Alan Weiss - The Consulting Bible

Never.

A market plan will move you forward. A business plan will kill you, because you'll hit it.

Success means having an evolving marketing plan that you tend to daily. Since many aspects of it are passive, you can take long vacations and still have it work for you. But success doesn't ever mean having a business plan, since these are notoriously inaccurate and become dismal, self‐fulfilling prophesies.

If you plan to increase your revenues by 20 percent, or bring on four new clients, or expand your virtual presence, you may just do that—at the expense of having done much more! You don't want to increase revenue by 20 percent; you want to maximize revenue, maximize new client acquisition, and expand your web presence.

When I was being interviewed by the then‐CEO of State Street Bank for a $350,000 assignment, he said to me, “We've increased net new revenues by 22 percent compounded annually over my watch, the last five years. Why do we need you?” In the next three seconds I was going to make or not make a third of a million dollars for me.

I said to him, “How do you know it shouldn't have been 34 percent?”

He thought for just a moment, smiled, and said, “You're hired.”

Let's return to a familiar refrain: Real wealth is discretionary time . Money is merely fuel for that wealth. Ironically, many consultants chasing after success are like dogs chasing cars. They probably aren't going to catch the car and, if they do, what are they going to do with it? Ironically, too many people are busy earning so much money that they are actually eroding their wealth.

Now couple that premise with another tenet—TIAABB: there is always a bigger boat.

The point isn't to have the most; it's to have what you need for your purposes, assuming those purposes will grow as you do. Families, interests, philanthropies, friends, and other involvements usually demand more and elevated support as one matures. That's natural and expectable.

When we vacationed in St. Barth a few years ago, every major slip in the inner harbor was occupied: six yachts that had to be worth $25 million each tied up bumper to bumper like Hondas in a supermarket parking lot. Out in the bay were a dozen more that couldn't fit in the inner harbor, and couldn't be seen or appreciated .

There is always a bigger boat. The point is to be able to acquire the right boat for you at any given time and move on to new ones when appropriate for your needs, not someone else's needs or ego challenges to you.

I raise these attributes and philosophies of success early so that you can assimilate them as you learn the strategic and tactical approaches that follow in the chapters ahead. These are the generic parameters of success that I've observed and enjoyed over decades in this profession. The specific ones will depend on your lifestyle, your interests, and your intentions.

Finally, the best way to achieve success by any measure in the consulting profession is to be a generalist, not a specialist. The hackneyed refrain “Specialize or die” sounds like New Hampshire's license plate motto (“Live free or die”). Surely there is a middle ground!

My refrain is “Generalize and thrive.” It's a simple equation: The more prospective buyers you have, the more opportunity you have to close business. The more appealing you are to the more people, the more you will be sought.

Once you start adding adjectives to your value propositions, you continue to narrow your field until it will fit on the head of a pin. Which of these two value propositions is more appealing to more people?

1 We accelerate sales closing time while decreasing costs of acquisition.

2 We accelerate sales closing time while decreasing costs of acquisition in the New England, middle‐market, mortgage‐lending space.

The first will still interest the mortgage bankers. The second will interest only them.

Usually, future trends and projections are saved for the final chapter in a book. I'm changing that here, because if you're going to, in essence, prepare for the future in the chapters ahead, perhaps it would be a good idea to agree in advance on what the future might hold! As Socrates pointed out, “If one does not know to what port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”

So how do we tell the good winds and stay away from the doldrums?

Anyone who makes projections in a snapshot such as a book can be in serious trouble, since events can change so quickly. However, I'm going to mitigate that problem in two ways.

First, I am providing an appendix that is electronic on my site ( http://summitconsulting.com), which means I can update it regularly and you will have ongoing access to it. Second, I'm going to focus not on the price of gold or the future of alternative energy, but rather on processes and systems that will influence our clients and, hence, us, in very broad areas.

Organizations will be porous and non‐porous. That is, they'll have residual talent among a relatively small group of people, and transient talent depending on the priorities and initiatives at any given moment. Some people will work in the office, some at home, some will rotate; some will be W2 (permanent) and some 1099 (temporary).

This will also become global, just as you might talk from Lansing, Michigan, to a credit expert for Visa who's in Kuala Lumpur.

Human resources (HR) departments will continue to attenuate. Their transactional functions (benefits administration, relocation, and so forth) have been outsourced successfully over the past two decades. That leaves the transformational functions (change management, organizational redesign, succession planning, and so on), which, by and large, HR has been excruciatingly awful at fulfilling, following every loony fad and buzzword written by every academic and training company guru. If you don't believe that, then consider the market in front of you and around you. It's not being satisfied within the organizations that need you. And at this writing, I can't think of one HR executive promoted to CEO in a Fortune 500 company over the past decade. It has become a dead end. (That is a consistent fact since the first edition of this book.)

What it means for consultants: We are cost‐effective responses to transformational needs. We come, we improve, and we depart, with no benefits package, no vested political interests, and no intent on a corner office or retirement fund. Change management and organizational development skills will be in great demand, often best delivered by solo practitioners, rather than by outside firms descending with 50 people and creating a pseudo‐HR department!

I believe that Africa and some South American and Asian markets will grow tremendously. This includes technological advances, communication advances, remote learning and coaching, and English as a common language. There is a growing middle class and a growing appetite for entrepreneurial success and small business development. Fewer people view large corporations as “safety nets” in view of recent developments.

These emerging markets will be served far better by agile, independent consultants than the mammoth firms that want to descend on clients with 300 junior people who have to learn the business over months.

You don't grow in the consulting profession by getting better at what you've already done yesterday. You grow by anticipating tomorrow.

We're going to see major increases in volunteering because of retired people with time on their hands, the American ethic about helping others (much stronger here than in Europe, where government is expected to provide such help), and companies lending executives to nonprofits, community organizers, and other social movements. However, as I've said on every board on which I've ever served in the arts and charity, “Nonprofit doesn't mean nonprofessional.” The excuse “I'm just a volunteer” doesn't compensate for sloppy management, wasted money, and a disappointed constituency.