Archive for the ‘consulting’ Category
A meditation on living in chesed
My friend and I both worked for a long time at a very stable medical device company in Minneapolis. We both eventually left to form our own companies. About this up and down adventure of working on your own, she liked to say “the universe will provide” because her experience was exactly that: interesting clients sought her out with interesting work, she had opportunities for growth coupled with the opportunity to learn and earn for herself and her family. I had to agree that opportunities popped up all the time—especially with the eyes-open approach of a consultant.
My question has more to do with naming the source of these opportunities. Recognizing “the universe” sounds too happenstance. Don’t get me wrong: I am all for whimsy and also a great believer in serendipity. I just want to name the source. Why? Out of joy. Out of wonder. Also because naming the source honors the source. So I credit God as the originator of opportunity.
I’m a beginner at living in dependence on chesed (God’s lovingkindness).
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Where Does Insight Come From?
How do I discombobulate without getting fired—or hired?
Over at the Philosopher’s Playground, Steven Gimbel wrote recently of his need to discombobulate his students (with their “naively smug beliefs which they’ve never thought very hard about.”) to help them begin the work of philosophy. I wonder if the act of getting discombobulated is the beginning point for producing any insight.
A few days back I had coffee with a friend who is a human resources executive and coach and thoughtful person. We were talking about what makes an organization dialogical, that is, willing to enter into conversation internally (versus the usual barking of orders from one management level to the next). Carol, as it turns out, had a keen interest in how dialogue works and was able to identify four stages in a verbal exchange required to produce insight:
- Awareness of a problem or issue
- Trigger: something in the exchange triggers a reflective moment. Insight often falls from the reflection
- Insight: the Aha moment, when suddenly I understand something previously opaque to me
- Action: Do something with an insight or it is gone. Write it down. Tell someone. Do anything.
Gimbel’s discombobulation seems to help with the awareness phase. We need to understand how what we thought certain or easy is neither certain nor easy. Sometimes I use a classroom exercise to help create the trigger/reflection step for my students. But just as often, in ordinary conversation, my discombobulation finds relief when my friend asks a question and I lapse into momentary reflection which often leads to an insight. Sometimes I feel like an “Aha” addict: there’s nothing like suddenly realizing a new truth—nothing like that “click” when a critical piece of how life works suddenly falls into place. That’s a big part of why I write.
Perhaps the key to those four stages is the action part. We need to do something with an insight. Right then at the very Aha moment. Otherwise it’s lost.
But corporate conversations routinely detour around discombobulation. It’s partly a time issue but mostly the politics of a department: a boss or manager or VP rarely seeks out discombobulation, especially from subordinates. The person in charge would much rather pay a high-priced ad agency or consulting group to come in and discombobulate them. I’ve been on both sides of a number of those meetings.
I’ve been trying to help my students become active discombobulaters in their workplaces: from wherever they land, my hope is they ask the impertinent questions that poke through the malarkey and point out deviation from mission.
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Is Freelance Writing a Career?
[I’m reposting this from about a year ago when I posted it on The Official Blog of Kirkistan, where I’ve stopped writing. This issue just keeps coming up.]
Before you say “Yes. Of course!” (with proper righteous indignation), consider that a career seems to move a person toward increasing levels of responsibility, toward tasks that require more maturity, toward more money (one can dream). Pick any company and follow the career path of say…well…how about a communication specialist? The communication specialist will write, manage projects, take care of details. They do well, so they are promoted to communication manager. In that position, they do some of the same tasks, though in lesser quantities, plus they manage people. They do well and graduate to director. In that position they have no project work, write only memos and emails, sit in meetings discussing what they’re teams are doing, aren’t doing and should be doing. And so a career proceeds until stopped at the individual’s level of incompetence.
This management person who was (possibly) a writer is now not writing at all and is instead directing others who carry out communication tactics. To many that is a satisfying, perfectly reasonable trajectory. And even for those who write or love to create, they can find opportunities in those positions to use their creativity to positively influence others. I’ve known some creative folks who have risen to management positions and done very well at creating imaginative and loyal teams and organizations.
But for others, this career path represents gradual movement away from craft, and away from the heart of what made work fun in the first place. A career presupposes that new skills are developed even as vision widens, which lands a person in a different job. But that is not quite the case for freelance writers. They often entertain dreams of, well, writing. It’s what they want to do. And so a career path for a freelance writer is less about successive positions (especially since freelancing is by definition outside typical corporate structures with their fixed paths) and more about finding work and the work itself.
The work itself is the career path for a freelance writer. Where there is joy in completing the work, where there is curiosity about how communication tools can fit to new situations and how those tools can resolve substantial problems—those are the milestones on the freelance writer’s career path. And over time, the writer finds herself or himself accomplishing a set of tasks with maturity and grace (one can hope). And looking back, the craft that helped accomplish tasks and assignments will have the distinct look of a career.
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Does Social Media Provide Too Big a Reveal?
What will be your single most embarrassing moment?
My industrial client sees the logic behind building a community of interest around the technology and processes they expertly provide. But building community means sharing information—and that’s problematic. This client’s industry is rife with corporate espionage, where one small step ahead of the competitor is a huge win. So they want to share their innovation story but they don’t want the information spigot open too wide.
The alternative is to continue to hold back the necessary ingredients for building relationships with would-be brand loyalists. Silence in a room gradually filling with talkers will eventually remove you from the game entirely.
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Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out (and Don’t Burn any Bridges)
Don't burn your bridge
There’s a flurry of lay-off activity these days over at a large client I’ve worked with for a number of years. I know because I’ve heard about it from a few different folks. I also know because lots of those I’ve not talked to are buffing their LinkedIn profiles and adding contacts like crazy. The rate of contact additions I see tells me these folks are not expecting to make it through the current set of axe swings. One guy told me they were expecting marketing to lose 30% of their people. One never knows how true these things are, but it is reason to take action.
In the medical device community I spend a lot of work time in, you never know if the fresh kid who started last year will be the director of marketing next time you come calling—so it only makes sense to not burn bridges on the way out. Friends—keep your options open as you welcome the next phase of your work-life.
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A Telephone Is Not A Commitment To Communicate
The other day a friend painted a picture of marketing and sales at his company: it looks like a telephone. His firm had not spent on outward-facing communications for a couple years. Instead, they picked up the phone and called people. This company targets a very tight niche of companies needing specialized fabrication services.
We talked about the state of their communication, and how brochures and the usual assortment of tools seemed like a waste of money—given that his industry has very few players and most are well-known to each other. I wondered aloud whether he could position his employees as expert problem solvers—which exactly is what they are—as walking, talking brochures. Is it possible that the very thing they do on the telephone could have a broader reach and work for them all the time? This is the promise of entering into dialogue.
But before moving that direction, set aside tactics for a moment. Before freeing employees to be public experts, any company—and especially my friend’s company—must make an extraordinary commitment. They must commit to communicate. If my friend’s company uses today’s conversational tools like he previously used advertising or brochures—tossing one-way benefit messages out in the marketplace every once in a while—he will fail. Instead, he and his company need to cultivate an attitude of sharing what they know in a way that draws out interest and conversation. And that is an on-going commitment. That’s how experts become experts.
Interestingly, putting experts into conversation is also a route to increased employee satisfaction. Good employees love to use their expertise to help real people solve real problems.
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Conversations Create Stuff
If there is one word that sums up the life of a consultant, it might be “talk.” But not for the reason you think. Consultants always seem to be selling—true—but it is even more true that fresh new solutions pop up in the middle of the most mundane conversations. Good consultants realize this and always have their radar up.
Yesterday I talked with a high-powered, well-connected friend who had just left the corporate world and was thinking about consulting. We waxed on about what fun it is to reconnect with old friends and colleagues in the course of networking, and finding new friends and hearing their stories. We both mentioned this crazy thing that can sometimes happen when someone innocently says “So, what is it you do, again?”
Suddenly you find yourself casting about for an appropriate way to summarize your work for this precise conversation, this context, and this person. You may even have an elevator speech ready to go, but even that needs to be tweaked right now. This instant.
And so you talk. And sometimes you are surprised by what comes out of your mouth. New stuff you’ve never thought of before. Stuff you can follow-up on right away.
My work as a communications consultant allows me to probe for ways to serve people and organizations with strategic writing skills. This conversation miracle happens routinely. We trade problems. We share insights. We consider what is and what could be. Along the way we often say true things about ourselves. And if we are listening, small confirmations pop up in the conversations. Small confirmations about who we are and what we do in life and how our role fits. When these small confirmation pop, and when I am listening, small acts of creation spring forth. Solid bits of ground beneath my feet, ready for walking forward, ready in a way I could not walk before. All because of conversations.
As a Trinitarian God-fearer (that is, your standard-issue Christian), I’m reminded that creation sprang forth in much the same way: the Triune God talking together and—behold—this blue ball, and everything on it.
So…have a conversation today.
P.S. Speaking of conversations, read Jeff Cornwall’s take on how his undergrad students view corporate career paths versus entrepreneurship. It will cheer you. Or not.
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conversation is an engine 
