (Transformative Scenario Planning), Adam takes the basic principles of scenario planning and explains how they can be used for social action initiatives.

Here are three ways scenario planning in the social sector (what Adam calls "Transformative Scenario Planning") can help social action groups:

1. Transformative Scenario Planning helps us see a bigger picture of what is happening now and might happen in the future.

We cannot be effective in changing what is happening in the world is we only see our own little part of what is happening. Transformative scenario planning enables actors from across a whole social system—a community, a sector, a nation—to pool their perspectives and so to see more systemically and act more effectively.

2. Transformative Scenario Planning helps us not be blindsided by futures we don’t want because of a narrow focus on what we do want.

People who are passionately trying to change the world often focus their attention on the way they want things to be. The discipline of Transformative Scenario Planning is that is requires us to focus dispassionately on how things might be, and so helps us improve our peripheral vision and our resilience.

3. Transformative Scenario Planning builds diverse alliances of actors, all of whom want to change the status quo.

More often, the problems we face are too complex to be solved by any one person or organization or sector. But the diverse actors who would need to work together to make progress usually don’t agree on the solution or even on the problem. Transformative scenario planning, because it initially focuses simply on describing “our complex problematic situation,” provides a practical way for such actors to begin to work together.

4. Transformative Scenario Planning helps us develop the capacity to think and talk and work with strangers and opponents, not just with friends and colleagues.

In a transformative scenario planning process, diverse actors rigorously and creatively talk through a set of relevant, challenging, plausible and clear scenario stories about what is happening and might happen; what these stories imply; and in the context of these stories what the actors can and must do. In this way the actors learn to work together across difficult differences in positions, perspectives, and interests.

5. Transformative Scenario Planning helps in constructing better ways forward together for a better world for all.

Transformative scenario planning is a way for a broad alliance of committed actors to build new understandings, relationships, intentions, and actions. These four types of results enable these actors to achieve together what they cannot achieve separately: to co-construct new and better futures.

Five Stages of Loss

Buy Meg's New Book Here

Building off of what Meg discusses in her book — there are a number of challenges that we felt we would have overcome by now but haven't. In our rush to move forward, we've lost track of where we are standing and can't acknowledge that we're lost.

Here are the stages that people who are lost move through:

1. People who are lost first deny that they are; they plunge confidently ahead even though they can't find any familiar signs.  They reassure themselves that everything's okay, they still know where they're going, the maps are still correct.  But gradually, confronted with strange and unfamiliar sights, anxiety seeps in.   They speed up their activities, urgently wanting to verify they're not lost.  Those lost on a mountain walk faster or go in circles; those lost in a failing project work faster, harder, and go in circles. 

2. At this point, doubt and uncertainty creep in.  People become angry and impatient, pushing aside any information that doesn't confirm their map.  They become desperate to find the smallest scrap of information that proves they know where they are.  They reject all other information; they treat as enemy the very information that would help them get unlost, pushing it and its messengers aside. 

3. When this strategy fails, people reach the point when they can no longer deny that they're lost. Fear and panic set in; stressed and scared, their brains stop working.  They can't think straight, so every action they take is senseless, only creating more exhaustion and more problems. 

4. By now, confused and panicked, people search frantically for any little sign that's familiar, the smallest shred of evidence that makes them feel un-lost. But they are lost, so this strategy fails and they continue to deteriorate.                 

5. When people realize that they are lost, that their immediate survival is at stake, they have only one option.  They must accept their situation: they are truly lost.  To find themselves, they don't have to change their physical situation, they only have to change their minds.  Instead of looking for hopeful signs that confirm the old maps, they acknowledge that this is where they are, right here, right now.  Setting aside anxiety and becoming aware of the information in the present environment, they can create new maps  to find their way through.

  Do any of these behaviors feel familiar?  Do they describe your own or colleagues behaviors?  Are we lost?

Five Non-Traditional Ways to Pause

Order Kevin's Book

Order Kevin's Book

In his latest book ("The Pause Principle"), author Kevin Cashman explains the importance and power of pausing and reflecting before moving forward. Most people think of a pause as a meditative moment, but in fact, a pause could be many things.


For this blog entry, Kevin compiled this list of Five Non-Traditional Ways of Pausing:

1.  Pause for understanding.  Certain that you know the answer?  That’s a good time to step back, gather more information, ask another relevant question, listen to someone else’s perspective, consider alignment with values and purpose.  Take the full measure of time to synthesize all the information. Managers too often make a quick response as a show of strength; leaders take all the time allotted for reflection before responding or rendering a decision.

2.  Pause for growth.  Schedule time and invest in your personal leadership growth through self-awareness and learning.  Help others grow and develop their talent.  Foster an innovative culture by incenting curiosity and questions that push boundaries.  Pause to think.  As a leader and strategist, isn’t that your job?  Encourage all your talent to ask: “Why? Why not? What might be possible?”  Step back to reward risk-taking; celebrate and appreciate failure for the learning that emerges.

3.  Pause for teams. Lost your focus? Feel like you’ve gotten off track?  Take the time to give everyone opportunity to express concerns, share their genuine feelings, ideas and listen authentically in the spirit of real collaboration. Help everyone reconnect their individual and team purpose around the greater mission.  Then, lead forward with greater, more meaningful impact.

4.  Pause for resilience.  Step back from the hurried, hectic pace, the onslaught of information and demands for energy, clarity, and fresh perspective.  Go for a walk or run.  Sit by the river.  Take a power nap, meditate, or listen to relaxing music.  New ideas and innovation emerge in the spaces between the doing.

5.  Pause for significance.  Engulfed in hyper-speed and productivity?  Next time you pick up your mobile device for a stream of transactions, pause and ask yourself, “What is really important today?”  When you step back to reconnect with what you really value, what will you choose to do or not do?

 

Five Quick Ways Busy managers Can Develop Their Staff

Get the Book

In their book, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go, Bev and Julie compare developing employees to eating properly and exercising. Managers know it’s good. They know they should. Yet, for a variety of reasons -- mostly TIME -- they just don’t do it as well or as frequently as they (and their organizations) would like.

Here they lay out five strategies for making development more doable in today’s workplace where time constraints are always a factor.

1. Transfer ownership - Managers don’t own their employees’ careers, their employees do. All that managers can (and should) feel accountable for is guiding, encouraging, collaborating on, and supporting the effort. When employees have some skin in the game, engagement, interest, commitment, and results grow.

2. Cultivate curiosity - When ownership for development is transferred to the employee, career conversations suddenly become a lot easier and less stressful for managers. Managers don’t need to have all the answers - only the right questions and a genuine interest in learning from others.

3. Iterate the IDP - Re-think the formal, lengthy individual development planning processes. For the manager, it’s a huge time-sink, and for the employee it’s frequently like drinking from a fire hose. So break it up. Do a little bit each month - or better yet, each week. These smaller, iterative chunks better accommodate the cadence of business. Equally importantly, they better accommodate how development really occurs: little by little, over time.

4. Engineer experiences - Contrary to conventional wisdom, development isn’t dependent upon promotions or new roles. It can be as simple as jointly identifying activities, tasks, or responsibilities that leverage talents and build the skills that employees need... right where they are. 

5. Carpe coachable moments - Career development opportunities occur countless times each day and when managers are sensitive to the cues around them, they can seize these coachable moments. An authentic and intentional two-minute touch-base can drive greater development than many well-staged formal career meetings.

Managers who consistently find the time to engage in career development that employees appreciate don’t have more time than others, they just have a mindset that allows them to use the little time they do have for maximum impact.

And maybe they eat more vegetables than the rest of us.

Five Things You Didn't Know About Solar Energy

Get the Book

Forget the hippy-dippy hype about solar energy being environmentally beneficial and all that. As Danny Kennedy says in his new book, solar energy is also a huge growth market that promises profits, jobs, and other benefits that would make the staunchest conservative think twice.

Here are just five interesting facts about solar energy you didn't know:

1. Solar energy has been around for a long time and it has been one of the most dependable sources of energy. NASA launched Vanguard 1, the first artificial satellite powered by solar cells in the 1960s. It's still going strong and remains the oldest manmade satellite in orbit -- over 6 billion miles traveled on sun power.

2. You can sell your solar power. Depending on where you live, you can sell excess power back to the electricity grid and make a profit.  For example, Ontario, Canada’s feed-in-tariff (FIT) program allows residential and commercial solar power producers to feed surplus electricity back into the grid at guaranteed prices.

3. Solar panels work perfectly fine in cold and snowy temperatures.  Though they are most effective in the sunny equatorial regions of the Earth, solar panels are equally at home in snow-bound countries, where they are unaffected by cold but benefit from more reflected photons from a snowy landscape.

4. Scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) wrote a Nobel Prize-winning paper in 1905 which explained how the photoelectric effect worked. Einstein’s theories formed the cornerstone of further development of the technology – even though effective generation from solar panels would not come about for another 50 years.

5.  Moths helped design the latest solar panels.  Biologists have noted that the eyes of moths do not reflect light but help them to navigate according to the position of the moon. This has now been copied to help improve the absorbency of solar panel surfaces, as photons bounce off a reflective surface rather than being absorbed, and the solar panel will lose efficiency.

And most importantly, it's cheaper.