All in Teams
Episode 27 of the podcast is now available and today I close out this month’s focus on Management Consulting war stories by talking about Starbucks Lemon Loaf Incident - an incident that taught me a little bit more about this idea of character and who we are.
I don’t think there is anything or anyone that operates at one polar extreme versus another. Sure, some folks veer more in one direction than another, but rarely, always and only at the extremes.
But you wouldn’t think so from most of the public rhetoric which, by definition, is driven by a desire for attention and alignment (with a predefined ideology - ours or someone else’s).
It seems to me that there are two kinds of people when the going gets tough. Those who panic and freeze. And those who manage their emotions and keep doing. This latter group is the group I think we all want to be part of.
Now, note that I didn’t say they stay calm, rather that they manage their emotions. Getting emotional and stressing out is, at least to me, a pretty natural human emotion. I’m not sure we can completely eliminate that response reflex. But I do think we can learn to manage those emotions, and thereby keep them in check.
Episode 26 of the podcast is now available and this episode continues this month’s theme of Management Consulting war stories, specifically the lessons I learned working with difficult people.
If there’s one thing that social distancing has re-emphasized, it’s the power and value of social connection. That community matters - and not only does it matter but it’s, frankly, more important than it ever has been. We’re all experiencing that, regardless of whether or not we’d conceptually bought into the idea before.
In fact, I’ve been heartened by the virtual outreach that I’ve seen everywhere - from family to friends to celebrities, in real life and across social media.
There’s that old saying that it’s easy to have principles until you have to practice them. Well, it’s the same thing with partnerships, especially when it comes to buyers and suppliers.
We like to throw that word around, especially during the early days of a relationship, during a QBR or during renewal times (by both sides). And that’s easy to do. It’s no sweat off anyone’s back to do it then. And we probably believe it, too.
In any business, you have to deal with odds on a day to day basis. Nothing is for certain, so you do the numbers, work out the scenarios and then take a call. Some of those times, things will go better than expected, some will go as expected, and other times, things will be worse than expected.
But however things end up, not taking action is NOT an option. You have to act and do.
If there is any consistent counsel, it is that we need to make decisions on the basis of facts. Hard, objective, scientifically-based information that provides us with a solid understanding of the situation at hand, the magnitude of the issue(s), the possible actions we can take and the relative weightage or prioritization of each.
This type of information ensures that we minimize the impact of emotion - subjective ideas based on our fears, our histories, our prior baggage and “what others are saying”.
Episode 24 of the podcast is now available and this month, I share stories from my life in Management Consulting, where I spent a decade prior to my entrepreneurial journey. And some of my most interesting lessons from that time had nothing to do with the work and everything to do with people.
We’re in an age of division. Everything seems to be either one side or the other. Red or blue. Black or white. With us or against us. You can’t read or listen to the news without hearing about it.
But while the social and political divisions in our discourse feel so much more pronounced these days, the fact is that this type of ‘one or the other’ mindset has been there all along, not least in our economic and personal lives.
Episode 23 of the podcast is now available and this month, I share stories from my life in Management Consulting, where I spent a decade prior to my entrepreneurial journey. And some of my most interesting lessons from that time had nothing to do with the work and everything to do with people.
If you’ve ever committed to learning a song on a musical instrument, you’ll know that there’s a certain amount of struggle that’s involved in the process.
Part of this struggle is knowing the technical details - where do I put my fingers, what chords do I play, what are the timings and how should I think about the phrasings here or there.
The song “Born To Run” is probably one of, if not THE, most popular Bruce Springsteen songs ever. Written in 1974 and released in 1975, the song became famous as much for its lyrics as its “wall of sound”. Ostensibly, it’s a love song that, at its core, is about a young man’s desire to get out of Freehold, New Jersey, but, really, it’s about our desire for freedom, our passions and going after whatever we believe in.
It’s one of the most played songs by The Boss and it’s highly unlikely that anyone reading this hasn’t at least heard of the song. In fact, particularly in the days before digital media, when live radio was in its prime
The year was 1995 and I’d just started in Management Consulting. Those first few months were interesting, exciting and (very) busy. I hadn’t been staffed on a project as yet, so I busied myself by helping several partners with proposal development and pitch work. That involved lots of research, coordination of different perspectives and inputs across the firm, and plenty of deck preparation.
As a result, the hours were long. A typical day started at around 8 am and if I wrapped up by 9 or 10 pm, that was a ‘good’ day because it meant I could get a decent night’s sleep.
There’s a perennial debate about the value of generalists versus specialists, that is, are we better off as generalists or should we all work to become specialists. We all tend to have a particular view as to which one is actually better, certainly from a career development perspective. And usually our point of view is encapsulated in a popular figure of speech - or at least the portion(s) of it that we quote, to serve our case.
If we believe in the generalist approach, we like to use the term “Jack of all trades”, as in “She’s so versatile, she’s a Jack of all trades”.
“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters." — Epictetus
I’ve been turning this quote over in my head for a long while now, and there’s something about it that resonates incredibly strongly with me.
The trouble is, I can’t quite figure out what.
Is it suggesting that if we are focused on becoming expert in a particular area, we mustn’t be afraid of appearing stupid or unknowledgeable i.e. that we’ve figured everything out already…
Episode 13 of the podcast is now available and today’s podcast wraps up this month’s focus on communications. In this episode, I talk about the secret to great communications - not saying anything.
The thing about giving advice is that it’s super easy to do at a distance. You can look at the options in a cold and calculated fashion, weigh up the pros and cons, and make definite judgements about the right path forward.
We see this firsthand in any education forum - specifically, business schools like those I studied at - where the case method is utilized. You study a specific situation, whether it’s related to people, strategy, operations, etc. You analyze the variables based on the information available. And then you make a logical, rational decision on what it takes to solve the specific problem at hand. Easy stuff.
Episode 11 of the podcast is now available and continues our exploration of the art of Communication, a subject that's integral to our ability to succeed in just about anything we do. In this episode, I share the age old story of The Curate's Egg and what it tells us about being upfront in our communications.
