Fascinating Article On The Evolution of Parental Workload

Excellent NY Times article which sheds light on how families and single parents are continuing to spend time with kids in spite of women working more and individual parental workload increasing (see chart along the left side). Although not all families have two parents, it would have been interesting to see total parental workload depicted. By adding the breakdowns for mother and father together, it appears as if (from 1965 to 2000) total parental workload has increased, total housekeeping has gone down, and total time spent with kids has gone up. It is interesting to note that average father’s housework time has increased. It also interesting to note that average paid work time for fathers has gone down (Note: this latter item is not one that I would have suspected).

It’s Not Easy Being Green

"It’s Not Easy Being Green" are famous words often attributed to Kermit the Frog. I think these words apply to not only famous frog puppets but also "green" management consultants (i.e., those fresh to the field).

Consulting can be a high pressure profession, and clients (as well as senior colleagues) often closely scrutinize new consultants, especially newly-minted MBAs during the first period when they land on a project. For what it’s worth here are some of the things that helped me get through my first few months when I entered the profession:

  • Check out the dress code for the first client you hit – Consultants need to dress well (perhaps well enough) so that they don’t inadvertently give the impression that their skills are average or mediocre. While seemingly shallow advice, underwhelming clients is not something that is easy to overcome. All said about dress, it may not be desirable to overdress for the client either. Unless you carry your wardrobe like a model, overdressing can make you stick out like a sore thumb.
  • Don’t immediately tell clients that you just started with the firm and just got your MBA – It can be tempting to say this because you think people will be easier on you if they know you are new. Not the case in consulting. It is much better to say something to the effect of "I am in my first year with the Firm". If you tip that you literally just started in the profession (too early before developing a relationship), you may be working yourself out of a hole with the client before you even get a chance to prove yourself. By all means, do not lie about who you are, but engage people the way they need to be engaged.
  • Get your first win in the eyes of the client early on – I’ll be honest. I don’t think I did this the first time I hit the client site. I was more concerned with following my perception of firm procedure & methodology to the letter. I focused on activities to the exclusion of results and what was actually going to help the client in a tangible way. Fortunately, one of the engagement managers on the project was able to steer me in the right direction. He told me something the effect of "Forget about XYZ methodology. The essence of what we need to do is meet goal ABC." Compare my shortfall compared to an analyst on the project that on day 2 of the project, without any fancy "MBA-based" methodology, found uncollected revenue by the client of X hundred thousand dollars (I’m just pulling out some numbers here) by reviewing some customer contracts. The results exceeded the professional fees of the analyst by many, many times compared to the two days of work.
  • Watch, learn, and work on developing "presence" – One of the unspoken areas about interviewing prospective consultants for employment is that consultants need to project and communicate with a strong level of confidence that carries right on to the client site. Being able to get through case interviews, being smart, being personable, and being a logical thinker is not enough when interviewing for a consulting firm. Consultants need to be able to facilitate situations, re-frame things, test hypotheses, and communicate in such a way as to drive things to closure. Projecting presence doesn’t stop after the interview process for employment.

For My Google YouTube Diary

My short roundup of articles and posts covering the Google acquisition of YouTube:

  • CNN reports Google buying YouTube for $1.65 billion. YouTube founded in February 2005. Steve’s note to self on another billion(s) dollar acquisition with a short total life as an independent company: Skype acquired for $2.6 billion. Some of my older notes here. I am neither following Skype nor YouTube that closely, but I expect that Skype had both more revenue and more of its revenue model "proven out" relative to YouTube.
  • Why Mark Cuban thinks Google is crazy (and here). Too much hidden liability. Steve’s note to self: The $1.65 billion "in theory" has liability priced into the deal. Additional note to self: the Kazaa damages were on the order of $100 million (? – here). Could potentially calibrate size of liability from this and other data.
  • Excellent post by Susan Mernit which outlines what Google didn’t buy in such a way that provides much deeper insight on Google’s strategy and the leverage of the web.
  • Fred Wilson’s great summary of what YouTube did right – really right. Provide some micro-level insight about what can be tapped into using the web, viral mechanics, and great user interfaces (while keeping it simple).

Update (10/18/06): Also make sure to check out David Dalka’s post here. Thanks, David!