Author Archives: malte

TNF #057: Result = Activity x Competence

Welcome Professionals…

…at the moment I am conducting a lot of interviews with senior sales executives. This is very insightful for me as I am trying to dissect their success factors and understand the main value levers.

One sales leader that I met this week said, he is operating on a very simple formula:

Result = Activity x Competence

My guess is that many of us hold empirical evidence that this simple formula is true for consulting projects. The more experience and thus competence you have in the assignment subject, the better you will manage your W/L-balance. Less experience can be compensated to a certain extent by more activity. Of course, to achieve the highest value that our clients deserve, we all strive to deliver highest compentence in combination with focused hard work.

I am personally very much in favour of simple and actionable frameworks. And I think you as top management consultants will join me in this preference. This formula is really pretty simple and certainly not enough to explain the world of sales to a rookie. However, it may serve as a good reminder on what really counts – and this well beyond the sales business.

Interesting enough, these two multipliers have different dimensions in time. Competence is a long term achievement, while activity can be allocated immediately through prioritization and effort.

Both competence and activity can accumulate over time, but only if we consciously steer the process. If we only dive into an urgent and important project by allocating lots of activity, it will not necessarily raise our competence. We must step back, revisit our actions and learn from them. The same with activity. If we follow unconnected projects, activity invested will never accumulate. We must have an overarching program, a broader goal to invest our activity in order to make it count.

Hopefully, I have not made things more complicated. Just remember:

Result = Activity x Competence

Happy frameworking,

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 #056: Internal networks

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Welcome Professionals…

…recently I witnessed an interesting big failure. One of the Big 4 audit firms bought a small specialty consulting firm. They hired their full staff of 6 consultants. Within a year after the acquisition, all but one consultant had left. Only the most junior person stayed, while the most senior management consultants – some of which with more than 15 years of experience – moved to different companies. What went wrong?

I happen to know key people on both sides. So I tried to find out and learn from this interesting case.

Talking to the one side, the specialty consulting firm, their members said: “We could not benefit from any synergies. We never received any cross-selling leads. Even worse, we rather experienced a conflict of interest with partners of the new mother company.”

The Big 4 side said: “They kept completely separate and even a bit isolated. They did not adapt to our operating model neither to our business culture.”

Maybe the acquisiton was not a good fit. Maybe the two business models and company cultures were too far apart. Either way, one large failure is quite obvious.

The two parties both failed in building internal networks. Every top management consultant working in a consulting firm needs a set of strong inter-company relationships. Successful work in such a setting is only possible when team members can rely on each other in terms of knowledge sharing, best utilization of resources in staffing, and building business development teams best foot forward.

In failing to build and support strong internal networks, the Big 4 company lost its investment and the consultants of the specialty consultancy took a dip in their career.

So, be nice to your colleagues – and connect,

Malte

TNF #055: Persistence is key

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Welcome Professionals…

…I was reminded of the importance of persistence this week. For a time of 2 weeks, I had to interrupt my daily workout due to a cold. When I started again, I was surprised how weak my muscels had become only due to this break of 2 weeks.

It is so important that we keep our positive habits consistently. We need to keep our routines of practicing and continuously improving our skills. The moment we stop, the skill level will degrade rapidly.

This is not only true for physical sports, but also for creative thinking, slide writing, story telling, networking, giving speeches and so on and on. Persistence is key!

Wishing you a great and persistent week

Malte

TNF #054: Let go

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Welcome Professionals…

…this week a friend told me about his new concept of letting go. He is a very successful salesman. He has sold all sorts of things in his life, machines, clothes, ideas – at the moment he is selling luxury travel.

Sometimes, he told me, he is getting stuck with a potential buyer. He offers everything the customer is asking for, ticks all boxes, but still cannot get to a close. When he recognizes that he might be chasing the deal too hard, he decides to actively let go of the potential customer. He tells himself that it does not matter if the person buys today, tomorrow, or never. He makes a farewell statement and let’s the customer alone. Surprisingly, this is the moment when quite many of these customers actually buy.

Well, I don’t know if this works for me. I am going to try it with my potential clients. Maybe I can tell you later about this.

What I do know is something very similar. To let go is the same concept that works with my brain when thinking about a concept. When I am chasing ideas like my friend is chasing deals. When I turn away a bit frustrated and tell myself that this actually does not matter much, I am let go. I do something else – and there it is. The idea comes to my mind. The trick is about relaxing the brain.

It can be best achieved by pursuing an activity that does not require much brain power. Best results I get when doing some physical workout or going for a walk. Checking the media creates too much sensual overflow. But really letting loose can be a very powerful tool in a profession where creativity counts.

Let (‘s) go

Malte

TNF #053: Getting close to perfect

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Welcome Professionals…

…we all aim to create perfect results for our clients. But as we know, there is actually nothing perfect in business life. We can only get close to perfect, but we will never get there in one step. In fact, to come close to perfect, it needs many iterations.

After doing the best we can and approaching a topic from multiple perspectives, we can only get better by involving some other critical minds. Ideally, we have a team of direct reports who are not too shy to speak up, or we have well-meaning colleagues, and we certainly need a trustful relationship to our boss or other senior advisors. For everything that we produce ourselves, we will have a certain bias then let’s us overlook some faults and shortcomings. This is just human.

We need to be open to share our thoughts and material with our colleagues before we take it to the client. While it hurts sometimes to get criticized, this is the only way to make good material really excellent.

Best consultants are not afraid to fail in front of their peers. They are not embarressed to aks questions. They take risks within the team in order to shine in front of the client.

Hoping you will shine

Malte

TNF #052: Anniversary issue

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Welcome Professionals…

…to the anniversary issue of Thursday Night Flight! As you can tell by the number in the title, this is the 52nd edition of the best practice blog for top management consultants. This means we have been once aroung the year with it together – week by week. Thank you so much for joining me and all the feedback I received from you. (Mostly in private, though).

When I come home on a Thursday night, I sit down, finish my writing and publish the next post. Quite often, I have collected only some raw ideas during the week and need to formulate the article right before the deadline. The deadline is a good thing, though. It pushes me to get something done each week.

A friend of mine once said: “Why don’t you skip an issue this week? You don’t have to write every week, you are your own boss, nobody expects you to do this every single week.” I guess he is right. Of course, I would like to believe that my audience expects me to write something each week. That there are readers out there who wait eagerly for each issue of the blog. But Google Analytics tells me that most of you look at the blog only from time to time. That’s okay and I hope you like it from time to time.

I actually do it because I promised it to myself. I said I would do it. So I do. Eventually the blog is called “Thursday Night Flight” and not “every other Thursday or whatever”.

You know what? This discipline and consistency feels great. Making the weekly publishing a habit and sticking to the plan is a reward in itself. Each single week it is a rather small step, but looking back on 52 issues around the year makes me feel a little bit proud.

BTW, today is my 40th birthday, which also fits well with the title of this post. Forgive me for being a bit sentimental here. I feel extremely grateful for the last 40 years. Looking forward to more to come.

Stick with me through the next year of Thursday Night Flight!

Malte

TNF #051: Murphy’s law revisited

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Welcome Professionals…

…I am sure you have heard of Murphy’s law, often cited as “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

Many smart people have reviewed the so called law and tried to explain or refute it. I won’t dive into that. It does not matter to me if it is true or false. But there have been situation when I thought that Murphy’s law applies to me. And that sucks.

Murphy’s law is my personal reminder that some things will go wrong – sooner or later. It is just a matter of statistics. If these errors occur during times when everything counts, when everything is on the edge, they become a great nuisance. Just before the important board meeting presentation the printer runs out of toner. Just before the crucial client meeting I spill tomato sauce on my white dress shirt. This is the time when I might complain about Murphy’s law.

Instead of worrying about the universal injustice, though, it is much better to have alternative plans in place.

As top management consultants, we like to be prepared for these statistical errors in order to stay cold-blooded when everything counts. Good examples of preparation are:

keeping a spare suit, shirt and tie in a closet in the office
installing an alternative printer to switch if one runs out of toner
keeping some money in the briefcase/jacket/office drawer separate from the wallet
always reviewing two alternative routes to the client
keeping a power pack for the phone
and so on…

What are your tricks? Let me know. And don’t worry about Murphy’s law ever again.

Malte

TNF #050: Feeling tired?

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Welcome Professionals…

…do you feel tired in the afternoon sometimes? I do. Here is what helps:

Sleep properly at night, at least 6 hours, no disturbance, no alcohol
Take regular meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner (do not skip breakfast!)
Reduce fast burning carbs like white bread, pasta, processed foods, etc.
Reduce sugar
Drink a lot of still water, less caffeine
Move (a little walk) or do quick exercise
Enjoy sunlight
Do some social activity (meeting, phone calls) instead of conceptual work
Breathe deeply

Wishing you a wide awake afternoon

Malte

TNF #049: Prepared for networking

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Welcome Professionals…

…I am attending a networking event today and I am getting prepared. There are only very few of these events that I actualy attend. I don’t like these awkward settings where everyone is running around exchanging business cards in order to sell something the next day. But some networking events offer a specific content and a curated membership network that are worth it from my point of view.

However, these occasions are rare and expensive, they cost time and money. So, it is better to go prepared. There are a few obvious preparations and some more sophisticated that I only got familiar with over recent years.

The obvious preparation is just common sense:

Making sure to be on time with a proper appearance
Placing some business cards into the jacket (not to be proactively used, but just in case somebody asks for one)
Reviewing the list of participants, marking target persons to connect with
Collecting some background information on target persons (CV on LinkedIn, mentioning in the news, looking for joint projects, interests, etc.)

The less obvious networking preparation is getting ready for conversations. On a networking event like this, we will have an agenda packed with some inspiring speeches and lots of breaks inbetween. I will not want to approach new contacts with some random conversation about the weather. Neither will I want to make it business transactional.

In order to really connect with people, I will want to pick a conversation that is playful enough for the small talk setting and at the same time meaningful enough to be remembered. This challenge needs preparation – and it also needs a lot of practice to be honest.

Here is what I will do. The topic of the conference is “upcycling”. I will think of anecdotes that link to this topic or to sub-topics that I find on the agenda. These anecdotes could be something that I heard on the news, an expert article that I read, a recent project that I did. Further, the anecdote needs to carry a message, this is where the meaning comes into play. By telling the story in my own personal way, I want to make sure to convey my personal opinion, something that I stand for, i.e., my values and believes.

Of course, this may sound a bit constructed. But think twice. A good networking conversation is exchanging stories on a joint topic where the discussion partners get to know each other. This is what it is worth to get prepared for.

Out for now

Malte

TNF #048: Surprise, surprise!

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Welcome Professionals…

…do you like a good surprise? A nicely wrapped up birthday present or your favourite dinner cooked for you when you didn’t expect it? Winning the lottery when you haven’t even played?

Seriously, a good surprise can be nice. In private. Not in business. I don’t like to be surprised in a business context. I like to be prepared and I like to allocate my time consciously.

Yet, there are quite some people around me who seem to think that a surprise is a good idea. They like to confront a group of people with a brand new concept. They turn around a personal 1:1 meeting to a completely different topic. They show PowerPoint presentations with animated items flying in at each push of a button. Handing over each bullet point one-by-one like a little gift.

I don’t really feel entertained by these kind of surprises. I think this is inappropriate in a business environment. The attention span of every person in business is diminishing. We need to concentrate and focus. And we need to prepare properly.

Why not sending the agenda in advance? Why not sharing the document well ahead of the meeting? Why not sending a welcome note 24 hours before the introductury meeting with a short bio and some questions to be answered during the meeting.

Not a big deal? I think so, too.

Malte