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New Resolutions and Fresh Starts

As we approach the year-end, I wanted to share some thoughts from my book, The Consulting Apprenticeship: 40 Jump-Ideas for You and Your Business. It is a technique that I’ve seen a number of operating companies and management consulting firms use effectively. I’ve usually called it the Spring Cleaning technique, to connote a sense of renewal that often comes with the pastime of cleaning and refreshing a home early- to mid-year. That said, the technique can really be applied at any time of year.

The Spring Cleaning technique consists of an executive- or management-level meeting to talk about the business in breadth, capture issues (no-holds barred), rank issues, strategize, and divide and conquer. The basic value of a Spring Cleaning management team meeting is as follows:

  • The meeting forces people to think proactively. While management may have regular weekly management meetings, it becomes easy to become caught up in the day-to-day grind and push off things that people don’t have time for but know are important.
  • The manager that oversees the functional line roles has an opportunity to reset expectations and goals. The psychology of starting fresh can re-energize the organization.
  • Involvement of a consultant can provide a third-party perspective, and in some cases, extra project bandwidth to overcome organizational inertia. The consultant may be expected to work with all of the parties above to prepare information in advance, facilitate meeting discussions, organize issues and action items, and develop a project structure for making and tracking progress. The consultant can essentially act as right-hand person to the sponsoring manager.

In the Spring Cleaning meetings that I have worked on, typical meetings may last a couple of days. The first day of meetings may involve level-setting and brainstorming on strategies. Between these days, the consultant may work to organize the notes, data, or perform analyses. The next day of meetings may be spent working through the high points, prioritizing, and identifying more detailed next steps.

While situations vary, the consultant may be retained as a both a project manager for the larger effort and as specialist to work with a specific functional group to implement change. In these change management situations, the organization may be trying to get over humps or change course while running the business. The value of the project management aspect should not be underestimated.

Two other options that I’ve seen are to include specialized workshops that can either:

  • precede the Spring Cleaning meeting (as a standalone workshop)
  • be more tightly integrated into the Spring Cleaning meeting.

As an example of the first option, I am co-hosting Behavioral Economics Workshops in conjunction with one of my colleagues and partners, Namika Sagara at Sagara Consulting. For those unfamiliar with the term behavioral economics, it is a field that has really grown and examines the psychology of how people form judgments and make decisions. Companies may apply behavioral economics to solve problems in innovative ways. More information on Behavioral Economics Workshops can be found at www.BehavioralEconomics.Info.

It’s rarely a good idea to treat business as usual. Stay on your toes, and take a moment to brainstorm and think about the possibilities of a workshop, renewal session, or Spring Cleaning meeting. Please feel free to reach out to either Namika or me if you want to set up a short call to brainstorm.

Namika Sagara, namika at sagaraconsulting.com

Steve Shu, steve at steveshuconsulting.com

 

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Update on Inside Nudging and Other Behavioral Science Efforts


I’ve published an update to Inside Nudging: The Excerpts (in paperback form for talks, workshops, and academic inquiries). The update includes:

  • Chapter 2: Organizations Can Package Behavioral Science for Good – This chapter describes a case of using behavioral finance in the retirement plan design space. I use this case to demonstrate one example of what a successful innovation center might look like. I also provide a summary using the Behavioral GRIT™ framework, where GRIT stands for the business functions related Goals, Research, Innovation, and Testing.
  • Chapter 8: Nudges Refined, Ethics Examined, Acceptability Explored – This chapter introduces Nudge Psyche, a checklist of things to think about so that you can be deliberate about how you approach nudge design and ethics. It attempts to help design by thinking about things from two broad perspectives: nudge design and nudgee attitudes. This chapter has been one of the most difficult ones for me to write as it draws from  a diverse set of research and literature areas including decision science, medical ethics, government, organizational behavior, behavioral science, and moral psychology. I have found the Nudge Psyche checklist to be very helpful though as implementation in the real world can get grey at times. The Nudge Psyche checklist can help one to tease apart the underlying issues.

The chapter excerpts are also complemented by Appendix A: Ideas to Introduce Behavioral Science Initiatives, which I quietly published earlier based on increasing interest by companies in learning about how to get started with behavioral science. I argue that first a company needs to identify its goals and identify what type of predominant organization model it wants to pursue. This may be an innovation center like I describe in Chapter 2. I also define four other predominant organizational models I’ve seen. I also offer that a company should consider a number of implementation elements that may play a role during execution. Example elements include an advisory board and a behavioral science officer.

As a final update, I plan to give a limited number of talks on Inside Nudging and co-host Behavioral Economics Workshops in conjunction with one of my colleagues and partners, Namika Sagara at Sagara Consulting. More information on the workshops can be found here.

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Behavioral Economics and Innovation Workshops


I am co-hosting Behavioral Economics and Innovation Workshops in conjunction with one of my colleagues and partners, Namika Sagara at Sagara Consulting. The goals of these workshops are twofold. First, the workshops teach and demonstrate key behavioral economics (BE) concepts to participants. Second, the workshops provide an introduction to how companies can implement BE initiatives. In-class exercises and a mock innovation setting provide an experiential learning process for internalizing BE knowledge and skills. More information on the workshops can be found here.

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A Perspective on How Behavioral Economists Think We Should Deal With Reason and Emotion in Decision Making

I thought I would re-post an answer to a question I was asked to answer on Quora, as it illustrates a conceptual flavor of how knowledge of behavioral economics can be applied to help navigate behavioral obstacles and opportunities.

The question:

How do behavioral economists think we should deal with reason and emotion in our decisions?

My answer:

The balancing act is tricky, and I think context and desired outcomes matter. For example:

  1. A thirty-year old might have problems saving for retirement because they think of savings as being for stranger. The solution might be to increase emotional connection between the thirty-year old and their future self so that the right behavior of saving can be achieved.
  2. A person might be emotionally attached to their home, and as a result, they might try to sell their home at too high of a price. It might be better if they can loosen their emotional attachment and feelings of endowment. Getting 3rd-party perspectives might be helpful to the seller in terms of distancing themselves so they can set a reasonable market price.
  3. Sometimes it’s hard to control emotions and desire, and people may try to precommit to a state so that proper decisions are more likely to be made in spite of the situation. I have heard of behavioral economists pouring salt over desserts at dinner (after they’ve had a few bites to get the taste) so they are less inclined to eat the whole thing.

The main takeaways are that there are essentially “two minds” at work, and they work in concert in different ways. Sometimes you need emotion. Sometimes you want less of it. Sometimes you can’t really change your emotions so you need self-control devices and external perspectives. Other times you need to try to slow down thinking. There are many different approaches to applying behavioral economics concepts.

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Please take a quick, 30-second survey for my book – Inside Nudging

I am writing a book for management professionals and those interested in implementing behavioral science (which includes behavioral economics and finance) in business settings. Situations include the incubation of innovation centers, behavioral science overlay capabilities, or advancement of existing organizations. I’d love your input on what challenges you see and what you’d like to see addressed!

 

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What Are The Best Management Consulting Books?

There are four books that I recommend as core to the generic practice of consulting. These are:

  1. The McKinsey Way by Ethan Rasiel
  2. Process Consultation by Edgar Schein (dry read)
  3. Flawless Consulting by Peter Block (optional and highly recommended for those coming from engineering versus consulting backgrounds)
  4. The Pyramid Principle:Logic In Writing and Thinking (for managers & consultants especially) by Barbara Minto

Beyond the generic core, there are three major dimensions that come to the top of my mind when considering practitioner-level knowledge of the management consulting space:

I have developed a working reading list that attempts to cover many of the areas above. It is a list for entry-level to advanced management consultants. It can be found here.

And for those readers seeking books and information on getting a job with a consulting firm, there are a number of other books out there. One site that sells such a book (“The Consulting Interview Bible“) is ManagementConsulted. As an aside, back in 2009 Kevin Gao (ex-McKinseyite) interviewed me for ManagementConsulted’s Life as a Consultant series.

The best historical account of the consulting industry I’ve read is The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World by Walter Kiechel

Finally, I just released a book entitled The Consulting Apprenticeship. The book focuses on nuances passed on during apprenticeship and complements the four books I mention at the beginning of this post or can be read standalone. More info at ConsultingApprenticeship.com.

The Consulting Apprenticeship is available for purchase at Amazon.

Edit (November 28, 2017): I just completed a new book, So What Strategy by Davina Stanley and Gerard Castles. The two authors began their consulting careers at McKinsey & Company (communications specialists). The book is thematically aligned with the books above, and I’ve written a review of the book here: The So What Strategy – A Highly Recommended Book for Business Communications. I also recommend considering their online courses here.

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How My Father and Fatherhood Have Transformed Me as a Professional

On this Father’s Day, I wanted to give a short tribute to my dad, and reflect on his professional influence on me. My father is a great man. He received an education in electrical engineering, served in the U.S. Army, been involved in numerous industrial and technology companies around the world, started a number of entrepreneurial ventures, had two kids with my mom (myself and my brother), been successfully married for more than forty years, supported numerous workers and business partners, and managed to stay energized and reasonably healthy to date.

Although that’s the backdrop, when I was growing up I had very little understanding of what my father did. As a young child, I think I even slightly hurt his feelings when I made a remark to him something to the effect of, “Dad. I understand things now. Mom is mom, right? But you are just a relative, right?”

So much of my early life can be (dramatically) portrayed as being a stuck-up narcissist. I only cared about myself, how I was perceived, and whether I could excel. Yet my father loved me. He helped me to develop some tangible core skills and traits that continue to support me as a professional. These included math, science, analysis, and logic skills. What I didn’t appreciate until many years later was that he also provided me with a tremendous safety net and helped me to build my self-confidence. He was extremely supportive. Decades later, I became more acutely aware of the importance of being supportive and was of clear enough mind to write the post “A Supportive Manager Outweighs All”. Father’s Day lesson #1 for professionals.

As a teenager and undergraduate, my father brought me into various start-up situations to get me beyond engineering and to think about business more. How much I wanted to focus on just engineering. Yet through the new experiences he introduced me to, I developed a better tacit understanding of dynamic organizations and paving new ground. I also learned a lot more about real people, how they behave, and what pressure draws out. So my father helped to guide my professional development in terms of understanding people & organizations, getting street smart, and connecting with people on a
deeper-level. Lesson #2.

As an adult and father, I touch the skin on my face and those of my kids, and I realize that the legacy of my father propagates. I cherish the elements that my kids and I all have from him. And I now more fully recognize the importance of valuing not only the people you know but also those you do not know and the interconnected world. Reflecting on fathers and fatherhood brings mortality, humanity, and the importance of leaving a legacy into greater focus. The influence of my father and fatherhood has taken me to new interests in the past decade or so, some of which include providing probono work (e.g., for nonprofits), seeking meaningful consulting projects that impact current human and societal issues (e.g., healthcare, retirement, organizational development), and teaching in the business school. Father’s Day lesson #3 is refining the understanding of one’s values and doing something about it. I shared a post on “Management Consulting Manifesto” to illustrate my evolved personal values and how they map to my perspectives on management consulting.

Readers, thanks for reading, and please share what lessons you’ve learned from your fathers (e.g., please post links and comments below).

Dad, Happy Father’s Day. I look forward to many more lessons from you. Thank you. I love you. Your son, Stephen.

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What To Do When Your Professional Services Organization Is Not Professional Enough

In helping companies develop, tune-up, or reboot their professional services organizations, here are some example of complaints I’ve heard that reflect the need for change:

  • Customer: “Instead of providing consulting services, your organization is marketing its products to me and asking me to pay the bill.”
  • General manager of services organization: “I am not sure we know what services we sell versus what services are provided as part of the product pre-sales cycle.”
  • Manager of services organization: “We have project in XYZ area, we’re doing another thing with company ABC, and we also have a lot of internal work on DOG. It’s really hard to report on where our time is spent.”
  • Customer: “The consultants you’ve assigned seem to have good technical and analytical skills. I am not sure what they are doing to help me though.”
  • Field manager: “Customer A is pretty much dead and will need a restart. We got to step 10 in the process before we realized our services team forgot to perform step 2 for quality control.”
  • Manager of services: “How do we price jobs? How do we cost jobs? No particular method.”
  • General manager of services: “Our folks have traditionally provided services for free, and now we are trying to charge money for them because the services have value. But our quality is not there, and we don’t have the discipline built into our DNA.”

One way to think about fixing these organizations is from the ground-up (roughly from delivery to project management to sales to strategy):

  1. Inventory the delivery team – What skills do these folks have on the technical side? What soft skills do they have in terms of dealing with clients? How can we develop the team’s leadership skills?
  2. Inspect either the project management or engagement management areas – To what extent is a cadence and communication structure established between the organization and the customer? Have there been frameworks or tools developed to support the customer-facing processes? Are there knowledge management processes in place to help with delivering greater value to the customer? What role does mentorship play in the organization?
  3. Analyze the sales process and key contacts with customer organization – What is the strategy for services? Do we have a crisp story on getting from needs to solutions and services? Do we proactively manage the sales pipeline? Who owns and follows-through on key customer contact points? Is there a customer satisfaction process that involves both direct parties delivering and independent parties objectively evaluating the quality of services delivered?
  4. Assess what’s next for customers and how your company’s boundaries fit into a larger, whole solution for the customer – What role should thought leadership play? How can the services organization figure out how greater value can be added to the customer experience? Should we expand the offerings? Should we partner with other companies? Or maybe we should change the total mix of products and services so that the customer can derive additional value on their own?

Professional services organizations are complex, and the above framework enables one to start to think about how one can make improvements that affect services delivered today, while keeping other areas in perspective for handling somewhat further down the road.

Please feel free to let me know about your thoughts and experiences. Thanks!

Related post: Special Discussion On Starting Consulting Services Organizations Within Product Companies

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