It’s pretty common for an experienced consultant to see a problem or a project and know exactly what needs to be done. For some, the way to go seems “simple.”
Keep in mind that a project that looks simple to you may seem like scaling Mt. Everest barefoot to your client. You’ve got to take time to bring clients along in their understanding at the pace that’s right for them. Don’t assume that what’s easy for you to grasp is the same for them.
I interviewed David Maxfield, co-author of Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success, for Management Consulting News. Maxfield is vice president of research at VitalSmarts, a corporate training company that helps clients with operational improvements. The team at VitalSmarts also wrote the bestsellers, Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations.
Maxfield and his team studied the science of personal change through their work with over 5,000 people. I asked Maxfield what he learned from his extensive research, why change is so hard, and the first step anyone can take toward successful change.
Get the podcast interview with David Maxfield.
I like it when a book makes a bold promise. Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success starts off with this one:
“If you apply the principles and tactics we outline, you can rapidly, profoundly, and sustainably change your own behavior (even long-standing bad habits). And by learning how to change your own behavior, you can dramatically improve results in most any area of life.”
Five people wrote this book, which is probably a story in itself. But then, these guys are used to teamwork. Before Change Anything, they wrote three New York Times bestsellers that you may have heard of: Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer.
One of the five authors, Kerry Patterson, wrote a six-part series about crucial conversations for my newsletter, Management Consulting News. And I interviewed Al Switzler, co-author of Influencer.
This latest book, which offers a research-based approach to making personal change, suggests that we have less control over our behavior than we believe. But we can control the six influences that govern our behavior. And that’s how we can make change happen.
The authors lay to rest the myth that willpower is all we need to make a change in our lives. We need more than grit and determination to alter behaviors, and the book offers four strategies to do that.
The book is full of interesting, well-written case studies about people who’ve made dramatic changes in their lives, from shaking a bad habit to making career changes. More than anything, the book gives you a roadmap for making just about any change you decide on. And who couldn’t use that every now and then?
I liked the book so much that I recorded a podcast with one of the book’s authors, David Maxfield. I’ll let you know when it’s available.
This book’s a keeper.
We all face complex issues that demand our best thinking and ideas, whether the issues arise at work or in our personal lives. And most of us use an assortment of techniques to generate useful ideas, from brainstorming and what-if questions to mind mapping.
These techniques work. But what you do when you’re not trying to generate a big idea helps the most when you eventually need that breakthrough. How do you prepare for the time when you need your creativity the most?
New ideas are born through the resorting and recombination of your existing experiences and knowledge. So allowing your mind to have new, unfamiliar experiences creates more possibilities to consider when you call on your brain to hatch new ideas.
Here are three ways to help you prime the pump for breakthrough ideas.
Break Your Patterns
Open your brain to new experiences and possibilities by simply changing parts of your daily routine. Maybe you vary your exercise session, take a new route to work, or read a book by a new author, in an unfamiliar genre. You could visit a museum you’ve never been to, vary your habits at work, or talk to someone who works in an entirely different field.
Clear Out Distractions
Ask anyone when the best ideas pop up and you often hear, “in the shower.” Sometimes people get hit with a great idea when they’re walking, washing dishes, or just sitting quietly. When your mind calms down, new ideas emerge.
These days, it’s tough to get those quiet moments, except in the shower. Give yourself the chance to calm your mind during the day. Don’t feel the need to respond to every email or text within minutes. Set aside times during the day to handle email and other tasks. Don’t let them suck up every free moment you have between daily activities.
Embrace the Unknown
Each time we advance a new idea, our minds leap into a potential new future. For some, that’s scary. If you want to generate breakthrough ideas, you must be at ease with the uncertainty of a new future. Among the things that help develop your comfort with the unknown are travel to new places, learning a new skill, such as a new language, or trying things you’ve never experienced.
Most of what we do to create breakthrough ideas happens long before we try to generate those ideas. If you can be systematic about changing up your patterns, managing distractions, and being comfortable with uncomfortable situations, you’ll be primed for your next brainstorming session.
I’m amazed when consultants tell me that they don’t like (or want) to sell. Some seem to think that the whole sales thing is completely beneath them. Then there are others who believe that they aren’t any good at selling. My reaction to both views is, you’re kidding, right?
For the reluctant seller (and there are fewer of them than some people think), I have one question: If you don’t like selling, how much do you loathe your work as a consultant?
I could understand resistance to selling if your job was to cold call people at dinner time and use high-pressure sales tactics to convert them to a new cell phone plan.
But your job is to help clients bring about change. You usually have to do that in an unfamiliar environment, working under tight deadlines, and facing resistance from the very people who need to change.
To overcome those odds, you spend a lot of time selling ideas and proposed actions to those who don’t want to change–or worse, to those who are indifferent. No matter how good an idea is, or how receptive clients are to it, you have to sell it.
The point is that if you can’t sell your ideas to others, your projects (and career) will hit the rocks. The simple reality is that to sell your services, you must be great at selling ideas. And many consultants do that exceptionally well.
Sometimes we already have the answers to our toughest problems, and don’t even know it. For consultants, the answer to the sales challenge is not so much about the mastery of specific sales techniques, useful as they may be.
If you feel that you need to improve as a seller, you don’t have to look very far for clues on how to do that. Just think about the selling (and re-selling) you do in your work with clients to make change happen in their organizations.
And if you really don’t like to sell, you’re probably not satisfied being a consultant either.
Most of us (myself included) have seen or been involved with a massive project flame out. It’s never pretty to watch a project team’s high hopes for success degenerate into tension, trepidation, and resignation.
You can point to the usual suspects that wreak havoc on any project–like shifting scope, tenacious resistance to change, or lapses in leadership. I’m sure you could expand this list. We know (at least in our heads) why projects fail, but the hard-learned lessons of blown time lines and canceled projects don’t seem to be taking root. The project failure rate is still higher than anyone should expect given our long history of doing projects.
If you want to improve your odds of a successful outcome, improve the quality of the questions you ask your team–especially as the project nears a milestone or completion. Be sure your questions get below the surface of key issues because research shows that people are less likely to reveal negative information as a project nears completion.
Roll out your best interviewing and diagnostic skills as your project approaches the end to help your team get over the last project hurdles.
If you’ve worked on complex projects, you’ve probably heard the recommendation to start an effort by going after short-term wins…the so-called “low hanging fruit.”
Quick wins, the reasoning goes, allow a project team to deliver some early incremental benefits, establishing momentum and setting the stage for success with more complex changes down the road. On the surface, this approach sounds reasonable. In reality, it falls flat for two important reasons.
First, many people respond negatively to incremental change. I’ve seen managers bicker for weeks over things like small changes in the size of their offices, how they report expenses, and policies about company-sponsored subscriptions. When the stakes are low, some people cling to entrenched positions until forced to change. That makes it very difficult to implement small changes.
Second, starting small is often an invitation to push issues that really matter to the back burner. It’s always easy to find reasons for postponing large-scale change–the timing isn’t right, internal politics aren’t favorable, or too many other things are going on. Once you accept such rationales for delays, you can end up bogged down indefinitely on small-scale changes.
The inevitable result of pursuing incremental change is that external events will eventually force an organization to undertake the large-scale change that it put off. But, by then, the organization will have lost the luxury of time, good planning, and proper execution for the change program it really needs. Too often, the results are disastrous.
For example, years before the company’s bankruptcy, General Motors executives knew exactly what they needed to do to save the business. They failed to make the hard choices before the market forced them to, and investors paid the price.
If you have a choice, go big with the changes you know are essential. Don’t ignore the “low hanging fruit” entirely, but don’t make those changes the focus of your project.
A harsh reality of selling professional services is that clients can always find more reasons to say no to proposed changes than to say yes. As you work through the sales process, anticipate resistance to change from at least the sources below.
A convincing case for change addresses these seven organizational barriers:
| Barrier | What You’ll Hear | What to Do |
| Inertia: Predictable resistance to any change. | “Why should we do this now?” | Contrast present to proposed future in terms of potential value. |
| Indifference: Failure to take ownership of the issue/problem. | “Not sure why I’m involved, but I’ll go along if I’m told to.” | Point out the impact of the present conditions and ramifications for individual stakeholders. |
| Cynicism: Doubt that proposed change will do any good. | “We tried this before and the effort fell flat.” | Illustrate the plan for achieving results. |
| Risk: Perception that proposed change has too much financial, operational, or personal risk. | “You want to do what?” | Acknowledge all reasonable risks and describe your approach to mitigating them. |
| Cost: Concerns over known and unforeseen cost of the proposed service. | “There are just too many other budget priorities.” | Create a compelling case for what the organization will gain. |
| Priorities: Belief that other projects, initiatives are threatened. | “So, we just pile this on everything else?” | Discuss strategies for managing disruption and managing the project. |
| Effort: Perception that the undertaking is too complex to complete. | “We’d have to hire an army to get this done.” | Offer examples of how you have handled similar work in the past. |
Sometimes a really good idea, like your latest sales proposal, gets derailed by the client for what seems to be no good reason. You may hear that the proposal was shelved because of timing, lack of resources, or budget constraints.
But it may actually be that the rule of loud noise was the reason for the loss. In most sales situations, you will find someone who doesn’t want what you’re selling no matter how much value you’ve promised. And those who don’t want something are often much louder in their opposition than the proponents.
In the face of strong opposition, some clients will give in to the pressure and stick with the status quo instead of getting into a drawn out political battle. Or they may find a different way to accomplish the same objective. No matter what they choose to do, it often leaves the seller empty-handed.
Part of the services sales process is to form, in collaboration with your client, a network of essential supporters. It is rarely enough to sell complex services to a single buyer. You’ll need broad support across the organization so that you can effectively head off the naysayers.
Do you know who’s making the loudest noises?
I often hear consultants bemoan clients’ resistance to implementing recommendations. Most often, client reticence means that you have failed to make a compelling enough case for change.
A common reason for that failure is how you interpret and present the facts of the client’s situation. This month in The Guerrilla Consultant, I offer some advice for using the power of facts to help clients understand and follow your recommendations.
Don’t get tripped up on your facts. Read the September issue of The Guerrilla Consultant.
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Michael McLaughlin is an advisor to organizations and individuals who offer high-value services to their clients. Read more.. |
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