Consultants Saying Things

The rise of AI in consulting is akin to the demise of the buggy whip industry in the early 20th century. Just as the automobile rendered buggy whips obsolete, AI and large language models threaten to automate many tasks traditionally performed by consultants. Here are 7 things you need to know about adapting to survive this disruption.

We Discuss:

• What is the threat AI poses to consulting?
• How do consultants USE AI instead of being replaced by it?
• How can consultants keep an authentic voice in the face of LLMs?
• What is the consultant's value proposition in an AI future?
• What types of consulting careers are most likely to be impacted?

Key Highlights:

• The consulting industry may be facing a "buggy whip moment" due to the rise of AI and large language models (LLMs) that can automate tasks traditionally done by consultants. (00:02:53)
• Consultants who don't adopt AI tools risk being replaced by those who do, similar to how those who didn't adopt typewriters were replaced by those who did. (00:06:45)
• AI tools can augment consultants' capabilities, allowing them to do more work at a better quality level. (00:27:36)
• The consulting industry may shift from providing free advisory content to protect their IP from being used to train AI models. (00:10:47)
• Consultants should be vigilant, view AI as an opportunity, skill up, focus on human elements, niche down, and get closer to clients to navigate the changes brought by AI. (00:33:56)
• Consulting work that requires human-level decision-making and capability will likely remain relevant in the short to medium term. (00:40:17)
• Consultants should protect their IP going forward to maintain their value and competitive edge. (00:44:01)
• Soft skills, emotional intelligence, and creativity will remain important for consultants as AI focuses on past data rather than innovative thinking. (00:30:32)
• Consultants who enjoy building machines (processes and new things) will have an advantage over those who prefer running machines (turning the crank). (00:41:10)

7 Takeaways:

1. The consulting industry is facing a potential disruption due to the rise of AI and large language models that can automate tasks traditionally performed by consultants.
2. Consultants who fail to adopt AI tools risk being replaced by those who do, highlighting the importance of staying current with technological advancements.
3. AI tools can augment consultants' capabilities, enabling them to deliver higher quality work more efficiently.
4. The consulting industry may shift away from providing free advisory content to protect their intellectual property from being used to train AI models.
5. To navigate the changes brought by AI, consultants should be vigilant, view AI as an opportunity, develop new skills, focus on human elements, specialize in niche areas, and build stronger relationships with clients.
6. In the short to medium term, consulting work that requires human-level decision-making and capability will likely remain relevant.
7. Soft skills, emotional intelligence, and creativity will continue to be valuable assets for consultants, as AI focuses on analyzing past data rather than generating innovative ideas.

For ambitious consultants aiming to establish themselves as thought leaders and advance to senior decision-making roles, deliberate career planning is important. Here are 5 tips for actively managing your consulting career. We're joined by Patrick Milholland who in his career has served in every major C-Suite position but found his groove with a non-profit career, specifically his utlimate goal of a CIO career. We Discuss:

• Why would someone plan their career this way?
• How does education impact the career plan?
• What are some of the pros and cons to taking this approach?
• What were some of Patrick's hard choices in his journey?
• What are some of his insights gleaned from following this process during his career?

Key Highlights:

• Patrick deliberately pursued 3 degrees with the goal of becoming a CIO (3:00-6:24). There was a clear career plan in place and calculated choices were made to achieve the goal.
• Working as a consultant provided great experience and exposure that enabled attaining a CIO role (12:11-14:18). The consulting skills translated directly.
• The consulting role was left for a CIO position at a nonprofit where purpose and satisfaction was found, beyond just financial motivators (14:18-15:45).
• Over time, impressive credentials and titles were accumulated that opened up additional career opportunities (32:13-34:12). The background stood out.
• Be deliberate about aligning career choices with defined goals and to consider personal tradeoffs like family time (40:24-41:28). Having a plan matters.
• Location has an impact – being in Silicon Valley expanded options vs. being in Ohio (34:05-34:24).

5 Takeaways:

We spend our lives gaining knowledge of the world around us. Unlearning things, making room for new knowledge or corrected or updated knowledge, is a skill we aren’t usually taught and don’t often practice. Here are 8 important things to know about Unlearning.

We're joined for this discussion by Pete Cafarchio who is an executive coach that helps transform leaders, teams, and cultures. Pete is the CEO of Oculus Consulting and helps practitioners perform at their best.

We Discuss:

• What is unlearning and why is it so important?
• What are the implications of unlearning for us as consultants?
• What are the implications for our clients?
• How do we effectively challenge a client’s stuck mindset?
• What's preventing us from applying this strategy?

Key Highlights:

• Unlearning is challenging deeply held beliefs and assumptions to make room for new perspectives (6:36).
• It takes courage since consultants are paid for what they know (6:15).
• We tend to defend our thinking, but feeling defensive can indicate we're not fully convinced about something (24:25).
• Self-awareness of our emotional reactions can reveal opportunities for unlearning (25:05).
• Groupthink and technology like social media algorithms can reinforce entrenched thinking, making unlearning more difficult (17:58, 30:04).
• Practical tips for unlearning include exposing ourselves to contrary views (35:02) and asking questions that imagine project failure scenarios (36:32) or competitor advantages (37:13) to surface overlooked issues.
• Facilitating unlearning conversations creates value for clients by getting them to reconsider assumptions (44:23).
• Information is now ubiquitous; consultants add value through context, application and strategy (43:36).

8 Takeaways:

1. Unlearning involves challenging ingrained beliefs to make room for new perspectives, which takes courage since consultants are paid for their knowledge. (6:36)
2. Feeling defensive about an idea can signal that we are not fully convinced about it and presents an opportunity for unlearning. (24:25)
3. Technology like social media algorithms tends to reinforce tribal thinking, making unlearning more difficult. (30:04)
4. Intentionally exposing ourselves to contrary opinions helps to challenge our assumptions and unlearn. (35:02)
5. Asking “what if we fail” questions imagine failure scenarios to uncover overlooked issues. (36:32)
6. Posing “what would competitors do” questions surfaces organizational vulnerabilities. (37:13)
7. Facilitating unlearning conversations creates value for clients by getting them to challenge assumptions. (44:23)
8. With ubiquitous information, consultants now add value through context, application and strategy rather than just providing information. (43:36)

The digital age has offered countless opportunities for connection, but the depth and authenticity of these connections often fall short. Check out these 5 strategies for growing professional communities.

We Discuss:

• Why do these communities matter? What problem are they solving?
• What are some challenges faced by consultants when seeking to build authentic, supportive networks?
• What are some strategies for a) finding a community to be part of; b) growing one of your own?
• How much does being ‘close-knit’ matter with these communities?

Key Highlights:

• Introduction to Converge Australia 2023, a series of 32 events in 25 days across Australia bringing strategy, architecture and community professionals together (2:20-4:00)
• The motivation and goals in attending professional community events (23:27-25:52)
• How to find and get involved in a professional community (25:52-28:11)
• Expectations and mindset that drive people to attend events like this (30:32-31:47)
• Importance of quality conversations over scale (36:35-38:18)
• Keys to building community (40:25-42:16)

5 Takeaways:

1. People attend these events to interact, gain new ideas, meet interesting people, and to make connections - if you're building a community you need to understand their motivations and why people come together
2. Getting involved in a professional community starts with building relationships and networks over time in areas that you have a genuine interest
3. Go in with a learning, exploratory mindset without set expectations and be prepared to give more than you receive and contribute value
4. Breaking large groups of people into smaller, more intimate groups leads to better conversations and connections than one large event
5. Understand who you want to help, what they need, how you can help - realize people are actively seeking community and connections

Consulting is known for long work hours, lack of work-life balance, tedious work, and sometimes lack of meaning. Here are the 5 things you should know about consulting and disillusionment. In this episode we discuss:

• What causes consultants to become disengaged or lose passion for their work over time?
• How do consulting firms try to engage and motivate their employees? Do these things work?
• What warning signs should consultants look out for that may indicate they are becoming disengaged?
• Are certain types of consulting roles or firms more prone to this than others?
• What should the cats on the ground do if they sense they're becoming disillusioned?

Key Highlights:

• Disillusionment begins when reality doesn't match expectations (9:00)
• Misalignment with values and life priority changes can also lead to disillusionment (14:15)
• Warning signs include apathy, irritation, fatigue (16:10)
• Lack of purpose, autonomy, work-life balance, not feeling valued causes issues (23:00)
• Steps to address: clarify values, assess root causes, change teams/projects, change industries (27:30)

5 Takeaways:

1. Disillusionment in consulting careers can happen when reality doesn't match expectations, values are misaligned, or life priorities change over time. Early warning signs include apathy, irritation, disconnection, fatigue.
2. Lack of purpose, lack of autonomy, poor work-life balance, not feeling valued, and not aligning with company culture can also lead to disillusionment.
3. Steps to address disillusionment: clarify values, assess root causes, explore options like new teams, projects, sabbatical, industry roles. Catch issues early.
4. To retain talent, companies should provide coaching/mentors, flexibility, continual growth opportunities. Fostering feelings of value and community also helps.
5. If leaving a company, do it gracefully - don't burn bridges. Thank them and own that it's your decision to make the change. This preserves professional reputation.

The Corporate IT group is sometimes viewed as a black hole consuming resources and getting in the way of getting business done. Almost like some don't know what Corporate IT does...

Some in the enterprise don’t really know how to engage with and leverage technology to deliver value. If it is hard for those who work FOR the company, it can be even harder to navigate corporate IT as a consultant who has landed someplace to try to address business problems.

Given that corporate IT represents a set of services or capabilities that enable an organization to realize business objectives, it is pretty important for anyone seeking to effect change to understand how to engage with them. Consultants especially need to work with corporate IT in order to deliver promised value for their consulting services (and to collect their fees).

Suffice it to say that “navigating the client’s IT organization” is not typically taught to consultants before they show up to solve business problems.

Consultants are required to have multiple sets of skills. One of those involves bringing people together in workshops to address problems or work out complex tasks. Many consultants are terrible at it...

In a recent thread in Reddit's r/consulting community, a junior consultant posted that they were running their first workshop and wanted the community's input on how to effectively run this session. I thought this would make a great topic for... more seasoned (old) consultants to reflect on.

I asked my friends to join me in a conversation on must-haves for running workshops.

In this episode:

• What's the difference between a workshop, a meeting, a gathering, etc.?
• When should a workshop really just be a brief meeting or an email?
• What works best, in-person, virtual, hybrid? When should each be used?
• What are table stakes, absolute must-haves for any workshop?
• How do you get good participant engagement in a workshop?
• How do you ensure participants get value from a workshop?

If you are a consultant and haven't already joined the r/consulting community on Reddit, you probably should.

Clients don't hire consultants to learn about our unique frameworks or totally novel perspectives or listen to our thought projects on topics like AI, data strategy or new product development. They hire us to help drive outcomes.

Sometimes these are outcomes that the client has already defined, other times they need some help divining what should actually result from a particular strategy or project.

Naturally there is a tension between the design of something and the realization of the thing. For consultants, there is a struggle between the abstract, ambiguous, hand-waving strategic things and the super technical, hyper focused lost in the weeds things.

Oftentimes we lose sight of the actual reason for working a problem with a client. We become so involved and invested with the details of HOW that we forget WHY.

The outcome is what matters. Keeping focus on that is not always easy.

Vacation is a great time to contemplate life, work, and life and work. The two can frequently be at odds for most people.

When we can relax our brains for minute, there's an opportunity to check-in and assess whether the work that we do and the life that we lead support one another. We hear all about work life 'balance' but that concept suggests compromises and doing neither work nor life well, but each in mediocrity.

What we should be after is figuring out if our life and our work are coherent. Does the one support and sustain the other. Do they move us in the same direction toward our goals or are they moving in different directions, tearing us apart.

My friend Phil joined me to talk about this. To be honest, we didn't start out intending to discuss it or make it an episode. We were just having a chat and captured some interesting conversation that has so many 'legs' to it. I suspect we will discuss this more in the near future.

In this episode:

• What's the problem with work/life "balance"?
• Why are so many people seemingly stuck in work or life situations making them unhappy?
• What are some purposes to life and how can work provide support?
• How can you use questioning to help attack this issue?

Which is worst? Too much ego in the workplace, not ENOUGH ego in the workplace, an inability to read the room and tune to the right level of ego needed for the moment? The answer is Yes.

Ego can lead to self-deception and self-sabotage. Where humility is required, we often find exactly the opposite. We so often encounter (or embody) a total lack of awareness of how actions and behavior are perceived.

In the workplace, especially as consultants, this is amplified by clients, context and environment. Getting it right is just not an easy thing to do.

I asked my good friends to join me for a discussion the topic of ego. Watch as Phil Yanov, Whynde Kuehn, and Oliver Cronk help me sort it out.

Please do indulge us and our egos. For this, our 60th episode and the end of Season 5, we have a record-setting 5 minutes of cold open... It definitely is worth it. Well, at least partially.

In this episode:

• What does the word "ego" actually mean outside of a clinical context?
• What is too much or too little ego?
• How does one fine tune the ego for the situation?
• How do you know when ego is getting in the way of your objectives and how do you correct that?
• How do we hold ourselves accountable for our ego?

Company culture is important, but not as important as profitability. Layoffs are necessary. Business is business... But you don't have to treat your people like garbage. They're your most valuable asset after all.

There are a number of examples we’ve seen over the past few years of company culture that doesn’t seem to get the balance quite right between the commercial needs of the business and respect for the individuals of the company. On the one hand, the business exists to make money and tough decisions are often called for that impact people’s lives. On the other, the humans that make up the company deserve to be treated fairly and with some dignity.

There appear to be economic headwinds as we move into 2023. Tools like LinkedIn can be one of the most powerful weapons in your branding, sales, or employment arsenal. That is, if you know how to use it effectively...

In a recent discussion on using Social Media on the podcast, we acknowledged the fact that while all 4 of us have years of expertise in using social tools, none of us are world-renowned experts who train other people how to use them. Luckily we're friends with a person who is.

Richard Bliss is 8th on LinkedIn's list of top global social selling experts. He's an author who's latest book is called DigitalFirst Leadership, and heads up BlissPoint Consulting which enables leaders to leverage the language of social media to extend their voice, vision and message. And don't forget that he publishes an annual research report on the LinkedIn Algorithm...

So yeah. He knows what he's talking about when it comes to using LinkedIn for success.

We asked him to sit down with us and talk through some of our observations and point out a few of his strategies for maximizing your effectiveness on LinkedIn.

For all the cats out there who are interested in upping their game on the socials, you'll want to grab a pen and a notebook...

In this episode:

• What are some key strategies for building a successful and effective LinkedIn profile?
• What are some common mistakes people make on business social sites?
• How do you better understand the algorithm to maximize viewership of posts and articles?
• What are tips for finding a client or career opportunity?
• What are some effective ways to grow your network?

With the year ending, and folks in various stages of vacation and merrymaking, the Consultants Saying Things team wanted to get together for our annual Christmas Special.   

This year we issue awards in various categories (e.g. Best LinkedIn Appearance by a Member of the Cast), talk about significant events of 2022 and turn to our expectations in 2023.   

In this episode: 

• A revisit to an online argument about clean energy and trains 
• 2022 CST Awards in 8 categories 
• Drinking

Social media is a wonderful, terrible thing. It is a cosmos of tools that allow us to be our best or, perhaps more often, our worst. If we're a knucklehead in real life, Facebook can make us a louder knucklehead...

For consulting professionals, the use of social media is typically career related or career-adjacent. Given there are so many ways to engage, given the sheer amount of noise, given our own proclivities to react emotionally to things we read, how does a professional get their message out while avoiding the combative social trap?

I asked my friends Phil Yanov, Oliver Cronk and Whynde Kuehn what they thought. What are the right ways for professionals to leverage social media to connect, build a brand, share ideas, communicate and learn?

In this episode:

• Why should a professional care at all about social media?
• What are some ways to avoid the social media conflict zone?
• How does one cut through the noise on the socials?
• What are some tips on maintaining equanimity while still engaging?
• What are some common pitfalls to avoid and useful tips to employ?

There's some extra goodness in the outro. Hope you enjoy.

According to various polls, public speaking ranks as peoples' top fear... ahead of snakes, heights, clowns and, in fact, death itself. Let that sink in. People would rather be DEAD than speak in front of a group of other humans.

So, first... why? And second, what can be done about it?

Naturally we can't solve EVERYONE'S fear of public speaking, so we decided to tackle this issue from the perspective of consulting.

Good consultants need to be able to do a variety of tasks well. Yes there's the need for technical or domain knowledge and skills, the ability to model and analyze, the skill of collecting information and processing it, the requirement of logical thinking, etc. But without the ability to communicate effectively to other people (i.e. the CLIENT), all of that good consultant stuff is less useful or perhaps even useless.

In this episode:

• Why is public speaking important?
• Why does it matter for consultants?
• Why are people afraid of speaking in front of others?
• What are some ways of getting better at public speaking?

There is a longish cold open and some extra goodness as an outro. Why? Well as you'll see, our discussions range over a wide, wide territory. Most of that content never sees the light of day. I thought I'd include a bit of off-topic stuff to give you a sense of the kind of people that get MY intellectual juices going. Being around these types of folks and having these kinds of conversations and being comfortable with it is what has enabled ME to face and conquer public speaking fears over time. Maybe it'll work for you...

The knock on consulting is that so much of what goes on is either a bunch of fluff and hand-waving at a stratospheric, impractical level or narrowly focused on mostly useless technical gee-wizardry with little connection to actual business need. How do you connect strategy to reality?

Luckily there's a new book that takes dead aim at this issue and serves as a practical guide to developing strategy that delivers real-world value. And even more luckily, the author is one of our own...

"Strategy to Reality: Making the Impossible Possible for Business Architects, Change Makers and Strategy Execution Leaders" by our own Whynde Kuehn is practical, digestible, and evergreen. She applies decades of knowledge and experience in what works and what doesn't and lays out a prescriptive plan for matching vision with delivery.

We wanted to sit down with her and discuss the book, how consultants can apply the knowledge within for their clients, and how leaders in industry can use it as a guide for change.

In this episode:

• What inspired Whynde to write this? What did she learn about the process
• What are the central factors at play when developing and applying strategy?
• How does business architecture factor in to strategy?
• How do you get real-world change from what seem like fluffy concepts?
• How do these practices sustain themselves inside of organizations?
• How do consultants help clients connect strategy and execution?

Being mentally resilient in the face of everything the world throws at us can be daunting. Whether it's work, family, friends, international politics... there's a lot of stress on us every day. How is a person supposed to deal? (Psst: I have the answer...).  

Okay. I personally don't have the answer. But I'm lucky to know some folks that are certified experts in this area.   

You may recall in the last episode of the podcast, Phil, Oliver, Whynde and myself discussed our experiences with mental resiliency over our careers. Frankly this amounted to personal anecdotes and clever observations. None of us are actual experts in mental health (which should be obvious to anyone who watches).   

Enter a couple of friends of ours: Dr. Haley Dare and Gavin Richardson of https://www.neurequity.com/. Hayley is a Chartered Consultant Clinical Psychologist with over 25 years’ professional experience and Gavin has extensive experience in designing and implementing transformational workplace mental health initiatives to enhance employee engagement and organizational performance. It turns out that they're ACTUAL experts in this space. Through their work, they help companies around the world ensure their employee's mental wellbeing. 

We brought them on to discuss mental resiliency, this time through the lens of professionals.  

In this episode: 

• Why does mental resiliency matter?
• What are some of the biggest causes of stress for Consultants? 
• How does that stress manifest itself? What are some of the impacts?
• What are some of the coping mechanisms? 
• How does brain chemistry factor in? 
• What are some ways to improve resiliency? 
• How do we, as consultants, protect "the asset" ?  

You're not gonna want to miss this one...  It should be said that if you are in real need of help due to stress or other mental health issues, don't listen to this podcast. Go out and get the help you need. YOU are the asset. Protect it!

Work can be hard. It can be stressful. Consulting in particular is full of A-Types who work long, busy hours trying to help in often frustrating client situations. What if you break?  

Each person's ability to handle things is different, with some having deeper mental capacity buckets than others. At some point, however, most people have experienced that bucket filling up and overflowing.   

What happens when you run so hot for so long that you start to burn out?  More importantly, how do you bounce back? How resilient can you be? How far can you stretch that stress rubber band without snapping it?  

I wanted to chat about this with my smart friends. Of course, while none of us is a medical professional (and mental health should be taken very seriously), we had some thoughts and anecdotes to share around how to be more mentally resilient.  

In this episode: 

• Why does mental resiliency matter? 
• What are some ways to avoid mental exhaustion and burnout? 
• When you do break down, how do you bounce back? 
• What are some tips for increasing your resiliency?

What is an architect? What is architecture? In the business technology context, is architecture a profession? What do architects do? A quick Google search reveals an endless debate on these topics that's been raging for several decades. Let's add more fuel to that fire and stir that pot...

Four years ago a friend told me that since I had so much to say about business and technology topics that I should go make a podcast. In retrospect I think he just wanted me to quit bothering him. Joke's on him. I had him join the cast.  

50 Episodes later, we've talked to dozens of people on many different topics... all related to how we as consultants can leverage our experience and knowledge to help deliver value to our clients.   

We've tried to make the discussions topical, meaningful and most of all, practical. Knowledge isn't particularly helpful if you have no realistic way to use it. Keeping things useful for the cat on the ground has always been important to us.   

We've had quite a lot of fun over the years and debated a variety of really interesting subjects. But what we enjoyed was not always what you, the viewers, found to be most helpful.   

For this 50th Episode, we wanted to see exactly which episodes where the most viewed on the Youtube channel, on the website consultantssayingthings.com and most listened to via the myriad audio-only services. We've pulled out clips from these Top 5 shows and put them together in one episode.   

In descending order, the episodes are:  

1) The One About Agile Being Bullshit 

2) The One About Business Architecture 

3) The One About Consulting 4.0 

4) The One About PMO 

5) The One About Ethics in Consulting  

Keep in mind there are another 45 episodes out there that we think are ALSO pretty good. But these ones are the Top 5.   

There's new footage here that never made it into the final edits of the respective episodes. We also begin Episode 50 with what has been almost universally identified as the best cold open of the series to date...  

Thanks for continuing to watch.

Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube.

The work environment can be tough. It is often political and tiresome and exhausting. The work week can be a tough slog. However... the workplace can often be very funny. Or at least, worthy of mockery and parody.  

We set about trying to lighten the mood by taking a look at various tropes and memes about work in general and consulting in particular. The jokes are many and can often be NSFW.   

We selected a number of memes off of Instagram and discussed them, had a laugh, and tried to decipher whether there was any merit to the meme. Are they true? Are they exaggeration? Are they simply myth?   

I'm joined by Phil Yanov, Oliver Cronk and Whynde Kuehn.   

In this episode:

• What are some good consulting memes that capture the essence of this line of work? 
• For each meme, what are the real aspects and what is simply hyperbole? 
• Can consulting memes teach anything to those wanting to enter the field? 

In the battle for talent, how do you identify people who are likely to exhibit the qualities you want? How do you do the same with your existing employees? Assessments? Reviews? Rorschach Tests?  

Many of us have been part of organizations that sought to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their staff by utilizing personality tests and skill assessments. They've been around for a long time. In fact, the first modern personality test was applied by the US Army in the early 1900s to identify soldiers that may be susceptible to shell shock.   

Fast-forward a hundred years and a quick Google search reveals the dozens of tests, frameworks, metamodels, questionnaires, and the like, which all purport to assist people in understanding each other.  

Whether it is Myers-Briggs, DISC, True Colors, 16PF, Winslow Personality Test, PCM, the Five Factor Model or any of a few dozen other tests and assessments, the question I had was simple: is any of this useful?  

Along with Oliver Cronk, Whynde Kuehn and special guest Andrew Tanner, we delve into that question and attempt to see how practitioners or consultancies might apply the various models.   

Andrew is an Organization Development and Change expert who's practiced in the field for over 20 years through his firm, Summerhill Consulting, and is currently the head of Learning and Development for PCF Bank in the UK.  

In this episode: 

• Why do organizations use these tools?
• How are they typically used?
• How effective are they?
• Why would a consultant want to understand their personality type?
• What do these tools tell us about the skills needed for consulting?

We all know smart people. They often have smart plans and smart designs. Sometimes fancy shoes. But the smartest plan or design is totally useless if it can't be explained to another human being.  

As humans, how do we share information in ways that convey our ideas, thoughts, intents, moods, histories? We tell stories. Sometimes the story is visual and can be anything from cave paintings to maps to plays to diagrams to art. Other times it is audio and involves music or oral histories. It can even be as simple as the written words or spreadsheets of data.  

The point of storytelling is to communicate. It is how we take simple or complex thoughts and share them with other people. It is how we lead people to see our vision. It is how we plant a flag, define a 'north star' or rally a nation to defend itself against impossible odds.  

Storytelling is a core competency for consultants. If you can't narrate, you can't explain your code, your architecture, your business strategy. It is central to what we do as consultants.   

I wanted to talk more about this with my smart friends. I also happen to think there is a great example of the "power of narrative" playing out in front of our eyes on the world stage.   

In this episode: 

• Why do we care about stories?  
• What makes stories important to consultants? 
• What makes a good story or narrative? 
• Why do some of us struggle to relate and narrate? 
• How can one improve at storytelling?

There is often a tendency for companies to prioritize action and delivery over planning and analysis. More "Deliver the widgets!" and less "What does our company actually do?"  

This can be seen in places where decision making is driven by technology and timelines instead of desired business outcomes, where the "How" and "When" is obsessed over while the "Why" is practically forgotten.  

But friends! It doesn't have to be this way!  

In the world of effective Business Architecture, understanding the "Why" actually enables and accelerates the "How" and the "When". In other words, if people on Project XYZ actually see and understand what the company does, why it does it, what business problem is being solved by their project and how the thing they're delivering helps move the entire enterprise toward its goals... well... things go faster, smoother, cheaper and end up better for everyone.  

My 100,000-foot view sounds easy. To dig into the right level of detail and understand Business Architecture, how it works and what it can really do, I turned to my smart friends Whynde Kuehn, Oliver Cronk and Phil Yanov.   

(By the way, Whynde is a globally recognized expert, consultant and educator in this space. A quick peek at her LinkedIn profile will give you the scoop...)  

In this Episode: 

• What the heck IS Business Architecture anyway?
• How is it practiced? What are the methods and frameworks? 
• What benefits does it provide? Who in the company should care?
• What are good examples of Business Architecture practice? What are bad ones?
• How does Business Architecture relate to Enterprise Architecture?
• How can you, yes YOU, get started in Business Architecture either as an employee in a company or as a consultant?

Well. 2021 is finally over. Did you learn anything? Will you do anything different with your career in 2022? If not now, then when?

For our annual Christmas Special, we wanted to chat about careers in consulting. Not just for folks thinking of maybe entering the field, but also for those who are in consulting and thinking of a lateral change and ALSO those contemplating an exit from consulting.

To help with that conversation, we brought in some folks we know that are living or have lived different aspects of the consulting lifestyle and had some insight to share. After all, the four of us don't know EVERYTHING there is to know about the topic. Hear some great insights from Joel McCreight, Brian Lindner, Max Kanaskar, Ian Liang and special guest star, Shashi Shrimali.

But we also thought it would be cool to invite folks to watch us record the session live via Zoom and YouTube and get their questions answered.

In this special Christmas episode:

• What's the best way to prepare for a career in consulting?
• How do you engage with good recruiters?
• What do you need to consider if you're leaving the corporate world for consulting?
• How can you change the type of consulting you do without actually leaving the field?
• What should you be thinking about if you plan on leaving consulting?

In our connected world of technology, the ways in which we engage with businesses and clients can have a big impact. And as we've seen with the ways in which our public and private data is used by companies like Meta, not all impacts are positive. Some are downright manipulative.

How does a company or an employee or a consultant working with a client know how to operate with transparency and integrity? We know that certain industries have regulations that define what is acceptable and compel compliance (law, medicine, accounting). There are also voluntary standards and practices established by working groups and business consortiums that can serve as guides to ethical behavior.

However, many industries and especially many different forms of consulting lack clearly articulated and codified ethical rules. Is it right or wrong to give or receive bribes (or dinners, or gifts) as part of doing business? Where are the guardrails in fudging timesheets? Is it okay to use user-data, given voluntarily or not, to target ads or shape opinion or manipulate thought? Even if these things are done for 'good' purposes or without ill intent?

Beyond employees or corporate entities, there is an opportunity for those of us who advise and solve problems for our clients to be better Philosopher-Consultants and operate with virtue and integrity.

But ethics can be complex issues, often culturally specific and rarely black or white. Tough scene for consultants to navigate. So I asked my friends Phil Yanov, Oliver Cronk, and Whynde Kuehn to chat with me about it.

In this episode:

• What does it mean for a company or a person to act with virtue?
• What does it mean to be ethical?
• When are ethics clear? When are they ambiguous?
• What are the cultural contexts at play here?
• How does a person in a company navigate ethics?
• How does a consultant work ethically and advise clients ethically?
• How does an employee or consultant know that they're acting ethically?

Consultants often help clients think about complex problems with few easy answers. There are almost always trade-offs to be made, regulations to follow, expenses to incur all while trying to run a business and make a profit.  

One of the most complex issues involving tough decisions is around how best to utilize business (or national) resources in a manner that ensures the business (or nation) can continue to grow and thrive in a way that doesn't negatively impact everyone else.  

Are you an oil company looking at how you'll be in business in 40 years if no one is buying gasoline or oil-based plastics? What alternative product lines should you be looking at?   

Are you a search-engine giant that uses more electricity than some countries to power your data centers? How do you supply that business need without causing brownouts? Solar? Wind? Fusion?   

Are you a Northeastern Pennsylvania-based mid-size paper company that uses a lot of trees? Perhaps finding a way to make your product from fast-growing varieties like bamboo instead of old-growth oak is a good way to ensure your business can continue to make product into the future.  

Decisions... some forced by the State, some forced by shareholders, others just good business planning, others perhaps totally altruistic. Sounds like an opportunity for a consultant looking to make a difference.  

I gathered my friends to discuss Sustainability and opportunities in that space. Along with Oliver Cronk, Whynde Kuehn and Phil Yanov, I was joined by Jonathan Gibbard who is a Business Unit Director for Sustainable Infrastructure & Operations at Ricardo Energy & Environment in the UK.  

In this Episode:

• What do we really mean by Sustainability? 
• What is driving companies to invest in Sustainable practices? 
• What is the state of the Sustainable Consulting industry? 
• Where are there career opportunities in this space for new or experienced consultants? 
• What does a consulting engagement look like that deals with Sustainability? 
• Who has the worst middle-name combo, Chris or Oliver?

If I were to only read my LinkedIn feed, I'd think every industry is being disrupted all the time, every day...

Certainly a search for "future of consulting" yields plenty of opinion along with thought pieces about new business models and such. Many of these results are a bit frenzied, foreboding and filled with gloom about AI and Gen Z taking over consulting.

I'm not sure exactly what the future of consulting looks like. So I asked my friends, Phil Yanov, Whynde Kuehn and Oliver Cronk to give me their thoughts on the subject.

In this episode:

• What do we think is changing?
• What was the impact of COVID-19 on consulting?
• How do consultancies change with the times?
• How does automation impact consulting?
• How do consultants position themselves to take advantage of changes to the industry?

Is it The Great Rebalance? The Great Reshuffle? The Great Resignation? The Great Discontent? To read about it, companies are really struggling to find workers these days. Clearly there aren't enough people that want to work.  

We think that's just a load of codswallop.  There was a recent LinkedIn News story about the consulting boom/bust job cycle that caught my eye. The story said that 2 in 3 consulting firms are short-staffed and 1 in 5 have to turn down work as a result. More than half said that recruiting and retention have become much harder this year.   

I wondered, is this because the firms didn't forecast demand correctly? Were they spooked by COVID and didn't plan recruiting properly? We know labor force participation in the US is declining... are consultants just dropping out of the workforce? Are people doing their own entrepreneurial thing?  

I wanted the input of my smart friends Phil Yanov, Whynde Kuehn and Oliver Cronk.   

In this episode: 

• Is there really a shortage of consultants? Why might there be one? 
• What is going on in the overall labor market that might add context? 
• Is there a labor shortage or just a labor realignment or are the workers just hiding in plain sight?
• How do consultants navigate this boom/bust cycle of demand for their skills? 
• What should existing or aspiring consultants be considering as they look at this landscape? 
• What changes should consulting firms be making to attract and retain talent?  

The model entrepreneur gets up one morning with a great idea, quits their job and boldly strikes out on their own... single-handedly building a great company from nothing, attracting flocks of clients, finding happiness and peace of mind and easily striking it rich. Modern-day gold rush.

Except that's false. Like... totally false. All of it.   

So many misconceptions of what entrepreneurship is about, especially among consultants who think that's a great exit strategy someday.  I called up my long-time friend Adam Anderson for a chat. 

Adam is the kind of cat who has started and run several of his own companies, gone from Founder to CEO a few times and helps others do the same, been entrepreneurship scholar-in-residence at two major Universities, sits on multiple startup boards, hangs out with Richard Branson and is currently trying to figure out how to make moonshine in space... among other things.   

I gotta tell you, it was a fantastic conversation. I mean, this is just pure gold.  

In this episode: 

• What are the mistakes most consultants make when they decide to go the entrepreneur route? 
• What's the reality of being the one-person show, of doing it all yourself? 
• Is there an entrepreneur archetype? 
• What is the role of innovation in entrepreneurship? 
• What are the tools you need to have or acquire as you make the jump from full time job to going solo? 
• Adam shares his journey from Employee to Consultant to Founder to CEO to CEO who helps CEO's navigate the same

Consulting may be an old profession (the second oldest?) but no one can argue that it hasn't undergone tremendous change over the past 20 years.

It makes sense, after all. Consulting reflects the business technology challenges and opportunities that clients are experiencing. And there's been incredible business technology change in the recent decades.

Which begs the question, what is it like being a young consultant of Millennial or Gen Z upbringing?

For insight I turned to my smart friends and a smart, young consultant, Ian Liang, with whom I've worked in the past. Ian has been a consultant for a Big 4 firm, worked in market strategy at Uber and is currently in Strategy and Analytics at a media firm in Los Angeles. He may also be scarred for life having worked on my teams in the past.

In this episode:

• What prompts a young person, fresh from college, to enter the consulting field?
• Do young people generally know what they're getting into with consulting?
• Is consulting experience as valued by the young as it once was?
• What do the fresh entrants into this field NOT know that may surprise them?
• What are the different expectations of the youth entering consulting today?
• Why do young people LEAVE consulting? Is the 10-15 year path to Partner career still relevant to the youth of today?
• Is there a consultant DNA? Do experiences vary by gender?
• And importantly for our guest Ian, would he do it again knowing what he knows now?

I used to think that if I could just clone myself a few times I might have the most perfect team and we'd produce the most perfect slides...  

Aside from that likely being a disaster, I used to think that's how mentorship worked. I mentor or coach someone to do things in the method of whatever firm we were working for so that I had more arms and legs to do work for clients.   

Luckily I learned better.   

It isn't about the firm or the client or even the work. It's about individual growth of both the mentor and the mentee.   

I wanted to explore the concept of mentorship with some of my smart friends. So I sat down with Phil Yanov, Whynde Kuehn and Oliver Cronk.   

In this Episode: 

• What do we mean by mentorship? 
• What are the different models of mentorship? 
• How do we compare apprenticeship, coaching, mentorship? 
• Why is it important to people at all stages of the career?
• What is the difference between mentorship and therapy? 
• What is good mentorship and what isn't? What works?

Well it looks like things are getting back to normal. Everyone should just go back to doing things like they did prior to Covid. All will be as it was…

Or not. As the case may be.

Have you heard the predictions for an imminent return to normalcy? Are you excited by the prospect of everyone working the 9-5, Monday thru Friday grind in the old cubicle just like before? Isn’t every consultant thrilled about the notion of going back to that 4am Monday flight to Peoria or Altoona or Wichita to sit in a conference room, face lit by the soft glow of PowerPoint slides and Excel formulas until that late Thursday flight home?

What does the looming return to work portend for business, for clients, for consultants?

I decided to ask my friends for their input on the matter. Joining me is Phil Yanov, Whynde Kuehn and Oliver Cronk.

In this Episode:

• Where do things stand a year into Covid now that vaccinations are in play?
• What about our business models and work routines has changed?
• Which changes will stick? What will go back to the way it was before?
• What should we be thinking with regard to our work patterns?

Welp. Glad this year's over. Perfect time to pour a drink, to be honest.   

It's also a perfect time for the third annual Christmas episode of the Consultants Saying Things podcast! It's great filler for that hole in spacetime between Christmas and New Year's.  

Join the full crew of Consultants Saying Things as we look forward to 2021 and what it holds in store for the consulting industry.   

We answer questions from LinkedIn and do it with a bit of liquid holiday cheer! And also we have some very special guests!  

Joining us: 

• Brent Stokes from episode 35 (Recruiting) joins us at 00:01:25 
• Oliver Cronk from episode 30 (Endpoint Security) at 00:18:30 
• Hussain Bandukwala from episode 18 (PMO) at 00:27:00 
• Jim Sevier from episode 06 (CRM) at 00:34:24 
• Doug Cone from episode 04 (Open Source) at 00:51:56 
• Nathan Allchin from episode 34 (Philosophy) at 01:02:25 
• Mike Walker from episode 28 (Enterprise Architecture) at 01:10:20 
• Larry Gioia from episode 09 (Empathy) at 01:31:05  

That wraps season 3 of the podcast. 36 episodes in the 30-90 minute range over the past 3 years. If you have a second, please subscribe.  

We'll see you in 2021. Enjoy!  

It's been a rough year. Companies have downsized and a maybe you've lost your job. You've sent out dozens or hundreds of resumes, worked your network. What now?

Consultants are maybe more used to searching for the next gig, but even for them, times are tough. And for the companies that panicked earlier in 2020 and let go of all of that talent, intellectual capital and institutional knowledge, how on earth do you find the skills needed to power your 2021 plans?

It somehow seems that in a market chock full of talent that can't find gigs, companies can't find anyone to fill their needs.

Enter professional executive recruiters. These are people who's entire life is spent understanding companies and the skills they need, developing relationships over time with talent in the market and playing matchmaker between the two.

To talk about this, I brought in my friend Brent Stokes from Bluesignal. In our conversation:

• What is professional recruiting? Isn’t it just staffing?
• Why do so many recruiting services get it so wrong when it comes to finding candidates?
• How do job-hunters, consultants, find the right recruiter to work with?
• Why do companies need recruiting services? They have HR already…
• What are some tips for consultants looking for work right now?
• What are some tips for companies searching for talent right now?

If you live in the real world, if you practice your profession in the real world, then you'll know the real world loves throwing crap at you whenever it can.   

The challenges come at us from every angle: family, work, friends, clients, colleagues, children, culture, technology, politics, pandemics... just to name a few.   

How on Earth is your average consultant expected to navigate this, continue to be productive, and stay sane?  

One way is by adopting and applying certain philosophies as frameworks for interacting with our world and our work.  

I have some friends that are interested (and knowledgeable) in this area and I sat them down for a chat. Added to this group is my friend Nathan Allchin who spent quite a bit of time in AI research and has been a management consultant for, well, for ever.  

In our conversation: 

• Why would anyone need a framework like this to begin with? 
• Why would a consultant need a philosophy?  
• What types of problems would we expect to solve by applying philosophy to consulting? 
• What philosophies or frameworks might one apply? 
• Are philosophies really just like architecture frameworks in that they’re highly context dependent? Or is there a one-philosophy-fits-all kind of thing out there? 
• Where could a consultant/practitioner go to learn more?

Consulting can be a tough game. All of these Type-A personalities aggressively posturing and circling each other for the kill. Egos are large and there's no shortage of locker-room braggadocio.

It's an industry that employs far too many sports metaphors and comes with a distinct odor of machismo.

Couple this with the fact that consultants dealing in Business/Technology Architecture roles often have technical or engineering backgrounds and this sets the scene for one of the great critiques of the field: Consulting is a Boys Club.

I wanted to talk to my friends about what it's like for women in the consulting field. I turned to the smartest business architect consultant I know, Whynde Keuhn, to join the cast for a lively discussion on the topic.

In our conversation:

• Why is there a gender imbalance in consulting?
• Why does it matter?
• What other tropes about women in consulting can be debunked?
• What could men learn from their female consultant colleagues that could perhaps improve our effectiveness?
• What could women learn from their male consultant colleagues that could perhaps improve THEIR effectiveness?
• For people just starting out in consulting, what are the key take-aways?
• Should the world just be run by women?

I'm tired of Covid. How bout you? Unfortunately, it probably doesn't matter if we're tired of it or not.

We've all been talking quite a lot about Covid impacts. We've all been living the Covid new-normal lifestyle. We've been quarantined and socially distanced and working from home and hunkered down. We've been living this Covid reality.

My question is simple: Have we learned anything or will things just go back to the way they were before?

I was basically ranting about this with my friends and we turned it into another episode of the podcast.

In our conversation:

• Chris is sick of Covid and now he's gonna say what he really thinks
• What's the deal with schools and virtual learning?
• What is the societal impact of this education system we've developed?
• What do leaders do to learn from the Covid experience and move forward?
• Was this a black swan event or not? Have we learned ANYTHING?
• What do practitioners do to start accepting and moving forward?

You may be thinking that now is the time to hunker down and just hope your business can survive. But what if you're missing out on a killer opportunity?

With the economy under pressure, an ongoing global pandemic and a healthy dose of socio-political uncertainty, it sure seems like the moment is right for the enterprise to keep its head down. Of course, if your company is out there hunting for value, the time may just be perfect.

I was curious about the impact of technology and uncertainty on value creation in unstable times. What opportunities might exist for the bold and unafraid?

As usual, I turned to my smart friends to help me think it out.

In our conversation:

• Who are the value hunters in these times?
• What impact can technology make on value creation with so much instability?
• Are we in the midst of a Private Equity gold rush to snap up stressed companies?
• What can a consultant do to take advantage of the current situation?

Check your endpoint. It's probably not as safe from cyberthreats as you think. And Covid made it worse...

The cybersecurity landscape has been dicey for years. In just the past week there have been massive outages in the networks of Tesla, Microsoft, Apple and AT&T. Think about that. Those companies basically impact every aspect of life. And while they've done a lot to protect their services over the years, the pandemic has thrown a spanner in the works.

If huge global companies with billions of dollars and super smart people are vulnerable, how safe are those corporate assets on the company laptop you're using for Zoom calls from home (Pajamas, noisy dogs, screaming e-learning kids and bad lighting not withstanding)?

I wanted to know more about this. So I asked my good friend Oliver Cronk to come on the podcast and talk about it. Oliver isn't just smart. He's also British. So he SOUNDS smarter as well. Beyond that, he's the Chief Architect at Tanium. Perhaps you've heard of them? They protect endpoint assets of small mom & pop shops like the US Air Force. So, yeah. These folks know something about endpoint security.

In our conversation:

• How has our new way of working impacted traditional security?
• Is the 'enterprise fortress' still relevant to security?
• How should CISO's, Risk Officers and other stakeholders adapt?
• How are Consultants able to take advantage of these trends?
• How can we better serve our clients in this environment?
• Is Phil really just an aged future version of Chris?

The ongoing global pandemic has profoundly impacted our clients and the way we work. It has also forced us to make major changes to our daily routines and behaviors.

Given the prolonged (and prolonging) health crisis and related economic and social upheavals around the world, it may seem like things have jumped the shark and spun totally out of control. The world has hit us upside the head with a proverbial 2x4 and how we react will determine the outcomes for each of us.

I asked some of my consultant friends what their thoughts were on where we are and what is to be done. We tried to stay away from predictions, but as you'll see that can often be hard to do on topics such as this.

In this third episode of a three-part Coronavirus series:

• What behaviors or processes are likely to stay changed for good?
• What are you hearing from clients and peers about their perspective?
• What Covid-induced behaviors have you developed that are working well for you?
• What's not working so well?
• What can we do about it?
• How do we look at this as opportunity for personal change?

One of the most overwrought concepts in business and technology is the idea of the Enterprise Architect and the Architecture they practice.

Libraries have been written about this topic. Literally. Libraries.

I wanted to have a discussion that was less about what it is and more about some of the most effective ways to practice it.

So I called on my buddy Mike Walker to join me with some of my other smart friends and talk about it.

In this episode:

• What is an architect?
• What do effective architects do well?
• What are some key skills necessary to practice enterprise architecture?
• What does enterprise architecture look like during the COVID crisis and beyond?
• Can Mike Walker actually predict the future?

If there is one thing the pandemic has revealed to us more than anything else, it's how terrible people are at video conferencing.  Whether it is the "up-the-nostril" laptop webcam shot, the dark-cave lighting problems or someone munching trail mix during the steering committee meeting, our collective quarantine has really demonstrated that most people don't quite have the hang of the video call. And don't even get started on what people apparently think appropriate to wear (or not wear) for the weekly status meeting...  

I wondered if my smart friends might have some tips for effective video conferencing. I was also interested in finding out what sort of products and equipment they're using and what recommendations they might have for folks just setting up a home office and learning the video conferencing ropes.  

In this episode: 

• What are the top etiquette tips for video calls? 
• Everything you needed to know about lighting 
• What kind of camera do you really need? 
• Best headsets and microphones for your calls 
• Why you really should consider two monitors 
• Why presence still matters... be professional people!