Category Archives: Thursday Night Flight

TNF #026: Saturday is the new Thursday

Welcome Professionals…

…I have made a mistake and I beg your pardon. For the first time after 25 publications of Thursday Night Flight, I have broken the chain. I missed out on Thursday, 24th of March 2016. I am truly sorry for all irritation and disappointment this might have caused on your side, my dear readers.

I am feeling bad for disappointing my readers and I did also disappoint myself. I have broken my resolution of publishing something useful for top management consutants every Thursday and I will do my best to return to the steady schedule immediately again.

This statement goes in line with my new resolution to admit mistakes quickly and emphatically. This principle is taken from a very famous book of Dale Carnegie: “If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.” It makes great sense to me, both for private and business relationships.

In the past, I have had a different view. I would try to avoid mistakes by all means and would be very reluctant to admit any mistake. This is quite common for the perfectionist point of view, but it is foolish to believe one could get away without any mistakes being noticed. In fact, I know that I do make mistakes from time to time and that it is best to admit them to the client as quickly and emphatically as I can.

For the stated example of slipping the publication date for Thursday Night Flight, I could have remained silent. Hoping to get away with it without further notice. I could have found lots of excuses, some of them quite valid from my point of view. But I decided to openly admit and beg for your pardon.

Please accept my sincere applogies!

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 #025: Parkinson’s law

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Welcome Professionals…

…did you ever hear of Parkinson’s law? It states that:

“work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”

Although it was meant in a humorous way when first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in an essay published in The Economist in 1955, it is widely believed to be true. We all can think of examples proving the truth of this statement.

It also applies to consulting work. It is one of the reasons why we operate under last minute pressure. It is also one important driver – though certainly not the only reason – why case teams work all night until complete exhaustion.

The only way that I found to work around Parkinson’s law is to set a thoughtful deadline and an allocated timeframe for each and every activity. I book working blocks for each task into my calendar and try to stick to it. I even reserve blocks for meals and free time. It works for me.

Have you found other ways? Let me know!

Malte

TNF #024: How to work-life balance?

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Welcome Professionals…

…in episode #024 of Thursday Night Flight we discussed the definition of work-life balance. To feel in balance, it is important to consciously devote time to the following elements:

sleep
physical activity
reflection
relaxation
connection
play

The key of work-life balance lies in the consciousness of allocation. It is essential to realize our needs and built them into our daily routines before they are unconsciously neglected. It may require some thinking to figure out what gives you the most relaxation or the most joy in play time.

But how fitting these activities into a busy consultant life? In the Thursday Night Flight series, we already described how to get the most out of your sleep and which physical activity fits best for a consultant.

In order to get the most out of you time, you can choose activities that combine many of the above elements. Let me share an example. A few years ago, I would play Badminton every Sunday morning. The reason for choosing Badminton was actually the idea of my wife. She enjoyed playing it and got me engaged in that activity, too. It is one of the few sports where men and women seem to have equal chances to win. We took that to the next level when we played mixed doubles with a good friend of mine and his wife. What we had created was a regular activity that combined many benefits. In only two hours we combined physical activity, play time, connection with my wife and connection with friends and finally relaxation when the four of us went to the sauna after each game.

From my point of view, this is a high-density work-life balance activity. With some creativity and consciousness, we can make more out of or free time and enjoy more balance.

Happy balancing!

Malte

PS: Read more on how to balance your life in my next post

TNF #023: What is work-life balance?

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Welcome Professionals…

…a perceived lack of work-life balance is the number one reason for top management consultants to choose another job. Does that always solve the problem? I doubt it.

You will want to achieve a balance of your working life and your other life while you are working as a consultant. This is a stretch and we all know it. The consulting life style is so much time consuming that it sometimes leaves hardly enough time to cater for the most existential needs like food and sleep.

To have a feeling of work-life balance, it is absolutely not necessary to spend the same amount of time on some “life activities” as you spend on your work. Your job is part of your life. What you do need to have a fulfilled life and a sustainable operating model is a feeling of perceived balance of your various priority items in life.

In any case, you want to make sure that you attribute some time besides the job for the following categories:

sleep
physical activity
reflection
relaxation
connection
play

Make sure that you consciously allocate time to each of the above categories. When you spend time on them, try to focus your attention on the actual activity that is on your agenda. As soon as you unconsciously skip any of these items for a longer time frame or sacrifice them completely in favour of work, you will feel unbalanced.

It is really hard to make these areas part of your regular habits. We will talk about this in upcoming episodes of Thursday Night Flight.

See you next time!

Malte

TNF #022: Still checking your emails or already smoking pot?

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Welcome Professionals…

…This week, a colleague of mine complained about the newest version of Microsoft Outlook. It seems that the mail notification feature disappeared. She was referring to the preview window that opened in the bottom right corner with every new mail coming in and then faded after a few seconds. If this is true, then Microsoft has rendered an invaluable service to the business world just by removing this standard feature!

This reminded me of a scientific study of King’s College in 2005. They observed three groups performing an IQ test. The first one as a neutral reference group, one group smoking marijuana while doing the test, and another one distracted by email. The group with distractions suffered a loss in IQ more than twice that found in the pot smoking group! I think this was a funny setup, that is probably the reason why I can still recall it.

So, how do you shut down distractions? What is your best recipe for staying concentrated?

Looking forward to receiving your comments!

Malte

TNF #021: You are what you eat

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Welcome Professionals…

…we want to be the best we can be and we want to bring the best to our clients. To achieve this, it is essential on which fuel we are running. Our food determines our performance. This is why we need to pay attention to healthy, good quality, and regular meals.

Of course, there are many special diets to choose from. I find them confusing and most of the time much too complicated to fit them into my busy schedule. What is more, there seem to be fashionable diets that appear and are being hyped until they are disproved by scientists and the next hype begins.

Instead, I have a single principle that helps me making the right choices for me. You are what you eat! I have a clear picture of who I am and who I want to be. Applying the statement: you are what you eat, leads to further derivatives for me:

Healthy
Natural
High quality
No ideology
Diversity

It is such a simple statement, but it works really well for me to make the day to day choices. Am I the apple or am I the chocolate bar? Do I want to be the steak or the pizza? You are what you eat! There is nothing wrong with any of these foods. I personally like all of them from time to time. You are what you eat just helps me to choose the right option in each situation.

What are your diet principles? Let me know,

Malte

TNF #020: The beauty of progress reports

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Welcome Professionals…

…Do your clients know what you are working on?

Of course, they will know what you are supposed to do. But do your clients know what you are actually doing until date of delivery? When did you send your last progress report?

I don’t know any consultant who likes to write progress reports. Yet this is such a powerful tool to generate trust.

For most consulting work, the end product is hard to judge. The final presentation of results may meet the expectations or it may bring a surprise. One good indicator for high quality results is the effort that was put into them.

On day of delivery though, your client will most likely not have the patience to listen to stories about all the effort you undertook. On the other hand, explaining the effort after the executive summary will rather sound defensive.

Regular progress reports do the trick. They deliver the right messages to your client:

“I am thinking of you”
“I am doing what you expect me to do”
“I am going through ups and downs to achieve results for you”

Such a report does not need to require much work in itself. It can be just a few lines in an email or a two minute phone call. Take your clients through the process and they will value the work even more!

Try to share some progress just now, I’d love to hear from you!

Malte

TNF #019: Mindset of the athlete

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Welcome Professionals…

…how do you think of yourself?

In my first year of consulting, a colleague who was just 3 months longer in the business than I made the following metaphoric expression. “We consultants are just like prostitutes. We are selling our brains to our clients.” I thought that was disgusting.

I rather like to think of consultants as athletes. Everyday prepared and dedicated to highest performance, creating the highest value for our clients. The mindset of the athlete also embraces the need for continuous training, good nutrition, fair amount of sleep and mental preparation for the big competition. This picture serves best from my point of view. It combines a high performing craft with caring for physical and psychological health and fitness.

What do you think? Any other ideas?

Malte

TNF #018: The myth of farming vs. hunting

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Welcome Professionals…

…are you a farmer or a hunter? This distinction is a common terminology in sales and business development. While the farmer nurtures and cultivates existing clients, the hunter finds new opportunities and turns them into sales. It is a common belief that these are two different profiles which require a different set of skills and different personalities. I think this is a myth! It is not true for top management consultants!

At least when we talk about our business, which is top management consulting – this distinction into farmers and hunters is certainly misleading. The key for successful business development in consulting services are trustful relationships. While the service is generally hard to compare in objective terms, it all comes down to the subjective perception of trust.

Here is a definition stated on Wikipedia: “A hunter is often associated with aggressive personalities who use aggressive sales technique”. This is exactly the problem. Many people have this association when thinking about a hunter. But the imagination of a consultant cold-calling a client, identifying the opportunity, aggressively pushing the unique selling point and finally signing the contract is a myth. It does not work this way.

Instead, both farmers and hunters need a trustful relationship to their client in order to win. The main difference is that the farmer usually already has a relationship – at least to some persons within the client organization. It is easier for the farmer to spot opportunities when already working for the client. Ongoing project work is a good means to provide knowledge and offer emotional support which is the main driver for trust in relationships.

What is different in hunting? The hunter as well has to rely on trustful relationships. The hunter just starts at a different level. Instead of using internal references, the hunter needs to establish a first contact by using external references, e.g., projects at clients from the same industry. Instead of taking advantage of existing relationships, the hunter builds new ones, which will usually take a certain amount of time before the first sale can be made. Instead of using paid work to generate trust of decision makers, the hunter needs to find other ways to do favours and offer support. These are usually unpaid.

So yes, hunting may need more stamina in building opportunities. But is has nothing to do with aggressiveness. Being aggressive is hurting any trust in relationships. The skillset and process applied are very similar.

In summary, hunting is just like farming, with the addition of:

using external reference
forming new relationships
providing (mostly) non-paid upfront favours

Looking forward to hearing from you about this debunked myth!

Malte

TNF #017: Keep it professional

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Welcome Professionals…

…I recently sent a text message to my boss: “kids are asleep now, how about you?”. This was a misled communication. The message was meant for my wife, but I sent it to my boss instead.

We all know these cases of misrouted communication. Wrong recipient, accidently hit the “reply-to-all” button or printing on the wrong device, respectively not picking up the printout. Sooner or later it happens when operating under time pressure.

I have a clear principle. I write every message in a way that will not embarrass me when misrouted.

No silly nicknames for clients, no swearing, no offensive jokes, no nonsense.

Simply keep it professional!

Malte