Consulting vs Smart-ass-ing
40 awesome tips of how consulting just doesn't work
Recently I was confronted with a page on Facebook, that made me realize, why being a consultant and being a know-it-all must be different things. The page '40 Awesome Tips For A Happy And Healthy Life' is a great example for very poor consulting because it misses the point and by its imperative has an air of bigheadedness. As Facebook is FTW and the page was in English, these following lines will be in English in subsequence. So let's grab a glass of fine wine and have ourselves a field day with 40 tips, of how consulting should work and how it shouldn't.
1st suggestion of 40 Tips is to take a jog every day for 10-30 minutes. Fist of all: you don't jog. You run. Not everyone likes to run. Some people are not even able to run, let alone every day. Think about handicapped people, obese people, people who have lives, work or other restrictions that prevent them from having a run every day and so on. Second, just running every day is senseless from a methodological point of view. If you train to stay in shape, 3 workouts a week of 30-45mins will be just fine. If you're aiming at improving your performance you'll have to stack. In that case it's even contraproductive to train monotonously without a specific concept. This advice should be: 'work out regularly' or 'stay in good physical shape' or maybe just 'move your body'. How often, how long, what kind of work-out is left to your customer. Some will prefer the gym, some will go for a ride on a bike, some will have a swim, and some may even run or mix. As a consultant, be as specific as necessary, but don't set up unecessary restrictions.
2nd tip is to sit and be quite for 10mins each day. Why sit? Why 10mins? Why not 8 or 9 or 15 or 2x5? And why each day? Obviously we all get it. It's about focus, distance and deceleration. But why the unecessary restrictions? 'relax and focus regularly' or 'calm down as much as you need' would be better advice.
3rd tip is not really a tip. It is more of a claim or even a proposition. Factually it is a tautology, because nobody would seriously oppose an obvious fact like taking response for someone's happiness. However not everybody on earth is granted a merciful fate. For example, if you are born in a 3rd world country, you'll have a different definition of 'happiness' from someone who is born in a developed country. Right now the greatest amount of refugees in history since WWII is fleeing African and Arabic countries in persuit of happiness. Europeans are mostly concerned with how to shut down their borders effectively . In the United States the Donald intends to build a wall on the border to Mexico. So I'm not even sure, whether I can back that proposition a 100%. Yes, of course you are in charge. But no, you are not alone. Sometimes a little help is necessary. It's like when your car breaks down and you face the choice of taking care of it on your own or have someone who is willing to help you and e.g. give you a ride or tow your car to the next gas station.
Tip 4 is just hilarious from a consultant's point of view. Your business is EXACTLY what other people think of you. Yes, what they think of YOU! The results of your work, your diligence and your state of the art expertise are necessary, but they are not key. You, your whole appearence, presence and character is what makes your customer decide wheter you're a good consultant or not. Hence this tip is plain BS. But hey! Who said everyone wants to be a consultant? Oh no, wait. No. In private, when I'm not wearing suit and tie, I also try to be polite, honest, accurate, helping and so on. I guess you should care about what people think of you. Maybe it's not your business. But either way it is something you can influence and you should at least care about.
No 5: Ok. This might work for me. I live with other paradigms, but basically there's some resemblence. Mine are love, passion, loyalty. In German this would be three L-s (Liebe, Leidenschaft, Loyalität), but that's merely a coincidence. Love, because I care foremost about the people I love. Passion, because I care foremost about the things I feel passionate about. Loyalty, because everyone and everyting I am involved with but I don't love or I am not necessarily passionate about deserves the best I can offer. Three E-s are again too narrow for good advice. I would prefer something like 'Have clear principles' or 'Set up your own paradigms' or something like that. So tip no 5 is not that bad of a point after all.
Sadly I just took the last gulp of my glass of wine. So it's 35 more tips to go. A decent amount of wine is going to be necessary. Still plenty of fun to be had. :-)
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