Tag Archives: perfection

TNF #095: Challenge your work

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Welcome Professionals…

…I am currently doing some writing. Actually, I am not referring to this short TNF blog post, but a 3-page article that will be sent to CEOs as a marketing paper. It is a work that I could do all by myself. I could probably come up with a version that is pretty good. At least one that is good enough from my point of view to be distributed. But I know that my view is biased.

To create something that is of an effective quality, I need to challenge my work with some outside-in perspective. Right after I had the first draft – essentially the outline of the article – I brought in a newspaper journalist and a marketing professional who review each iteration. They relentlessly criticize every version of the draft and make me go through it again and again. They do this in a constructive way, they also make some suggestions on improvements.

When we have a final draft, I will show it to a representative of the target audience and also get his comments. I will most likely have to re-work the thing again.

The process hurts. It is a nuisnace to iterate the same text again and again. That is exactly the point. Without the challenge group, I would not do it. I would give in too early. To meet our highest quality targets, we must challenge our work from the outside. By experts who feel comfortable to speak up and call us out.

Not giving up,

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 #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.

perfect

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

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!