Monthly Archives: November 2017

TNF #113: Don’t break the chain

Welcome Professionals…

…today is Thursday again, time for the next Thursday Night Flight post. It is close to my bedtime and I have no idea, no clue for this post. I don’t feel like writing today.

Whatever – there is no way I am going to break the chain.

Two years ago, I took the deliberate decision to write one post every Thursday and have kept my sequence since then. I will not skip an edition just on a gut level. If I quit, it is due to a deliberate thought process.

When I started this series it was clearly an experiment in digital marketing. I had never written a blog before. English is not my native language. I knew that I would struggle and that I would make plenty of mistakes. I decided to go for it anyway. To embarress myself in public and to acknowledge my shortcomings.

I have the sincere goal to pass on helpful experience on best practices for top management consultants. As I do this, I learn a lot for myself. I make myself aware of tips and tricks as I write them down. I practice writing a blog. And after all, I also take an exercise in self-discipline.

This is why it is so important to never break the chain!

Job done!

Malte

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!

TNF #112: Idle time for the brain

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Welcome Professionals…

…I definitely find myself guilty of this. I am not giving enough idle time to my brain as I should. In order to increase productivity and make the most out of my time, I am tempted to schedule out my full day with conversations, problem solving time, writing and so on. I even use commuting time or workouts for listening to audio books or taking online skills training. This is generally very rewarding because of a feeling of high efficiency. However, it can turn out to be highly ineffective when the balance of idle time gets lost.

I have discovered that my best creative ideas happen in idle time. I find solutions to problems that have been bugging me for days at times when I am not actively thinking about a solution. I make decisions or new plans when I let my mind wander without any clear directions.

While – thanks to our smartphone – it is difficult for anybody to shut of distractions these days, it is especially challenging in top management consulting. Huge amount of information and data to process with tight deadlines, excessive meeting time, solutions to be found for pressing problems, and on top of all this: deprevation of sleep.

Even more so, it is important that we as top management consultants make our minds wander from time to time. The job requires creativity, intuition and judgment – traits which will increase enourmously by taking some deliberate idle time exercise.

When did you recently have one of these idle times:

taking a walk or a slow run without listening to music or other distractions
looking out of the window, gazing at the landscape while on a train ride
standing and watching people pass-by while waiting for a client appointment

Enjoy these times for the sake of higher effectiveness!

Malte

TNF #111: Puzzle observations

Welcome Professionals…

…When I recently came into the room that I use as my office at home, I discovered that my 8 year old daughter had layed out a jigsaw puzzle on the floor. I think it consists of 500 parts and she had just got started with the frame.

I could not resist to take a look at the puzzle parts every time I passed them, trying to find at least one additional fitting piece. Although it is absolutely not my business and my daughter will probably be angry with me if I make some visible progress, I just had to give it a try everytime I gazed the pile of parts.

When I finally left the room, a couple of observations occurred to me:

I seem to have a natural drive towards finding solutions for problems, even when they are clearly not my business.
It helps to get started with the big picture!
It helps to form a hypothesis which puzzle part is going to fit next before looking at the big pile of parts!
As a rule, I will not find the puzzle part I was looking for, but come across another part that will make a good addition to the big picture along the way.
Trial and error is a necessity to make progress.
The process is more fun than taking pride in the end result!

I leave you with this and wish you great fun in puzzling out the problems of your client!

Malte

TNF #110: At your best

1 Reply

Welcome Professionals…

…Do you do checkup calls with target clients sometimes? Calling clients you haven’t worked with for some time to see whether they have a current need that could be turned into your next assignment? I do.

Doing a call is always much more personal than sending an email. We will also be able to gather much more information in a two-way conversation instead of an interchange of emails. In a personal phone call, we are able to submit much more meaning behind the words and bring across our personality.

On the contrary, the spoken word may reveal our current state of mind much easier than a written text. This can be a disadvantage sometimes. I used to do these kind of checkup calls one after another when I was desparately looking for the next project. Not a good idea! Too much pressure and anxiety will be transported in that client conversation. It is an unconscious setup for failure.

Instead, we want to do business development calls when we are at our best. Maybe when we have just won another contract or when we have had another success. This is actually the best time to make such a call. It seems counterintuitive to ask for more work when you have just received an assignment, but psychologically it makes sense. We want to feel confident and relaxed.

If a current success story is not in reach and you still want to make this calls, at least get yourself into a good mood. For example, I go for a walk in the sun while doing the phone call instead of sitting in the office starring at my computer screen. Try it, it makes a huge difference!

Wishing you lots of new client

Malte

TNF #109: Too early is also not on time

Welcome Professionals…

…This week I was surprised by a very unusual case of bad timing.

At the premise of my client, we were expecting a candidate for a presentation, that was the follow-up meeting to a first job interview.

The exact time schedule had been shared and confirmed well in advance. The plan was to arrive at 4.15 pm and get an introduction to a task, work on the task from 4.30 pm for 30 minutes, and then present the results at 5.00 pm.

The candidate showed up at 1.30 pm – more than two and half hours early. The staff at the reception was a bit overwhelmed. They finally placed the candidate into an office at the end of the floor, hoping he would not run into other candidates for the same job that were expected for an earlier slot.

You may say: rather too early than too late. But this is actually not true. As a professional we want to be on time. Neither too early nor too late. Being too early is just another way of not being on time. It sets business partners under pressure who might feel an obligation of changing their schedule because they do not want to make their guests wait. It can have other stressful implications like in the case above.

Entering the office 5 to 10 minutes in advance is fine. For everything beyond that – go grab a coffee outside.

Now it’s time for me to shut up,

Malte