Monthly Archives: April 2011

Rules to Hiring Your Next Consultant (Part 2)

Finding for the right consultant to achieve your goals becomes a lot easier when you have a structured plan to following. In Part 1, we talked about defining the problem and establishing a supportive contact.

Rule #3 – Unearth Potential Candidates

Don’t get too hung up on particular credentials or levels of experience when you begin your search for a consultant. There are many good people out there. You are not looking for people with certain certificates on their walls. You’re looking for people who can help solve your problem.

Use key phrases from your problem definition (Rule 1, above) to search the web. Check the yellow pages. Talk to customers and suppliers. Talk to competitors, if you can.

When you have a reasonable number of candidates, it’s time to make a short list. Talk to references, and of course talk to your candidate consultants.

Include these questions when you interview potential consultants:

How did they learn the basics of this industry?
What approach sets them apart from other consultants?
What approach sets them apart from others with more experience?
What kind of challenges did they overcome to get results for their clients? How did they measure those results?
When have they failed, and how did they handle that failure?

The last question may be very telling. We all make mistakes and handle them in different ways. Can you work with someone who cannot or will not admit mistakes? Good consultants will acknowledge the possibility of errors in planning or execution – and you should feel confident that they would handle them with integrity and competence.

Overall, when you talk to the consultant, do you get the feeling that you’re both getting more confused? Or that everything is falling into place and a sound approach will be developed?

Rule #4 – Sift the Gems from the Dirt

You’ve made your short list and are looking into the candidates with more detail.

Is the consultant more interested in talking you into an easy sale of what they have (a particular software, methodology or widget, for example), or in working with you to uncover the truly relevant variables, and to develop an effective solution?

You don’t have to winnow the list down to a single best candidate. In fact, there may be many that are qualified to help you solve your problem.

Rules to Hiring Your Next Consultant (Part 1)

Hiring a consultant is easy if you don’t care about the results. Surprisingly, many companies have hired consultants that have cost them a lot of money and produced little of what they hoped to achieve. Luckily there are six rules that can help make sure you hire the right person to get the proper results. I developed these rules with a good friend and business associate, Roy Gawlick.

Rule #1 – Define the Problem

Detailing the problem you are trying to solve or the results you’d like to achieve helps to determine who can help you best. Use these questions to help summarize the problem for the consultant and for you:

With what do you need help? Why is this problem important?
What is going wrong? What is going right? What results would you like to see improved?
What are the costs and benefits of action – and of inaction?
Is this an urgent problem? What are the time constraints? What other constraints do you face?
Who are the key players and decision-makers?
What resources (funding, equipment, suppliers or customers, staff with particular abilities or corporate memories…) are available to help implement a solution?

Remember, if you have a difficult time defining the problem, you will have a difficult time identifying the solution, and the right consultant. But don’t try to make this step perfect. What you really need is a starting point, so do the best you can with the time you have. You may even find that you need one consultant to help define the problem and a different one to find the best solution.

Rule #2 – Be a Good Client

Make sure the consultant’s key contact with your organization has the authority to approve or reject work in progress, and to arrange support within your organization. If your organizational groups are not all on-board, it will be hard for the best consultant to make any real progress.

In your organization, who suffers, and who benefits, from the current situation? Who will suffer or benefit from change? What incentives are there for individuals or groups in your organization to support the consultant? What incentives are there for them to oppose the consultant?
Will your staff have or make the time to help the consultant identify issues and implement solutions? Or are they too caught up in their regular duties?
When the consultant needs approval for an issue that will affect groups differently, how will your organization make the decision the consultant needs?

Proving a Better Way Isn’t Always Easy

The time for change had come. The leadership had tried working with the people running the program for almost two years and still they hadn’t made the progress they desired and knew could be achieved. I was approached and asked to look at the program and see what would be needed to get the desired results.

I began, as I do with any change project, by listening vigilantly to the people sponsoring the program as well as the students participating in it. What I found was a disjoint between what the sponsors wanted to see learned and what was actually internalized. The program had been around for over 30 years in similar forms throughout the world and by all records, very successful in accomplishing its goals. Why was ours not reaching its full potential?

Keeping in mind all I heard from the listening to the people and all I learned from researching these kinds of programs I created a whole new design for the program. It felt like it was time to try something new. Traditionally, the program was always delivered in one block of time, usually five days in a row. My design was to split it across seven sessions, meeting for a full day once a month.

It took a little work to convince the leadership to try the new idea. Once they were on board, the task become convincing the groups that sponsor the program to support the new design. I knew presenting such a different format would be met with some resistance. When it was time to present to the sponsoring groups I thought I was ready. I had my research, my design and feedback from past participants. What I didn’t have was data supporting the seven-month format.

I was not prepared for the vehemence of their response. It was more than just resistance to change; many people felt the program was working just fine as it was and the change wasn’t necessary. Others felt the change would make finding participants much more difficult due to the extended commitment. Still others saw the change as corrupting the tradition of the program and would cause a negative perception for the sponsors. A few were willing to try it for a year but reserved full support until they saw some results. After what seemed like hours of discussion we had enough support to go forward with the new design.

The first year saw a small group of participants, all fully sponsored. The results were better than any of us could ever imagine. When asked about their experience, all the participants thought they learned more from the once a month format than they would have learned had all the information been presented in a one week program. The program was, by all records, a huge success. While we won many more supporters after that first year, there still were those who disagreed with the new format.

The change has been in effect for the past five years and the number of people supporting has steadily grown. While there are still some who would rather see the format go back to one week, many, many others like it just the way it is.

It took almost five years of answering questions, resolving concerns and graduating successful participants to prove the validity of this programs new design. While it wasn’t always easy, it was always worth it. It took a little faith and a lot of confidence.

Winning and Losing

All our lives we are told to win, win, win! We’re encouraged to be the best student and get the highest grades and ranking in our class. When we play sports it becomes get the most points or cross the finish line first. Even into adulthood with our work the drive is to make more money and move up the ladder. If you haven’t been subjected to any of these I’m happy for you. I’ve seen it far more often than not and seen the negative consequences it can create.

These win-lose scenarios may create an atmosphere that motivates people to strive to be better but only for a short while. Once you’ve been on the losing side of the equation the competition isn’t motivating any longer. In fact, what happens is the “loser” starts resenting the “winner.” Before too long the person winning the competition can be made to feel like they are losing instead. In these cases, the win-lose turns into an ugly lose-lose situation.

I have had disagreements with plenty of people regarding win-lose versus lose-lose and win-win scenarios. I have no problem with friendly competition (win-lose) because it does help drive many of us to be better. If we are playing a game a lot of the fun comes from trying to win the game. But, what happens when the same person wins over and over and over? You guessed it; no one wants to play anymore. The person who was wining loses because no one will play and everyone else loses because they don’t have a chance; turning the win-lose into lose-lose.

Not all examples of this are as obvious. How about in business; how many meetings have you attended that you thought were a waste of time? Think about one of them. What made the meeting so bad? Did the leader care about your ideas, help you to do something better or were they more focused on the leader’s own wants? Would you say the meeting was a win-win, win-lose or lose-lose?

I’m sure the leader of the meeting would say they were going to for a win-win. People don’t generally call meetings unless they want something positive from them. I’m also sure the participants would say this particular meeting was a lose-lose. If people attending felt they wasted their time they are going to feel a loss for themselves as well as lessening their respect for the leader.

Striving for the win-win in all situations gets better results. Games trying for win-win focus on the fun of the competition more than who gets the most points. In business the win-win comes when everyone can gain something from their work. Sometimes it’s additional knowledge or feeling respected, other times it’s having your idea be the catalyst for something big in the company.

On the big scale of life, there is no win-lose; only win-win or lose-lose. The question is whether to follow the common, easy path which leads to lose-lose or the less traveled, harder path leading to win-win. The latter will make all the difference.

Patience, Balance, and Relaxation

I’ve been a trainer and teacher for all my adult years. At the core, it is what I am. It seems I look at every situation as a learning opportunity – sometimes to the frustration of my friends and family.

Always trying to find better ways to reach people I developed three basic principles that appear in everything we do: patience, balance, and relaxation. Before we get twisted in multiple definitions let me define how I use them.

Patience is about waiting for the right moment to act. You do this automatically in many situations. An example is waiting your turn to speak when in a conversation with someone. If you try to speak at the same time as someone else something in the conversation gets lost.

Balance is about knowing what to do when patience has determined the right moment to act. Knowledge coupled with understanding creates balance. We are learning creatures. The more we learn the better our lives become. The more we learn the more balance we have in our lives.

Relaxation is about not trying to make something happen but letting it happen. When we have patience to wait for the right moment; have the balance of knowing and understanding what to do; and trust to let it happen, all goes well. The hard part of this is overriding our desire to control everything around us.

Let’s look at an example where you probably already employ our three principles: driving a car. You’re on the highway and determine you need to change lanes because the car you are approaching is moving slower than you. Do you just switch lanes? Hopefully not; first you look to make sure the lane where you want to go is clear. You wait for the right moment to change lanes. This becomes especially important the more traffic there is on the road. Now that we’ve got the right moment we have to know what to do in that moment; turn on the blinker, rotate the steering wheel appropriately, check our speed, and keep an eye on all the other vehicles. The relaxation is a little harder to see. No, we don’t just go limp at the steering wheel and expect the car to operate on its own. Relaxation in this case is being comfortable with our steering; speed and spacing to change lanes. If you don’t think this is letting it happen try driving with someone who has just received their driving permit.

I have yet to be presented with a situation where these principles don’t apply. Think of anything you already do well and these three principles will be present. Think of something you want to do better and at least one of these three will be the reason you still struggle.

The Training Equation

All of us have been through different training programs throughout our lives; wouldn’t you agree? For most of us it started at five years old, heading off to kindergarten. The standard learning progression is elementary school, middle school, high school. After that some go off to college and graduate work. Once in the workforce everyone is engage, at one point or another, with different courses and one-the-job/life training and learning. If you take some time and remember back to any of these programs you can probably remember teachers who you felt really taught you a lot and those who you wish you never encountered.

At each of these levels of training, the equation for learning remains the same:

Learning = Knowledge Capacity + Teaching Technique

This simple equation contains a number of details: Learning is about retaining more facts about a topic, increasing our understanding or gaining a new skill. Knowledge Capacity pertains to the person who hopes to gain the Learning. It is a combination of a person’s ability to take in new information, their enthusiasm for the topic and their willingness to be taught. Teaching Technique includes the knowledge of the material by the presenter, the pace of the program and how the teacher interacts with the students. Basically, increasing Knowledge Capacity, Teaching Technique or both will lead to better Learning.

Unfortunately, the complexity of this equation increases because different forces influence each of the pieces. Let’s take a person falling asleep during training as an example. Obviously their Knowledge Capacity has been greatly diminished thus reducing the Learning. What we don’t know is the reason for their falling asleep. It could be any of a dozen or more reasons like not getting a good night’s sleep or not feeling well, becoming bored with the training, being overwhelmed by the material or not connecting with the trainer’s presentation style.

I use this equation to help make me a better trainer. Before the training begins I work to maximize the Teaching Technique as much as possible. Learn the material to present, learn about the proposed audience so the pacing and be adjusted and how to best interact with them. Once the training begins I pay close attention to the people: who is falling asleep, who looks bored, and who looks confused, as well as who’s asking and answering questions. Based on what the audience tells me physically and verbally, I adjust my teaching to accentuate the positive factors and diminish or eliminate the negative factors.

Great Learning is a dance between keeping Knowledge Capacity as positive as possible and adjusting Teaching Technique to meet the people’s needs.

To Change Or Not To Change

The biggest difficulty with discussing change is the vastness of the areas change can encompass. To make this complex topic more manageable, let’s categorize change into one of three levels.

Level 1 change would be the no thought and no choice changes in our lives. One example would be aging. While we might fight to keep our bodies from breaking down, we have no control over the fact that with every passing moment we are aging. Another example of level 1 would be the seasons. Aside from living at the equator, everyone lives in areas where each season is marked with some kind of change. Yes, it is your choice of where you live but you have no say in how the seasons play out, just how you deal with them.

Level 2 changes would be ones where little thought and energy is needed to enact. Some examples would include buying food and putting gasoline in your car. When the cupboards and refrigerator are running low on food you have to change your routine to go to the store and purchase more. Even if part of your regular routine is shopping for food, you still make choices about what food you buy. If you are part of the small percentage of people who always shop at the same time and always buy the same items then this could get elevated to level 3 should some change happen. The same holds true for putting fuel in our cars. Most of us don’t stop by the gas station at the same time on the same day each week; most of us go when our car tells us it is low on fuel.

Level 3 changes are the ones that give us the most grief. These are the ones that require a fair amount of thought to perform and usually more energy. Examples would include learning a new skill, like driving a car for the first time, or trying a shift in our lives, like leaving our job or changing a relationship. These are the ones we dread the most.

When asking the question, “to change or not to change,” it’s the level 3 changes most people want to avoid. We’re okay with level 1 because, well, we have no choice. Level 2 doesn’t bother us much because they’re part of our normal living experience. They can be inconvenient at times, like getting home to find the refrigerator bare and having to go back out for food, but we don’t give them a lot of thought. Level 3’s on the other hand cause us pain, agony, anxiety, and just about every other negative adjective you can bring to mind. They’re also the ones that, once accomplished, can bring us the most happiness, joy, and good fortune imaginable.

Fate or Personal Choice

Many years ago, during one of my life coaching classes, I took part in a discussion of fate versus personal choice. It wasn’t surprising, because of the subject matter, to see everyone in the class pick the argument that our lives are totally ours to choose what to do. I found myself standing alone among two dozen people. My argument is that life is both.

I’ve always had a hard time making the argument for one versus the other. To say everything is fated takes away any freedom in our choices and to say that everything is personal choice takes away the possibility of a bigger picture (a view larger than all of us combined.)

I maintain that the universe, God, the collective consciousness – life – has at least an overview of a designed path for each of us. Within that design we have the free will to choose whatever direction we want, including the ability to go completely opposite of the big picture. The issue that arises is that life isn’t always clear about which direction it wants us to take. This leads to a lot of bumbling around, testing different options, and making some less than perfect moves.

What I’ve found is if the desired direction is a very important one, life will keep throwing it in front of you, no matter how many times you wonder away from it. Writing this blog is a good example. I’ve been told by a multitude of people over the past four or five years that I should be sharing my thoughts with everyone. I kept choosing to not do it, and yes I had plenty of excuses of why I couldn’t do it – it wasn’t always a conscious choice to turn away. Yet, time and again someone else would bring it back to my attention until now when I decided to follow it.

I don’t know why it so important for me to write this regularly, but it is. Maybe it’s to help you with your life path choices. Maybe it’s to help me with my life choices. Maybe it’s some of both. While the final goal may not be clear, it is clear this is what I should be doing and I’ve made a choice to do it. I can say that a part of me is relieved and excited about this path while another part is scared and stressed, but that’s a story for another day.

The point I’m trying to make is life has a design, a fate if you will, for each of us. At the same time, we have the free will to choose whatever direction we want to follow, regardless of how that fits with the big design. The best part of being able to make our own choices is that we never have to stay with any one choice. If one way isn’t right, we can go another way or another way.

If you find yourself really stressing over the path you are on, it’s probably because there are new choices for you to make. Is it time to make a different choice to get a different, and maybe better, result? Who knows it might relieve the stress and increase your life’s excitement.

Life Path Inspirations

It was a crystal clear, winter night like many others that was to turn into one of the most wonderful days of my entire life. It was a night I wasn’t ready for and didn’t expect for another two weeks.

At 1 o’clock in the morning I was driving my wife to the hospital, our first child preparing to enter this world. It was early February; the air was cold and the sky clear. Traveling the country road to the main highway we passed a herd of 12 deer, the most we had seen at one time. They looked up and watched as we passed, almost acknowledging our passing, before returning to their grazing.

Because of the late hour we entered the hospital through the emergency entrance. The staff was very busy and the admitting nurse visibly relieved to have someone pass her way that was not injured. We were escorted to the maternity ward where we were greeted by a friend who had taught our Lamaze classes. By 2 o’clock the doctor had arrived and did the initial examination of mother and baby. Both were well, the baby’s vitals very strong. The one problem, the baby was breach (butt down instead of head down.) This meant a trip to the operating room instead of the birthing room.

In the operating room I encountered a team of doctors, nurses, and technicians. To this day they remain the best working team I’ve ever seen. Everyone knew their job and performed it when needed – it was amazing to watch. I held my wife’s hand as she drifted off to sleep. The work began and I was in awe of it all. Experiencing the miracle of birth was inspiring and humbling. There is a lot we can do with technology and medicine but neither can create life.

Then the moment came… it was the hardest moment of my life. On my right was my wife, my love, in an induced sleep. On my left was this new life, my daughter. My wife was going to be brought to recovery while my daughter to the nursery. There I stood, looking at one then the other and I couldn’t decide which one needed me more or which direction to head. I expect this wasn’t the first time the staff had witnessed a father in this state. One of them gently told me to go with my daughter while they took care of my wife. In that meek and relieved voice I said, “okay.”

I was expecting to be a bystander in the nursery but life had other plans. Over the next 24 hours more than a dozen new children would crowd into the nursery but that early morning there was only one other and my new daughter. I was invited by the nurses to help with her cleaning, measuring, and taking of the foot print. We wrapped her in a blanket and put a little pink cap on her head. Then the nurse handed me my new baby daughter and motioned to a rocking chair nearby. I sat down and was able to feed her a bottle of sugar water, her first meal.

It was new beginning for her as well as a new beginning for me. These are the experiences that define us, who we are and what path we follow. Many of the decisions I’ve made over the past 20 years can be traced back to this event. We all have defining moments, or events, that change us. Sometimes they are lost to the fading memory of time.

I challenge you to look back at your life and remember a time or an event that helped you choose your path. Remember, our life path isn’t a straight line; it bends, turns sharply, and sometimes meanders in different directions. What has inspired you to change your path?

The Process of Group Faclitation

Groups are created for a purpose – a specific work project, a corporate department or for social good. Many times difficulties arise when attempting to achieve the group’s goals or even to set those goals. The range of problems is huge, including everything from personality conflicts to unclear expectations to political agendas.

Each group I’ve worked with has a uniqueness all their own but my starting point is always the same. I listen to the members and sometimes those who created the group; I read their body language and assess the overall dynamics. This gives me a feel for where the people see themselves in the group and where their group fits into the overall picture of the organization. From here a plan can unfold the combines the individual personalities of the members with the larger personality of the group.

There are two rules I live by when creating these plans: only win-win solutions are allowed and not be attached to the ideas that get tossed onto the table. The win-win solutions get everyone to support them and are the only ones that truly get support from everyone. A win-lose solution means someone isn’t going to be happy which means someone isn’t going to be fully supportive of the solution. Win-lose solutions quickly turn into lose-lose situations. The win-win is always there – even if sometimes you have to dig really, really deep for it.

The second rule, not being attached to ideas tossed onto the table, helps tremendously when it comes to finding those win-win solutions. Groups rarely seem to have problems coming up with ideas that can solve a problem, develop a new product, or satisfy a customer. By not being attached to my ideas I’m freed to keep looking for better ways to meet the need presented. When we attach ourselves to an idea our brain starts looking for ways to make that idea work; justify its existence; and be the top of the heap idea that will be used. When we let go of being attached to an idea our brain starts looking for ways to make it better; listens for cues from other people for better ideas; and turns the competition into finding the best solution, not one particular idea.

Kinetic Symmetry

Managing Change