Category Archives: Thursday Night Flight

TNF #116: Leaving the comfort zone

Welcome Professionals…

…Top management consultants must explore new frontiers!

No matter how professional as an expert you are, you may want to continuously reach out to new areas, new projects, new clients that are out of your inner circle in order to extend your knowledge, expertise, and influence. This requires leaving the comfort zone and it is always hard to push oneself beyond these boundaries.

I encourage everyone to practice leaving the comfort zone in private and recreational setups. To try something new, learn a new skill or to embarrass yourself in front of friends and family is much more comfortable than doing it in a business environment. By regularly moving the private comfort zone it also becomes easier in extending frontiers in business life.

Therefore, I make it a habit to learn new skills in sports and music and to ridicule myself in front of others like for instance singing in public. The awkwardness of the moment is actually a good tell that I am leaving the comfort zone. Over time, this process builds up resilience to also take risks in a professional context.

Let’s cross the frontiers!

Malte

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TNF #115: Be generous

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Welcome Professionals…

…We want to add extraordinary value to our client organizations. That is what we all are striving for as top management consultants. Of course, a premium value has to come at a premium price point. As a matter of fact, the high price premium a client is willing to pay and the commitment that it shows will be one driving factor for a succcesful implementation.

So, we do not want to give away our service for free and yet there are situations when it pays off to be generous. If this act of generosity is well-placed it will have a major effect on building trust.

My most recent example occurred today. I was getting together with a CEO to kick off a new project. The contract had been negotiated with his staff and they had advised him to sign it. It was in front of him, he was already holding his pen in his hands.

“You know, the contract is agreed by the responsible department head and procurement. It is well written and also fine with me. There is just one thing I don’t quite understand.” He paused. Then he pointed to one paragraph. “Why is there an extra-charge for this specific service?” I explained it to him. He said: “Alright, I see your point, but some competitors of yours do that for free.”

He took his pen to sign the contract. “Wait”, I said, “let’s cross out this paragraph. Let’s get this out of the way.” He was really surprised by this generous act. He would have signed the contract anyway. So why give in?

What then followed was an intense briefing on the project in which the CEO communicated in a very open-hearted way. He commented on his personal values and even shared some of his own weaknesses. This is not possible without some fundamental trust. I am sure that the generous concession I made was a deposit on the trust account.

We cannot expect an immediate effect like this. True generosity means giving something without expecting anything in return. Only then, the generous act is eligible to build trustful, long-term relationships.

It’s Christmas time so let’s be generous,

Malte

TNF #114: Clutter on my mind

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Welcome Professionals…

…I had almost forgotten how good it feels. For months I had known that it is time for this. My wife does it regularly, but I tend to shy away from it.

I am talking about throwing stuff away. Getting rid of things that are not in use. Many of us – myself included – hold on to these things because they could be of use in a future situation.

What if I put on wheight? Then I might need the old pants which don’t fit me today. What if it is very bad weather day? Maybe then I want to wear the old shabby suit. What if we will all return to Blackberry technology one day…..- this is what is holding me back from removing clutter.

When I finally did remove non-used items in my home office and my wardrobe rigorously, it really made me happy. This is actually a finding that the famous author Gretchen Rubin talks a lot about in her bestseller “Happiness Project”.

Since the objective of this blog is to make top management consultants more successful and not just happier, let me point towards another overservation. What I also felt was more clarity of thought. It felt like removing some clutter in my environment also cleared up some structures in my head.

It is a no brainer that removing clutter helps to stay organized and by that means will enhance effectiveness. On top of that, there is a psychological effect. Letting go of physical clutter will enhance to let go of cluttered thoughts. Creating structure in our environment will enhance structured thinking.

Try it, next time you are stuck, clean up a cupboard or a drawer!

Malte

TNF #113: Don’t break the chain

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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

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

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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

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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

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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

TNF #108: New size = new product

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Welcome Professionals…

…I was writing an article for a newspaper recently. The editor advised me that the article had to have exactly the size of 3,500 characters (including spaces). I had a document that was about 13,000 characters and I thought I would just cross out some paragraphs, condense some lines and it would be finished. Wrong!

I ended up writing the whole text all over again. I was able to use the material I had as a collection of content and I was able to use the main conclusion. Everything else had to be redone for this new edition. I needed a new story line, some new examples and it turned out to be much quicker to rewrite the article than altering every single sentence. It seems so obvious when you think about it. If you take some paragraphs out of a text, the text will not make sense anymore.

The same applies to presentations. A convincing presentation is always geared towards objective, audience and timing. When we face significant changes in one or more of these three dimensions, we have to rewrite the whole thing! I have seen so many case teams shuffling old slides into new presentations. It usually does not work.

It gets especially frustrating when case teams start producing slides while the person who knows the audience and will have to hold the presentation is not even in the room, yet. This leads to rather unpopular night shifts.

Wise presenters plan upfront and have their material crafted on individual requirements!

Hope you can skip the night shift this time,

Malte

TNF #107: Respect the gatekeeper

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Welcome Professionals…

…Every VIP needs a gatekeeper. Everyone attracting a lot of attention and unsolicited business offers needs somebody filtering out the spam. They call them reception desk, personal assistant, or deputy, let’s call them gatekeeper for now.

Many people try to get access to VIPs directly. They ignore the gatekeeper and use tools and methods to bypass them. This is a mistake. For someone who installed a gatekeeper it can be very annoying to get unfiltered messages by email, text, whatsapp, social media and so on. For the gatekeeper it is annoying to be treated like an obstacle.

Gatekeepers are usually a person of trust for VIPs. They have a lot of power to decide who is allowed to reach them, who receives a time slot and when. It is much wiser to respect their powerful role and collaborate with them. I remember a salesman that I met 12 years ago. He was from Germany and made a business trip to the US every year for two weeks. He only had these two weeks to meet his most important clients. How did he manage to meet everyone of his VIPs in only two weeks? He revealed his method to me. He had special gifts for the gatekeepers. On every trip, he brought an article of virtu – I think it was a specially designed espresso cup. The personal assistants were keen to receive the next collector’s item. This was his secret trick, he explained to me.

Actually I think the real reason for his success was something else. I do not believe in the pursuasive power of espresso cups. As a matter of fact, I perceived the salesman as someone who treated every person with the same level of respect. He was not only charmign – which he certainly was – he wholeheartedly loved to talk to people and did this with a true interest. I can imagine that he took the same interest into the lifes of the gatekeepers when he handed over his espresso cups. Honest interest and attention cannot be denied by no-one.

Treating every person with respect should be a self-evident virtue. It especially works well with gatekeepers since they get to deal with rude requests quite often.

Try it in your next call,

Malte