Category Archives: Thursday Night Flight

TNF #096: Listening is the new reading

Welcome Professionals…

… I have been a regular listener of podcasts during my daily commute for a couple of years now. This summer holiday season, I additionally discovered audio books. There is quite a large selection available these days and virtually every bestseller can also be found in an audio version.

With a range of available smartphone apps you do not need to worry about large boxes with 22 CDs anymore. All what is required is an app and a download of a few hundred megabytes.

What I discovered is not only the availabilty and ease of audio books, but their increased value to reading. Reading is an activity that I enjoy, but it also consumes a lot of attention. I have been listening recently to the bestseller of Daniel Kahneman “Thinking, fast and slow” and have identified the following advantages of listening versus reading.

I find it more enjoyable, because I can listen to the book and look at the beautiful landscape at the same time. I am able to read more during my vacation time because I can combine it with other activities, like watching the kids in the pool, exercising, driving, or doing the dishes. Most importantly, during concentrated listening, it seems to give me more capacity to consider the material and transfer it to my personal life.

Enjoy your summer vacations – hopefully with a good book!

Malte

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TNF #095: Charting your course

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Welcome Professionals…

… Today’s edition of TNF is inspired by the summer vacation period. Some of you may have read last year’s blogpost about “Surfing the client”, TNF #044. I went wind surfing on the Lake of Garda in Italy back then and wind surfing is exactly what I do this week.

Surfing and sailing provides us with a rich set of analogies for business life. During the year we are constantly out there on the open water, coping with different weather conditions, sometimes surfing new business opportunities and sometimes fighting the upcoming thunderstorm. We need to adapt to the terrain, the wind, the water. We have to pick the fitting gear every day and need to make sure that we make progress towards our goals and do not drift away.

Vacation time is a period where can step out of the water. We can sit on the shore and reflect the period behind us. We can make new plans for the time ahead and chart our course for the future. We can address some basic questions that need a regular review. From my point of view, twice a year is a good frequency for charting your course.

Charting your course: Where do I want to go? Do I clearly see the fixed star for my course
Progress assessment: Did I make progress into that direction? Where do I want to make improvements?
Equipment planning: Do I have all the resources, capabilities, tools and systems in place? What do I need to add or get rid of?
Milestone setting: What are my next milestones on the way to my goal?
Determination: How do I feel when I reach my next milestone? What will I do to celebrate this success?

I am writing this while sitting on the shore of Lake of Garda, watching my kids aquire some new wind surfing skills. Wishing you all a great summer vacation period!

Use the time for charting your course!

Malte

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

TNF #094: Break free

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Welcome Professionals…

…Last Friday I broke free. I was relieved of my cast on the right hand after 6 weeks. I already shared some learnings from this time when I could not use my right hand. Today, I want to draw some conclusions.

The handicap affected me most in: handwriting, typing, operating the mouse/trackpad, and – surprisingly – shaking hands.

I recognized how often we shake hands in Switzerland and how awkward it feels to grab someone’s right hand with my left hand. The people who were alert and spontaneous enough to put forth their own left hand earned my admiration.

My key learning experience evolved around writing. Here I have built some new habits that I will seek to maintain:

Taking less notes. I enjoy being able to make some handwritten notes in conversations, but I will be less exhaustive in the future. I will have more presence by taking wrapping up the essential minutes after the meeting.
Making use of Siri dictation. This is a great way of being more effective. Dictating a report or email on the go after a meeting can be quicker and more efficient. It can also be liberating to work outside of the office rather than sitting in front of the computer most of the time.
Using the phone more often vs. email. I recognized – once again – how much more powerful a direct conversation can be, instead of sending an email.

After all, I am very happy to be both-handed again. May the good things remain.

Hope you are all in the pink,

Malte

TNF #093: Keep focus

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Welcome Professionals…

…I know, many of us chose the profession of a top management consultant for the high variety of topics the job provides. There is hardly one project like the other. Many young graduates join consulting to see a variety of industries and like to work as a generalist in the beginning. I was the same when I started.

However, it is so hard getting started without any specialization. In fact, I think the only way to get a grip in business is through radical focus and specialization. Finding a topic, a niche industry, a special craft that is key to establish a standing as an expert. Then, when you have built the expertise and your personal brand, there will come opportunities to branch out and widen the focus bit by bit.

I was talking this week to a consultant who is trying to do business development across various industries. She was tackling IT, private banking, industrial goods, consumer goods and retail and medical technology – all at the same time! What’s more, she distributed her efforts across many geographies from Europe to Middle East. This is a very obvious example of wasted energy. And I am not blaming this person – she knew exactly what went wrong and decided to focus in the future.

It may be hard in the beginning to choose something and leave so many other interesting choices untapped. In a world of unlimited opportunities, we all suffer form FoMO – fear of missing out. The good thing is, it does not matter so much what we pick. Once we have mastered this area, we will get to diversify from there. To make a dent, we clearly must keep our focus.

Stay focused,

Malte

TNF #092: Persistence vs. patience

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Welcome Professionals…

…Building new client relationships requires a long-term effort. Trust will only grow over time. It may take years to establish a new client relationship. Many times, we will give up too early. For a winning strategy, we need to keep the right balance between persistence and patience.

Persistence is highly important. We must not loose grip if our emails or phone calls do not get answered. We continuously have to think of new ways to add value to the person that we want to build a connection with. We have to keep trying.

There is a tipping point, when persistence is turning into annoyance. When our activity reaches a certain level of intensity and frequency, the target person might feel pushed into something and this will usually put an end to the newly established connection. This is why persistence has to balanced with patience.

Hard to say which number of contact attempts is ideal. My business partner has empirically developed a rule of thumb over the last 30 years in business. According to his practical research, it takes 8 quality interactions per year to develop a new connection. This has proven to be working for hundreds of connections established. A quality interaction is defined as a two way communication that is personalized and linked to the target person’s targets and interests. Sending a simple newsletter does not count, but a personal invitation to an event with an answer received (confirmation of attendance or excuse due to other plans) will be eligible. Phone calls turn out to be the most efficient means for quality interactions.

I have tracked this rule myself and it works for me. Let me know how it works for you!

Malte

TNF #091: Do it now!

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Welcome Professionals…

…As my frequent readers already know, I am not able to use my right hand for writing at the moment and I use the dictation function of Siri instead. This led me to another discovery this week.

One of my least favorite work is transfering minutes into our CRM system and writing detailed reports on interviewed candidates. Whatever, it has to be done, despite all procrastination.

My usual procedure would be to take hand-written notes of interviews and collect them over time in my drawer. Then, when the delivery date of the reports comes close, I would set a time slot in my calendar for writing reports. I would pick a time early in the morning, when my personal reserve of will power is not yet fully depleted.

Now, that stacking hand-written notes is not an option, I have changed my routine to dictating notes of meetings and phone calls immediately, so that I do not forget the essential information. I have done this as well with interview reports. Transcribing the key findings of some 90 minutes of intense conversation to a summary of 2 pages by using the dictation function of Siri.

What can I say: The actual writing (dictating in that case) is done in up to 50% less time. It is done right away without any procrastination. It feels better, because my files are up to date and I do not have to look at the daunting stack of paper all the time.

My learning is: Do the nagging tasks as soon as possible to get them out of my head and out of the way.

Feeling free,

Malte

TNF #090: Tailor the message

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Welcome Professionals…

…Here comes a reminder on an old principle that probably every consultant already knows: The message of a presentation must be tailored to the receiving audience!

Sure, you might say. This is so simple and obvious, yet it gets forgotten so many times. All too often we tend to use the material that we already have and skip the extra tailoring effort. We like the messages that sound convincing to ourselves, not necessarily pursusasive for the individuals we address. We think within the frameworks that work for us, but may be too complicated for the attention span of our listeners.

For every presentation that we prepare, we must answer the most basic questions first:

Who is our target audience of the message/presentation?
What is their status (knowledge, opinion, goals, capacities, restrictions, etc.)
Where do we want to move the audience?

Once the key message is tailored, we should review the following three questions to make our message pursuasive:

How can we create a supportive atmosphere in the beginning (a compliment, a joke, an appreciation of the audience, a consensus, etc.)
How can we address stakeholders during our presentation and show them that we understand them and that we care?
How can we finalize with a positive call for action?

Everything else is just PowerPoint,

Malte

TNF #088: Handicap

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Welcome Professionals…

…Today I’m writing with handicap. Last Sunday, I broke the ring finger of my right-hand in a stupid accident. Of course, this brings some challenges to my work.

I’m a right-handed person. And now I’m not able to use my right hand at all. This is a real bummer to my productivity. When I was 16, I took a machine writing class. I’m actually very quick in blindly using 10 fingers for typing. During interviews on the phone I used to take notes simultaneously within our CRM system. All of this doesn’t work anymore.

I am now looking for better ways instead of doing everything left-handed. I am actively experimenting with various new tools and adjusted processes to overcome my handicap.

I am really curious to know: What are your experiences with this? Have you ever been in a situation where you couldn’t use one of your hands? What did you do to stay productive?

BTW: This text is written by using the dictating function on my MacBook. I will let you know about my improvements over the course of the next weeks.

Waving with my left hand,

Malte

TNF #087: I love complicated clients

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Welcome Professionals…

…Without complexity, there would be no need for top management consultants. This is why I stated “Complexity is your friend, my friend” in TNF #003. Sometimes, when it feels like we are drowning in complexity, it is helpful to relate back to that statement.

I would like to even go one step further. “I love complicated clients!” From an outside-in perspective, some clients seem to be complicated. They have lots of politics going on in their organizations, project tasks and timeline are issue to a lot of changes, they have side-problems that need to be resolved, they have a peculiar way of communication and so on. I think we all had clients like this.

Of course, I prefer when things are running smoothly, just as planned. When everything is just easy-going. But this might be a short-sighted view. If everything is easy, my service is at risk of being replaced by a competitor that is offering a lower price. Without complexity and challenge my added value is at risk of being commoditized.

All these clients out there who move time lines, change assignments on the go, complain a lot, are lost in details, have to succeed in political fights, or are just having a bad day – they need our help. This is where we can make a difference through our professional service and our positive mindset. Those who an deal with complicated clients have a USP.

At least thinking this way helps when someone complicated comes up….

Malte