consulting Archives : Conferences That Work

How to deal with a “quick question”

Monday, December 30th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

During my 40+ years of consulting, I’ve received countless phone calls and emails that begin with a rushed introduction, followed by the ominous phrase: “I have a quick question.”

Beware!

In my experience, despite some folks’ naive explanations, this seemingly innocent phrase means one of two things:

The person is trying to sell me something, or
They know I charge for my time but want free advice.

The first—quick-question-as-sales-tool—is easy to deflect:

Q. “Can I set up a quick call to tell you about a product or service that will undoubtedly change your life?”

A. “No.”

The second approach is trickier. Perhaps my impressive expertise in answering the “quick question” will magically convince them to pay for my services!

The question may be quick, but the answer…

The real issue is that while the question may be “quick”, there’s no guarantee the answer will be short.

Q. What is the meaning of life?

A. ??????? [I’m pretty sure it’s not “42“.]

Occasionally, I don’t know the answer and can quickly tell the questioner, “Sorry, I don’t know about that,” perhaps referring them to someone who can help. But that’s rare. People don’t want to waste time asking someone unlikely to be helpful, so they usually have good reasons for reaching out to me.

Consulting as a dance

I’ve participated in hundreds of client-consultant conversations. I think of them as dances: mysterious, exciting, full of potential for creating something great, and, sometimes, unfortunately, disappointing.

In my experience, these contracting “minuets” can take as little as ten minutes or, let’s just say, far too long.

The Thirty-Minute Rule

So, if the questioner seems sincere, I invoke my Thirty-Minute Rule to avoid a never-ending dance.

The Thirty-Minute Rule is my reasonable compromise between the competing needs of a consultant and a client. It balances generosity with professionalism, while reinforcing the value of my expertise.

In consulting, “quick questions” often tread a fine line between goodwill and professional boundaries. While helping others builds relationships, my time and expertise are valuable. The Thirty-Minute Rule allows me to offer a fair compromise, demonstrating both generosity and respect for my professional worth. By setting clear limits, I ensure interactions remain productive and mutually beneficial.

After all, consulting is a dance that works best when both partners respect the steps.

Tags: answering questions, consulting, question, thirty minute rule| Posted in Consulting | No Comments »

5 Reasons I’m Grateful for My Clients After 40+ Years of Consulting

Monday, May 20th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

I got my first paid consulting job in 1983, solving IT problems for a lumber yard. I’ve been a consultant ever since. I’m so grateful to the hundreds of clients I’ve served over the last 40+ years.

Here are five reasons why I’m grateful for my clients.

1—It’s always a people problem

I was a technology nerd when I got that first gig. I was your guy if you had a problem with personal computers, flaky local area networks, or database systems. It took me about five years of having CEOs confiding to me their non-technical woes despite being hired to solve “tech” problems to learn the truth of Weinberg’s Second Law of Consulting:

“No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem.”

I became fascinated by the culture of organizations. As an outsider, I marveled at the variety of dysfunctions I observed. Over time, I got better at solving the people problems I uncovered. Eventually, I realized I was more interested in working with people than technology.

Without the copious experiences of people problems that my clients provided, I’d never be doing what I love today: facilitating connection between people.

2—My clients allow me to try new things

My clients come to me with problems they can’t (at the time) solve. As I work with them they give me opportunities to try new things. Yes, occasionally, I discover I already know how to solve their problems, but that’s rarely the case. My clients’ wants and needs challenge me to be creative. I invariably end up recommending and doing things I’ve never tried before. Consequently, I learn about what works and what doesn’t. My knowledge base and skill set expand.

Because my clients allow me to try new things, I become a better consultant.

3—My clients are my teachers

I’m grateful for my clients because I learn from them. Here are a couple of examples.

Improving Conferences That Work

I designed and facilitated my first peer conference in 1992. I ran them in my spare time for thirteen years before writing my first book. Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love took four years to write. Having spent seventeen years developing the why and how of peer conferences, you might reasonably expect that the book provided a somewhat definitive guide for peer conference rationale and design.

Not so.

I’m still proud of how well Conferences That Work lays out the fundamental reasons for the importance and value of peer conferences. However, it turned out that the implementation sections, adequate for their day, had some important gaps and limitations. When it was published in 2009, my peer conference work exploded.

And, my goodness, I got feedback! It was great feedback. Clients critiqued the approaches I’d developed. Participants said, “Why don’t you do that this way?” It was scary but exciting because much of the feedback included great ideas.

The result was that I wrote two supplements to the book that I published in 2013 and 2015. They included everything I’d learned from my clients that improved peer conferences. I made them free to download. It seemed the least I could do.

Getting thoughtful specific feedback

This doesn’t happen very often. But last week I received a long email from a client whom I’d consulted a couple of times on the design of her organization’s online conferences. After sharing that “our second peer conference was even better than our first” she gave details of “three tweaks…that worked really well for us”.

Her process changes were extraordinarily well-described, creative, and innovative! So good, that I expect to write about them on this blog soon.

Feedback like this is a gift that helps me improve my craft.

4—My clients get me more work

During my 20+ year IT consulting career, word of mouth generated all of my work!

Today, because consulting on meeting design and facilitation is a niche practice, marketing via sharing my website posts with subscribers and on social media has also become a significant source of new clients. When potential clients visit this site, they can view my sample client list, assuring them I have credible authority as a consultant.

5—My clients pay me for work I love to do

Yes, I do pro-bono work (e.g. industry education). And I’m happy to discuss innovative ways of getting paid. (No, not by “exposure”.) But, otherwise, my clients pay me for work I love to do.

How cool is that!

Thank you

Finally, I also want to thank everyone who isn’t a client (yet) who has given me feedback over the years.

That includes the ~2,000 folks who have commented on this blog, my professional friends and colleagues, in person and on social media, and tens of thousands of participants who have supported my work and continue to help me learn and grow.

Thank you.

I’m grateful for you.

Tags: clients, consulting, gratitude| Posted in Consulting, Event design, Learning | No Comments »

Do you have an unhealthy relationship with your career?

Monday, February 26th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

Recently, I had a thought-provoking conversation with association maven and friend KiKi L’Italien. She said she had worked hard to avoid replicating in her marriage some unhealthy dynamics she experienced in her family while growing up. And she felt she’d been successful. But recently, she realized that she had incorporated these unhealthy dynamics into her relationship with her career.

Like me, KiKi’s had a rich and complex professional life. She has switched several times between working as an employee and as an independent consultant in the association field. KiKi told me that some aspects of her behavior working as an independent mirrored the dysfunction of her growing up. Though this was one of several factors leading to the decision, KiKi decided to embrace working as an employee once more for big red M, a company that is a good match for her passions and expertise.

This is the latest step along KiKi‘s journey. I admire the honesty, energy, commitment, and smarts that she brings to her life and work. I want to thank KiKi for her frank sharing that inspired the core of this post. Namely: we need to look not only at our family relationships but also our relationships with our career.

My relationship with my career

Each person’s past experiences and situations are unique. I, like KiKi, work to disentangle myself from what I was taught to believe when I was young. I also notice and review how I work and my relationships with my clients. Doing this reduces the effects of learned dysfunction on my day-to-day life.

For example, when I first started consulting I was scared of disappointing my clients. I (falsely) believed that if I didn’t do a perfect job I would fail in some way. Since I’m not perfect, this led me not to feel good about myself. So, in those early days, I put up with what I now know were unreasonable requests from clients. It took some years before I felt confident in saying no to some of these requests. Eventually, that progressed to breaking up with clients who ignored or did not want to accept my boundaries for a working relationship.

At times, KiKi and I have both chosen to work independently rather than being employed by an organization. This is a big, complicated decision.

I sometimes envy folks embedded inside organizations. They usually have access to resources that I could never have as an independent. As a consultant, I have less authority to effect change in an organization than anyone who works there. And, as an independent, I’ve sometimes felt nervous about the lack of a regular paycheck.

Then I remember that, as an independent, I have the freedom to choose:

whom I work with;
the kind of work I do and the way I do that work;
the power to determine my schedule; and
my ability to take breaks and time off when it’s best for me, not my employer.

Your relationship with your career

An unhealthy relationship with your career is different from an unhealthy relationship with your work. The former means your dysfunctional behaviors may affect:

the kinds of work you choose;
the quality of your work relationships at every job; and
your career path.

You have almost certainly experienced unpleasant situations at work. Some of them are caused by circumstances completely out of your control. But in some of them, you have played a part. Having an unhealthy relationship with your career means that you repeat dysfunctional patterns as you move or make decisions about moving from one work opportunity to another.

An analogy would be someone who is a “bad picker” of relationship partners. Over and over again this person chooses to have relationships with people. with whom they are not compatible for one or more reasons that ultimately sabotage each relationship. The same dysfunctional patterns repeat again and again inside each relationship because bad pickers are drawn to relationships that fulfill what their dysfunctional aspects need rather than what their authentic self requires and deserves.

Similarly, you may be drawn to work situations that feed your dysfunctional aspects, leading to repeated eventual dissatisfaction with each new work situation.

There’s no single “right” relationship

Exploring your relationship with your career can have a profound long-term effect on your life.

For example, noticing and responding to our relationship with our work and our careers influence how Kiki and I choose to work as an independent or employee. There is no single right choice for everyone. Although I haven’t received a paycheck for over 30 years, from 1983 to 1993 I was a part-time college professor drawing a salary while simultaneously pursuing independent consulting work. My friend, veteran event producer and educator Brandt Krueger, has a similar story to tell. Employed for twenty years, he eventually struck out as an independent for eight years, only recently returning to employment as a senior event producer at a large company.

What is best for KiKi, Brandt, and me is different. And that’s OK, and as it should be.

What’s important is to keep looking at our experience with everyone who is part of our world. That includes our family, friends, colleagues, working environment, and our career.

We need to keep noticing what’s happening, what’s working, and what isn’t in all these components of our lives. This crucial work allows us to reduce the distance between who we are and how we show up in the world. In the process, you’ll be working to minimize the unhealthy aspects of your relationship with your career.

Tags: consulting, dysfunction, employee, health, relationships, working| Posted in Consulting, Personal effectiveness | No Comments »

The Consultant’s Curse

Monday, July 31st, 2023 by Adrian Segar

Though I’ve been a professional consultant of one kind or another for over forty years, I sometimes still fall victim to the Consultant’s Curse.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: consulting, explaining, influencing, listening, permission, problem solving| Posted in Consulting | 2 Comments »

Pros and cons of consulting for large organizations

Monday, September 19th, 2022 by Adrian Segar

I’ve consulted for more than a thousand organizations. My clients include branches of the U.S. Government, large international agencies, and for-profit and non-profit companies. Over the last four decades, I’ve found the size of a client’s organization affects many aspects of my work. Here are some of the pros and cons of consulting for large organizations.

Pros of consulting for large organizations

The pros of consulting for large organizations are pretty much what you’d expect.

Credibility

When choosing a consultant it’s smart to see whom they’ve worked for (and check references). Potential clients who check out my partial client list can see that I’ve worked for huge organizations like The World Bank, The Nature Conservancy, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Having had clients like these can reassure large organizations that I may be able to help them too. Smaller potential clients may also be impressed. (I also include plenty of smaller organizations on my client list, so people know I routinely work with large and small clients.)

Status

Consulting for large, well-known organizations obviously confers a certain amount of status. If you care about that kind of thing. Which some people do.

Access to resources

Large organization clients usually have more access to useful resources than smaller clients. For example, meeting rooms, specialized support staff, and travel budgets are often plentiful and generous. That can make my work easier and more pleasant. (Note: I’ve found for-profit clients have a harder time freeing up staff support for my work than the associations that make up a majority of my client mix.)

Larger fees? Perhaps…

You’d think that larger organizations would tend to pay more generous fees, and I’m sure sometimes you’d be right. However, I don’t set my fees based on the size of the client but on the scope of the work that’s needed. Though I don’t charge the stratospheric rates that some consultants quote, very small companies can have a hard time finding the money to pay me to do a good job. (And if I can’t do a good job for them, whatever the quantity of work, I won’t sign a contract.)

In general, only a few potential clients reject me because they decide they can’t afford me. My contracts with large clients may involve more time and money than similar work for a smaller client (see below). Otherwise, since I don’t set my fees on a “what the market can afford” basis, I don’t find a significant correlation between client size and fees. Other consultants’ experiences may be different.

Cons of consulting for large organizations

The cons of consulting for large organizations are less obvious than the pros. It took me a while to discover them.

More BS

In general, I don’t enjoy consulting for large clients as much as small ones. That’s because I’ve found working with large organizations involves…well, more bullshit. The BS manifests in many ways. It’s more likely, for example, that there will be conflicts between people and departments that I have to handle as part of my work. Decision-making processes are often convoluted. Administrative and contract issues take up more time.

There are exceptions. Typically they occur when I’m working for an autonomous subunit of the entire organization where the stakeholders have the decision-making authority needed for me to do my work. Under these circumstances, it’s like working for a small client, albeit one embedded in a large organization. Unfortunately, I don’t often come across this structure. Even when I do, the organization’s environment and structure sometimes warp the goals and objectives for our work in strange ways.

Harder to talk to decision-makers

One of the most frustrating issues when consulting for large organizations is that it can be impossible to talk directly with key decision-makers. In large organizations, I often work with middle managers who are enthusiastic about what we create. But then we have to sell our approach to upper management. Senior staff typically expect to hear from their middle managers rather than me. In practice, this is very inefficient. Any questions or objections that middle management can’t answer have to be passed back to me. This does not usually end well.

My rule of thumb is that if I can get ten minutes with a senior manager, we can get a go (usually) / no-go decision. For example, working with a hospital chain CEO recently, it took a few minutes to resolve an issue that no one else in the organization was able to handle. But this is frequently impossible!

I have seen more great consulting collaborations unnecessarily scuttled via the refusal of senior management to get even briefly directly involved than for any other reason.

I’m well aware that as a consultant I have no power, only influence. So I don’t take it personally when clients don’t follow my advice. But it’s still a frustrating and wasteful experience for everyone involved—and it’s a much more common outcome at large organizations.

It’s a wash

Creating long-lasting positive change in the organization

It seems plausible that a good consultant can create more long-lasting positive change in a large organization than in a small one. After all, the former has more people to influence, and any successfully introduced change will therefore affect a larger number of people.

My experience tends to support Jerry Weinberg’s Law of Raspberry Jam:

Influence is like raspberry jam. The wider you spread it, the thinner it gets.

Large organizations dilute your influence for creating change because it’s spread over many people. In a small organization, I have more influence over fewer people and can help make a bigger change take place.

Here’s an example. A few years ago, I and a group of meeting designers spent a day looking into how we could improve the annual UN Climate Change Conference meeting process in order to better meet the challenges of the climate crisis. These meetings involve hundreds of countries and thousands of NGOs and people. A few hours spent reviewing the arcane procedures that have been historically used convinced me that the likelihood of a single consultant or organization affecting the outcome of these meetings was infinitesimal.

Conclusions

Personally, I prefer to consult with smaller organizations. Although the perks of working with a giant concern are rather nice, they don’t compensate for dealing with the higher level of BS that I often encounter or the increased likelihood of failing to make a positive change (despite getting paid).

I’m sure that some consultants prefer spending time in big and complex cultures. If you’re one of them and would like to share your viewpoint, please do so in the comments below. And if you agree with my preference, share that too!

Tags: client size, consulting, fees, management, resources, status| Posted in Consulting | 4 Comments »

How to attract great consulting clients

Monday, August 1st, 2022 by Adrian Segar

These days I am blessed with clients who are a joy to work with. But that wasn’t always true. Here’s how I learned to attract great consulting clients.

It shouldn’t need to be said, but I’m going to say it anyway. Everything that follows assumes that you have something of value to offer potential clients, you’re competent enough to supply it and have a realistic opinion about your worth. If you’re looking to get consulting work but don’t have all the requisite skills or expect to be paid unrealistic fees, this post won’t help you. But if you are a consultant who somehow keeps ending up with difficult clients, read on!

In the beginning…

In 1984, after careers in academia and small business, I began a consulting journey that has continued to this day.

Running a monthly local community group—the Southeastern Vermont Computer Users Group, long defunct—exposed me to businesses that needed advice and support on using these new-fangled “personal computers”. They hired me. Early on, I remember telling my wife that I had a few months of work booked but didn’t know if there would be more. After about five years of making similar statements, she pointed out that I probably didn’t need to worry too much.

Wondering about how much work I’d get, I accepted everything I was offered that I could do.

And sometimes, that didn’t work so well.

Three lessons learned

Charging enough

A local lumber mill offered me my first IT consulting job. I had no idea how much to charge, so I asked a friend. He asked me the hourly rate I thought I should ask for. When he heard my answer he laughed and said, “Double that!”

He was right. I had been doubting my value. The client didn’t even question my fee, and neither have hundreds of subsequent clients. Over the subsequent years, I discovered the truth of one of my mentor’s Secrets of Consulting:

“The more they pay you, the more they love you. The less they pay you, the less they respect you.”
—Jerry Weinberg, one of his ten laws of pricing

In fact, if a potential client tries to aggressively negotiate with me over my fee, it’s a warning sign that our relationship is going to be less than ideal.

Working for free

I was once asked for a detailed proposal to fix problems with a client’s complicated database management system. The client told me they’d fired their previous consultant. I spent a significant amount of time determining possible solutions and submitted a comprehensive proposal. Imagine my disappointment when the potential client gave the proposal to the supposedly “ex-” consultant and told him to implement my solution.

This taught me an expensive lesson.

Since then, I simply won’t do creative work for clients without payment. I’m happy to have an initial call (typically 30 – 60 minutes) without charge and send a general proposal. But I won’t work after that point without a signed contract.

My advice: avoid any potential client who insists on detailed creative ideas before a contracted relationship exists.

Depending on trust—but getting it in writing

I used handshake agreements for years. They worked almost perfectly for me, but that’s because I eventually discovered I have a good (though not infallible) intuitive sense of whom to trust. But eventually, I began requiring written contracts for one important reason.

A written contract is a great tool to minimize misunderstandings.

Despite my best attempts to clearly communicate and agree on task scope, execution logistics, and the many other components of a professional relationship, I still find that what ends up in my head can be different from my client’s understanding. The creation of a signed written contract, which sometimes goes through a few drafts, is a great process to maximize the likelihood that our expectations match. And it acts as a great de-escalation tool if one of us forgets what we’ve agreed to.

The most effective way to attract great clients

But the best way I’ve discovered to attract great clients is to know who I am and share myself publicly.

What does that mean?

It means continuing to learn as much about my core self as possible, figuring out my mission, and sharing who I am with anyone who’s interested.

For example, this blog includes hundreds of articles posted over the last 16 years. Those who care can learn about my views on a wide range of topics, such as meeting design, facilitation, consulting, life lessons, facilitating change, the meeting industry, personal effectiveness, technology, and much more.

I’ve been happy to participate in many video interviews and podcasts, allowing people to learn more about my ideas, approaches, and personality.

On Twitter, I post on an even wider range of subjects, sharing content and ideas I like as well as, these days, a lot of political commentary.

Though I’m well aware that I, like everyone, still maintain personas, I continue to try to minimize the difference between the me I present to the world and who I truly am.

Allowing potential clients to see who I am helps them decide whether I might be a good fit to work with. Sharing who I am attracts those who like what they see. And, I’ve found, I’m likely to like them too! Which, as Seth Godin points out, can be a win-win:

“Like your customers and they’re more likely to like you back.”
—Seth Godin, The likable brand (or person)

How to attract great consulting clients

To summarize, let’s assume you can be of value to potential clients. Then to attract great consulting clients, you need to do three things:

Learn how to identify and say no to potential clients who are not looking for a win-win relationship with you.
Work to understand who you really are and your mission in life, and then be that person (no games). This is probably the hardest step. But it pays rich dividends in so many ways, not just in your professional life.
Market yourself—your core beliefs, skills, and personality—to potential clients. Those who have a need for your services and like what they learn about you will be drawn to get in touch.

That’s my recipe for attracting great consulting clients. It’s been working for me for years. If you’re a consultant who ends up with difficult clients more than you would like, I hope it helps you too!

As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Tags: charging enough, clients, consulting, creative work, fees, lessons learned, trust, working for free, written contracts| Posted in Consulting | No Comments »

Who has more power, a consultant or a janitor?

Monday, May 9th, 2022 by Adrian Segar

Picture the renowned senior consultant breezing into the gleaming corporate HQ of Fortune 500 MegaCorp, for a well-paid gig advising C-suite executives. Now, picture the newly-hired janitor who spends their evenings mopping & vacuuming floors, cleaning restrooms, and emptying trash and recycling cans in a small MegaCorp branch office. Who has more power, the consultant or the janitor?

Obviously, the consultant has more power. They get to influence what happens at MegaCorp at a high level. Consultants have helped major industries successfully adapt to changing circumstances. (They’ve also been responsible for controversial decisions.) The lowly janitor? They just keep the office clean and tidy. Right?

Wrong. Actually, the janitor has more power! Here’s why.

Influence but no authority

Both the consultant and the janitor have responsibilities. MegaCorp contracted the consultant to give the C-suite good advice. MegaCorp pays the janitor to caretake the office.

The janitor has more power because they have the authority to do their assigned caretaking. Even though MegaCorp limits through the job description the scope and status of their work, the janitor has the power to determine how to clean floors and empty trashcans.

The consultant has no power to make any changes at MegaCorp. Consultants have influence — but no authority, no power. My mentor Jerry Weinberg defined consulting as the art of influencing people at their request. Any seasoned consultant, however successful, sometimes fails to influence their clients.

“As a consultant in various fields for 42 years, this is a familiar world: one where I have influence with a client but less authority than a janitor. Clients are free to ignore my advice. Sometimes they do, but clearly I have useful influence that typically leads to significant change. (Otherwise, I wouldn’t continue to be hired and — usually 😀 — appreciated.)”
—Adrian Segar, The declining influence of leadership positional power in a network society

The janitor has the power to caretake their building in the way they want and need. MegaCorp gives them that power while not granting any to the consultant.

The Hard Law

Having influence but no power is one of the hard things about being a consultant, as expressed by Jerry Weinberg’s Hard Law:

“If you can’t accept failure, you’ll never succeed as a consultant.”
—Jerry Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting

This is indeed a tough truth to swallow. But Jerry adds an “atom of hope” with a reframe:

“Some people do succeed as consultants, so it must be possible to deal with failure.”
—ibid

Tags: consultant, consulting, influence, Jerry Weinberg, power, responsibility| Posted in Consulting | No Comments »

The job you’ll be doing in the future hasn’t been invented yet

Monday, April 8th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

“The job you’ll be doing in the future hasn’t been invented yet.”

This is old news.

The story of my professional life

1977: I earn a Ph.D. in applied elementary high-energy particle physics. Get a post-doc position and move to the United States. Work at major U.S. particle accelerators for a year. Leave academic research forever.
Since 1978 — that’s 47 years! — every job I’ve had didn’t exist a few years earlier.

1978: I join the management of Solar Alternative, a solar energy manufacturing business founded the previous year. Five years earlier, there were no such businesses in the United States.

1983: I start teaching computer science using personal computers in the classroom. IBM introduced the PC in 1981.

1984: I begin IT consulting for clients using personal computers. Businesses didn’t start using personal computers until the early 80s.

1992: I organize a conference where there are no expert speakers available (it’s a new field, and there are no experts). Invent a way to make the conference successful based on the collective needs, wants, and experience of the attendees. (The conference has run annually for the last 33 years.) This is something new. Organizations hear about this and ask me to design and facilitate their conferences.

2005: I realize that the conference process I invented and since improved is incredibly popular with participants. I decide to write a book about it, and in…

2009: I self-publish Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love. (Five years earlier, self-publishing was a minor industry for vanity projects. Now it’s the most common way authors publish.) I quickly discover the size and interest of the meetings industry. In demand, I become a meeting designer and facilitator of participant-driven, participation-rich meetings. Yet another career that had not existed before.

A conventional career

My parents once suggested I become an accountant. I politely declined and continued studying physics. I have nothing against conventional careers, but my life hasn’t turned out that way.

Yet.

If I had to guess, it probably won’t.

And it probably won’t for you either.

Has the job you’re doing now just been invented? Share your experience in the comments below!

Tags: career, consulting, future of work, jobs| Posted in Consulting, life lessons | No Comments »

Aim to serve rather than please

Monday, October 29th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

Although I’m simultaneously overwhelmed and underwhelmed by the thousands of books and videos about “leadership” pumped out every year, a recent quote struck a chord:

“You’ll do more good if you aim to serve more than you aim to please.”
—S. Chris Edmonds

For context, watch this two-minute video:

While Chris focuses on the context of team leadership, I think that aiming to serve rather than please is also a useful rubric to keep in mind as a consultant. So here are three reasons why you should aim to serve, not please:

It’s impossible to please everyone! Try to please everyone, and you’ll likely please no one.
To aim to serve a client, you need to define what “serve” means. That’s important because if you don’t know how to serve your client you’re not going to be a good consultant. In the video, Chris talks about defining service for a team; the same considerations apply to consulting.
Finally, aiming to serve one’s clients, even at the expense of failing to please them, allows you to feel good about yourself at the end of the day. On a few occasions, I have respectfully declined to provide a requested service that would have pleased a client, because I believed it would not serve them well. Doing this sometimes meant giving up paid work, with all the ensuing consequences. Nevertheless, I feel I made the right decision, both for me and my clients. Because, ultimately, serving clients is more important than pleasing them.

Have you ever felt the temptation to please your clients rather than serve them?

Have you ever walked away from a client rather than agreeing to please but not serve them?

Share your stories in the comments below!

Photo attribution: Flickr user tuttotutto

Tags: Chris Edmonds, consulting, leadership, please, serve, service, team leadership| Posted in Consulting | No Comments »

The declining influence of leadership positional power in a network society

Monday, June 4th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

Almost all organization leaders today wield positional power: the power of a boss to make decisions that affect others. This is unlikely to change soon. However, the growth of the network era, where leaders and workers need to connect outside the workplace in order to stay up-to-date professionally and to be open to new and innovative ideas, is creating a shift away from traditional hierarchical power models.

Positional power

Harold Jarche writes frequently about positional power:

“One major change as we enter the network era is that positional power (based on institutions and hierarchies) may no longer be required to have influence in a network society.”
—Harold Jarche, the new networked norm

It’s increasingly possible to have influence these days without being anyone’s boss.

Influence but no authority

As a consultant in various fields for 42 years, this is a familiar world: one where I have influence with a client but less authority than a janitor. Clients are free to ignore my advice. Sometimes they do, but clearly, I have useful influence that typically leads to significant change. (Otherwise, I wouldn’t continue to be hired and — usually 😀 — appreciated.)

Today, far more people work in the gig economy, which has grown in large part because the network era has made it much easier to find and hire specialized services on a just-in-time basis. This development has caused significant disruptions. Two examples: less long-term job security and the weakened ability for workers to advocate for their concerns en masse. However, there’s a positive side.

The network era

The network era is making possible a shift towards decentralized influence and power, and away from the dysfunctional features of hierarchical societal and organizational structures that have led to much suffering and misery throughout human history. Today there’s no reason to pick either positional or network era power. We can create systems that incorporate the best features of both.

Here’s Harold Jarche again:

“…it is up to all of us to keep working on new structures and systems. This is perhaps the only great work to be done for the next few decades. We have the science and technology to address most of the world’s problems. What we lack are structures that enable transparency and action on behalf of humankind, and not the vested interests of the rich and powerful.”
—Harold Jarche, chaos and order

This isn’t easy work. When consulting, one of my biggest meeting design challenges is to get the boss’s buy-in. Typically middle management is enthusiastic and onboard. But the most senior decision-maker will occasionally override everyone else in the organization. They make poor design decisions based on obsolete ideas about how people learn and a lack of understanding of how good meeting design can transform communities.

The network era is here. Its effect on power relationships isn’t going away. To improve the relevance and effectiveness of social structures, organizations, and meetings, it’s crucial for leaders to understand and accept the potential and value of decentralized influence.

Image attribution: Flickr user thomwoo

Tags: authority, boss, consulting, gig economy, Harold Jarche, hierarchical power models, influence, network era, network society, positional power, power| Posted in Facilitating Change, leadership | No Comments »