Category Archives: Thursday Night Flight

TNF #106: Buffet of opportunities

Welcome Professionals…

…I am currently spending a week of vacation in a hotel with an all-inclusive offer on food and drinks. The supercharged buffets inspired me to write this week’s blog post. In this hotel you can eat and drink all around the clock. Since everything is paid for already, you just have to reach out for something and have it right away. Besides the three main meals in the restaurants, you get access to a host of snack bars which are spread across the hotel and pools. Before I even realized it, I found myself overeating on fastfood, softdrinks and ice cream.

I discovered that it takes quite a lot of will-power to go to the lunch buffet and just have a salad and some grilled fish despite of all the fragrant temptations. It takes a long term target (health), some core principles (skip sugar and fast carbs) and a mid-term plan (eat light to be mobile enough for the tennis match in the afternoon) to make wise food choices. This has quite some parallels to our business life it occurred to me.

In business we have a host of opportunities to fill our day. Before we know it, our day will be spent with checking emails and sitting in ineffective meetings. Emails and meetings are the sugar and fast carbs of business. For the short term, they make us feel busy, but there is a great risk of missing our long-term target if we indulge in them. Our days will be crammed with ballast and we will feel reactive and unflexible.

Only a clear long-term target, some derived key principles and a mid-term plan will enable us to withstand the distracting temptations and focus on deep work. I personally have made good experience with re-visiting my long-term targets once a month in a planning session and putting the mid-term plan into my calendar. My key principles are always with me in on a notes page in my briefcase. I shared them with my assistant so that she can operate in line with them when booking my time.

What is your sugar in your business day? How do you stay focused on your business targets and away from the temptations? Let me know.

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 #105: The art of rehearsal

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Welcome Professionals…

…Winston Churchill did it, professional musicians and actors do it, TED talkers do it – so why don’t we do it? In TNF #104 we discussed the power of rehearsal. A good rehearsal – when done professionally – will boost the effectiveness of your presentation by magnitudes!

So what is key for a professional rehearsal? Here is a checklist:

Plan a decent amount of time for a rehearsal. You may need some extra time for modifications to your presentation after the first dry-run and then do it again!
Get the team together when more than one presenter is running the show. Band members may practice their part alone, but every band has to practice together before entering the stage!
Rehearse with a proper audience. Get some critical minds who will give you constructive feedback. Don’t just do it in front of the mirror, this is not the same!
Remember your words. You must always know the first and last sentence of your presentation by heart! The intro and outro have be fluent and to the point. You can improvise with words inbetween, but never allow yourself a weak start or ending.
Keep your technological support idot-proof. At least plan a backup procedure in case something goes wrong.
Practice eye-contact on your most important lines, also practice accentuation!
Practice how to work the room. When moving during the presentation, set your steps deliberately. Who will you turn to, who will you engage with?
Don’t be too hard to yourself. Every dry-run will feel a bit awkward and never close to perfect. You will rock the show when lights go on and adrenalin kicks in!

Taking the rehearsal seriously will get you to a completely different level.

Knock on wood!

Malte

TNF #104: The power of rehearsal

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Welcome Professionals…

…As top management consultants, we deliver most of our work in presentations. From the proposal pitch throughout sharing first hypotheses and intermediate results, convincing stakeholders up to giving a presentation on final conclusions and recommendations to a steering committee. All of these are presentations whether we use a formal slide presentation or free speech, whether we talk to a group or one-on-one.

A good preparation of these presentations is key and everybody knows that. Yet, I see a lot of effort put into the content while the power of a rehearsal is untapped. Only few teams and individuals acutally take the time for a proper rehearsal.

Of course, good content is the foundation of every presentation. Deep analytics, rigorous problem solving, creative thinking, and logical conclusions are crucial to every presentation. This work has to be done professionally without any doubt.

Once the content is clear, I see presenters spending a lot of time and effort in structuring the presentation, choosing the right words and graphs, adding pictures, polishing colors and so on. This is also quite important. While the polishing often goes on to the last minute before the presentation, a proper rehearsal is skipped in most cases.

This is a great mistake. While content, structure, and appearance are certainly tablestakes to every presentation, there are some additional elements of equal importance. These include

good connection between presenter and audience
projection of self-confidency
fluency and flawless execution (esp. when more than one presenter is involved
projection of a positive attitude

The above are most important elements for building a trustful atmosphere to move and convince the audience. This is why we do a presentation in the first place, otherwise we could just pass on a written document. Achieving these features takes a lot of general training and experience. It does also require specific training for the individual presentation. This is done by a proper rehearsal.

I will cover the key features of an effective rehearsal in next week’s TNF.

Stay tuned,

Malte

TNF #103: Deadline

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Welcome Professionals…

…Recently I overheard somebody saying: “I must meet this deadline or my boss will kill me!” I was cringing when I heard so much negativity condensed in one single sentence. From a motivational standpoint this is the worst formulation of thought. Think about the elements of this sentence.

“I must”: Nobody must do anything in our rich part of the world. We all must die some day. Thats all. The rest we can choose.

“…meet this deadline…”: I actually looked up the word deadline, because I wondered where it comes from. Here’s what I found on Wiktionary: “According to the Oxford English Dictionary, early usage refers simply to lines that do not move, such as one used in angling. Slightly later American usage refers to a boundary in a prison […] beyond which prisoners were shot.” I never really liked the word deadline, but now I think it is disgusting.

“…or my boss…”: This is an externalized motivation. Our protagonist is doing it for somebody else, someone of higher authority. This induces a feeling of low self-worth.

“…will kill me!”: Clearly an exaggeration from my point of view. Other than prisoners in the original meaning of the term deadline, employees will barely get shot by their boss for crossing the deadline. Thinking about the act of killing will certainly be a severe threat that is completely inappropriate for this kind of problem.

You may call my analysis of this one sentence hairsplitting. And you may be right. My point is: Words matter! Let’s think twice before we use such a desperate sentence again. First of all for the sake of our own souls. Second for the people around us – our team mates, clients, and bosses, too.

Wishing you freedom of thought,

Malte

TNF #102: Take a stand

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Welcome Professionals…

…Our business world is complex. A proper judgment calls for a broad overview, joined-up thinking, and analytical rigor. Good solutions require experience as well as creativity. This is why our clients draw on the expertise of top management consultants in finding satisfying answers to their questions.

What the client will expect is a clear guidance. What will strain the clients patience are ambiguous statements like “on the one hand…, but on the other hand..”.

I went to a conference recently where two approaches to one problem were presented. After the presentation, one of the listeners went to see several consultants who had been in the audience, all of which called themselves an expert on the topic. The listener asked a precise question: “Which of the two approaches would you advise me to use?”

What he received time and time again was a fuzzy “Well, it depends. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages…”

I certainly do understand the dilemma of the consultant here. There is usually not just one way, there is no golden rule, there are always disadvantages and advantages to a specific approach. But this is no excuse to sneak out.

When the question is put as clearly as in the case above, the client is looking for a reference point from a trusted advisor. The client wants to hear an informed opinion. This is the time when the top management consultant has to take a firm stand.

These are some examples of taking a stand:

Approach B is the best-practice standard and used by most of my clients!
I would choose approach A because it safes precious time!
If you look for speed take approach A, if you look for comprehensiveness take B!

We must all strive to develop the experience and skill level to make a judgment call in our area of expertise. Of course, we will never take a naïve guess. When we enter new terrain, it is much better saying: “To answer this question, I have to study your specific situation in detail”. That buys some time.

Encouraging you to take a stand,

Malte

TNF #101: Humor epiphany

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Welcome Professionals…

…I had an epiphany a while ago. I re-discovered the importance of humor in my life, especially in my business life.

Humor has always played a major role in my life. Fortunately, I had a happy childhood in my family with 3 younger brothers where we always had some funny banter going on. As a school kid I used to tell lots of jokes and later at university, I participated in a student comedy contest. With a friend I founded a satire magazine, one of the first published in the internet back in 1996.

When I entered my job as a top management consultant something changed. I remember my first project where we celebrated the final milestone of the project with in a dinner meeting with our client. Soon enough I found myself joking around with the client, in part recycling some bits of my comedy repertoire. I think we had a fun time and I thought the client as well. Except for my project leader.

As I found out during the final feedback round, my project leader rated my behaviour at the dinner table as completely inappropriate. He evaluated my client handling skills as unsatisfactory as a result.

My epiphany occurred when I realized that my long forgotten experience with my first project leader still influences me in client contacts. At least in high-rank client contacts, it makes me act more serious than necessary. Seriousness is an extremely important trait in top management consulting, but overdone it can show as rigidity. So I am acknowledging the situation in my early career that made me suppress the humorous part of my personality. With new confidence I am deliberately adding more fun, banter, and humor to my client interactions. It leads me to come across as a more rounded personality and is relieving tension in various situation. After all, it is more fun to work this way!

Have fun,

Malte

TNF #100: Second chance

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Welcome Professionals…

… Sometimes we get a second chance to please a client. Of course, we do everything we can to get to the perfect result in the first run. I am not talking about the usual iteration a concept needs to get finalized. I am talking about the situations when the project result is presented and declined completely so that you have to start all over again. These situations can really bring you down.

I had a situation like this recently. In my recruiting business, the success of a project is defined as a distinctive event: the conclusion of an employment contract. Ideally, it is a research and selection process that runs through a funnel until one top candidate is selected and employed. Ideally, we hit the success result after one run. But as the human factor kicks in, it is not completely unusual to go through this twice.

In my case, I had been through the whole process twice. Two times yielding a top candidate that the client hestitated to hire, but also hesitated to reject. We ended up with two candidates and no decision. Something about the candidates personality was feeling not quite right for the client.

To be honest, I was a bit frustrated, a bit angry and a bit clueless. What could I do? What should I do?

I finally made up my mind and figured that I was generally satisfied with the overall process. We had done the right things the right way, we just had not found the ideal candidate, yet. I changed my view and defined this as the perfect situation to demonstrate real commitment and client dedication.

We organized another project kick-off, with a briefing of objectives that were based on the learnings of the first two runs. We started all over again with a clean sheet. Now we have a second chance to please a client – for as many runs as it takes!

Keep trying,

Malte

TNF #099: Bicycle race

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Welcome Professionals…

… I made my first client visit by bicycle today. It felt just great.

The weather was nice and sunny and the client location was actually only 3 km away from my office. Google maps suggested the most time efficient way to get there was by bicycle. So I did.

The city of Zurich has recently been flooded by rental bikes of an Asian company. But there are plenty of other suppliers. Just across the street of my office, there is a municipal workshop, renting bicycles for free, you just need to fund a deposit.

The company I visited was a startup, where I came completely overdressed wearing suit and tie. Parking my bike in front of the door got me about break even. It felt wonderful cruising through the city, like a little refreshment during the workday. A breakout from the usual schedule.

Thank you for the suggestion Google. And thank you for renting bicycles for free, Zurich.

Keep moving,

Malte

TNF #098: Not making excuses

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Welcome Professionals…

… I just had a little car accident an hour ago. I was driving home from a client. When I was standing at a traffic light, wondering which topic I could use for my next TNF post, someone bumped into my car. Not a severe crash, it just made a few scratches. No big deal, it was more the surprise that hit me.

Let me just say so much: Don’t text and drive!

Once we had exchanged contact information and I was on the road again, I had the immediate thought: “Tonight I am going to skip the TNF post!” My mind was automatically making excuses: “I had an accident, I should now take a rest, maybe sit in the garden, enjoying the fine weather. Perhaps I suffer from a whiplash injury…”

What a nonsense! One of the typical attempts of my brain to save power and get some idle time. If your brain is somehow like mine, it will easily find the most creative excuses for skipping or postponing a chore. We must be aware of this fact and be alert that most of these immediate thoughts that keep us from pursuing a plan are just flimsy excuses trying to talk us out of something that takes attention and energy. It is the powersave mode that comes up.

With this awareness, we can push the nasty excuses aside and do what we intend to do. Like writing this post. Here it is.

Drive safely,

Malte

TNF #097: Make a list

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Welcome Professionals…

… When is the last time that you have made a list of your achievements?

It is a useful exercise that can significantly increase our energy levels. Psychologists have scientifically proven that we feel happier when we write down three items that we are grateful for each night. The increased happiness is recognizeable already after a few iterations, usually after 10 – 20 days.

I got reminded of this fact when I was talking to a CEO recently. He told me how tough the market was and that he was trying hard with his team to acquire clients. He told me about the expectations of his shareholders and his day-to-day struggles when things were not developing as planned. He said something like “I wonder why I am still in this position”.

Later in the talk, when he took a list out of his drawer, he immediately lighted up. He had made a list of all the clients the company had won since he entered the company. I could see how this list changed his mood completely from sarcasm to confidence. He took pride in explaining the list and the stories behind the wins. He closed with the words “actually we have already achieved a lot”.

It is a common theme. We focus day in, day out on the gap between our status quo and our target. For each problem solved, the second biggest problem will take the spot of the first one. This can get quite exhausting. It is good to look back from time to time and take stock of our achievements.

I have this feeling everytime I prepare a list of reference projects for a proposal. It gives me a boost in my energy, confidence, and motivation. Recently, I met a consultant who took stock of all her client contacts over the last 5 years. She filled 18 pages with clients sorted into companies which were then categorized by industries. She had two findings: She wanted to build more focus and she won more confidence that she will succeed in this.

Try it, make a list!

Malte