Blogging for Consultants

Looks like there is some sort of Consulting and Blogging meme going around. Guerilla Consultant has a well thought out argument what kind of consultant should be looking at blogging:

Blogging is the perfect Guerrilla Marketing tactic. You can reach a large audience quickly, and repeatedly. The cost of blogging is low, and the technology is simple to use. It's an excellent way to stay in touch with your existing clients and help prospective clients get to know you. 

With all that going for it as a marketing tool, shouldn't every consultant be blogging?

The marketing tools that work best are those that you can execute most effectively. If you get tongue-tied in front of an audience, it doesn't make sense for public speaking to be the centerpiece of your marketing program. That just leads to foot dragging, and the results aren't likely to be stellar either. 

The same point applies to blogs. Do you like to write--a lot? If you don't enjoy writing regularly, or you aren't very good at it, you may want to hold off on that blog. 

The technical aspects of blogging may be a no-brainer, but content drives the success of a blog. Can you feed your blog with content that your clients really want to read? Finding relevant content takes time. Even if you have plenty to say, you still have to draft, edit, and publish, all of which are time-consuming. 

You often hear bloggers say that blogs invite informal writing, and that typos and grammatical errors just come with the territory. Maybe that's okay for Max the Golden Retriever, but it's the kiss of death if you are marketing a high-end professional services business. Be sure you have the skills, time, and patience to write valuable stuff on a regular basis.

That's right folks. If the buyer of your services is out there searching on the internet (and who's not?) having a blog, specially if you like writing is great. But GC didn't get it fully right. For consultants who look great on camera, and those who can speak well have options too. Embedding videos and podcasting.

Blogs are just a tool. Embrace the tool to suit your strength. Build links with other consultants and pagerank will follow. Once PageRank comes, authority follows. 

However if you think your clients don't search for services that you offer on the internet you can possibly hold of from blogging.

Can you be sure that your client's junior who has been asked to compile a list of potential consultants does not, however?

Flattery will get you anywhere

Ooh ! This mail makes me feel so wanted

What's the bet that I am just one of many thousands who is getting this mail.

Still, I love the ego-massaging aspect! It's a mass mail and yet you feel "Wow! The president of BusinessWeek thinks I am somebody!"

Shows you how a little flattery will ensure people to do most things!

Do you use flattery? Does it work?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Keith Fox, President, BusinessWeek
Date: Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 11:19 PM
Subject: An invitation to join the BusinessWeek Market Advisory Board
To: Gautam Ghosh

Dear Gautam, As a valuable member of the BusinessWeek community, your input matters. That's why I'm pleased to extend this invitation to you to join our exclusive research panel, the BusinessWeek Market Advisory Board. We seek the voices of opinion leaders, like you, to shed light on critical business issues. When you join, you'll become part of a select group that weighs in on various topics through periodic online surveys. Your unique perspective will help us better understand how current trends are driving change in today's business environment. It only takes a few minutes to join, and membership offers benefits such as access to exclusive research papers, newsletters, and sweepstakes opportunities. Please click here to sign up. Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing your thoughts as a member of the BusinessWeek Market Advisory Board. Sincerely, Keith Fox President BusinessWeek

The role of trainer

On a training e-group there was a discussion whether it is correct or proper for trainers to use the group as a resource bank to ask for presentations on various soft-skill topics.

This got me to think about the role of a trainer and I posted this email to the group:

This dependence on "slides" still means that we trainers are on a "Teaching" mode.... the sage on the stage

To really achieve learning amongst adult learners I would suggest using the different aspects of adult learning like active experimentation, reflective observation, concrete experience and abstract conceptualisation (ref: Kolb's learning theory)

Only then can we move from a "teaching mode" to a "facilitator of learning", being the "guide by the side"

People in a training room have collectively more wisdom and learning than the trainer, and the true role of a trainer is to get them to express it and share it with each other and crystallise it. A trainer is a catalyst.

When you try to teach adults, they will never learn

The Informal Organization

Well, we all knew it intuitively but it's good to see it confirmed by a large survey. The question is, so what? What will organizations do differently if they see this report?

A new survey of American workers confirms what many have long suspected: Informal relationships, rather than formal management structures, are where work really gets done, problems are solved and companies gain competitive advantage.

The “informal organization” is also what keeps people upbeat about work. According to the survey conducted by Katzenbach Partners LLC, a management consulting firm that works with leading global companies to achieve breakthroughs in organizational performance, the informal organization gives workers confidence that they can solve problems and the encouragement that they contribute to their company’s success.

“The lesson from this research is that the informal organization – the way work gets done outside formal organizational charts and processes– is real, and that employees recognize it and value it,” said Zia Khan, a Principal with Katzenbach Partners, and co-author of a major upcoming report on the informal organization. “The question is, does management also value it? Our research shows that the informal organization is a strategic asset executives need to actively manage instead of leaving to chance.”

The Age of Self-Promotion

You might not realise this reading this blog, but I am quite a bit of an introvert. I find meeting people and interacting with them with any amount of engagement quite strenuous and it is something that drains my energy.

I don't know if that has something to do with it, but the reality is that I find the idea od self-promotion quite obnoxious. Today on Linkedin Answers I posted a question, and when someone mailed me that he found the question a "lead generation trap" I promptly took the question down, even though I didn't find any clause on linkedin that says that using answers for such a purpose is discouraged. It says in fact "if you are asking a question in order to recruit or advertise, or announcing your own job search, you must indicate that while creating the question with the checkboxes provided."

However, on a personal level, I could not even bear it that one person thought I came across as self promoting. Which is why I took the question down.

So when Tom Peters posts about Donald Trump here and here, and ask does "Excellence in 'Brand You' Development" trumps (pun intended I suppose ;-) skill?" I surely wish it does not. However, in today's age we always see that any kind of promotion makes even a mediocre skilled person do much better. Take the example of David Beckham in football (or soccer, if you are in the US). Sure, Beckham is talented, but the rewards he gets are not commensurate with his skills as a player alone. In fact more talented football players than him exist, but are not as famous as he is.

So is this age as unfair as the ages that preceded it? What is objective skill and talent?

Should I shamelessly self-promote myself or not? Oh don't bother answering. I can't.

The Indian who holds two Guinness records

How many Guinness world record holders do you know? These are extraordinary people who do not reach just personal milestones but become the best in the world in a very concrete sense.

I know just one such person and he holds not just one but now two Guinness world records, and thereby becoming the first Indian to do so (not counting sportsmen I presume :-)

I met Sqdn Leader Jayasimha of Hyderabad at a recent trainers retreat organised by a leading firm. He holds the Guinness record for memory having remembered a series of 200 random items in the same order, and recently made a record as he spoke for a mind-boggling 111 hours continuously, starting from 24th and finishing on 30th March, with breaks of only ten to fifteen minutes in between.

Heartiest congratulations, sir !

Saying No

Knowing something intellectually and actually doing it are two different things.

When starting off on our own, I had anticipated that there would be a time when I would have to say no to a client. I thought I was ready for it. You know the whole routine of "You are as defined by what you don't do as by what you do" kind of thinking.

So when last week someone called from one of the world's largest IT firms if we could come and meet them in connection with a 2-3 hour game to conduct for their 80 developers in May, I realised that while it was do-able it was not something I wanted to be known for.

But I kept off trying to say no.

I reasoned and I justified to myself. "Oh I'll meet them and get to reframe their problem and make it a OD consulting intervention" was my dominant thought. "Even if I can't, I can always walk away and I would have made some connections in this large IT firm for future business development"

In my heart of hearts, I knew I was fooling myself. So today after a week of dithering I mailed the lady who had called me saying that the need does not fall in our expertise area and we would love to work with them in the future on OD and HR consulting needs.

Yes, knowing it and doing it is a totally different kettle of fish, I discovered again :-)

How do you say no to clients and customers ?

On emotions

It's a pleasure to welcome a friend Ishita to the blogosphere, and her first post is about acknowledging emotions in the workplace.

As she writes that bit about swiping one's card and leaving emotions outside is so true in organizations,

that's why words like Human "resources" and "talent" management are such buzzwords

people seem to shy away from calling employees as "people"

what has changed from the industrial era where people were called "hands" ? As she says:

We hire a complete human being into an organization. One human being, who is complete with competence, capability, experience and emotions. We expect several such complete human beings to stay and work together in a confined space (at times very large confined spaces) for several hours and yet we preach – “Don’t bring emotions into the workplace”

On the other hand, most of the workplace conflicts arise out of different emotions having being expressed at the wrong place. Stands true not only for negative emotions, but also for positive emotions.

A key skill for anyone growing in the corporate jungle, as I have posted earlier, is recognizing emotions (both of self and others), managing it and expressing it appropriately.

My Media sources

Nimmy tagged me with this media tag meme that's been going around in the KM circles. Hmm, trust KM people to want to know how people keep themselves informed, heh, right?

So here goes...

• Books: I am always ready to devour a book. Any book. I was brought up on a diet of fiction from childhood and it always is great to get lost in imaginary worlds created by others. Recently at a second hand book exhibition I got some great Le Carre novels at throwaway prices, and the Dubliners by James Joyce. In the recent past I've mostly read fiction by Indian authors like Amitav Ghosh (his Circle of Reason is my all time favorite), Jhumpa Lahiri (both the Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake were amazing). I got hooked on to IWE (Indian Writing in English) after reading Midnight's Children in 1995 :-). It is also great to read a book that is about a place you know by someone you can call a friend too. On the non-fiction front I stick to the classical management books. Drucker, Tom Peters, Ram Charan. A recent buy has been Ram Charan's "Know-How", am still to read that :-) On KM, Nonaka's classic "The Knowledge Creating Company" has been a big influence. As well as Intellectual Capital by Tom Stewart. Other great books that have been big influences has been The Tao of Physics by Capra, Chaos by Gleick, Sensemaking by Weick, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Genome. Oh before I forget, I guess graphic novels have to go in this section. I loved "The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller ...am a big Batman fan :-)
  
• Communication: My preferred mode of communication is by email. I do not like the intrusiveness of the phone unless it is by people close to me. I am not a big IM user too. Can't really express myself with clarity and with dodgy internet connections. SMS texting is a good compromise between the phone and IM. But my vote goes for the email anyday over the others. Hey, but that's just me.
  
• TV: I am a eclectic TV watcher. Mostly ESPN-Star Sports, CNN-IBN, NDTV, CNBC-TV18. Love Storyboard when I get the chance on what's happening in the advertising and media industry. Also like to catch the gadgets and tech programs on the channels even though I can't buy anything :-) Love "No Reservations" on Travel and Living. Always wanted a job where I could go around eating in exotic countries and get paid for it :-)
  
• Films. Am hooked to predominantly Hindi movies. The whole spectrum, from Nagesh Kukunoor to Aditya Chopra. Though I'll gladly miss a Barjatya movie anyday :-) Am looking forward to the Namesake's movie release (there's even a blog about it). In English movies I like the action movies with some kind of plot. No Vin Diesel for me. I'd rather see a Denzel Washington thriller. Haven't seen too much of the world cinema, though I loved the trilogy of Kieslowski's called Red, White and Blue
  
• Magazines - I read magazines when I am travelling. Outlook, India Today, Business Today, Time are my airport buys. Also keep a tab on what Training and T+D are saying.
  
• Music - Am not a big music buff. 1980s English music stuff. And Kishore Kumar.
  
• Radio - Only get to hear the FM when I am driving. Radio City is the cure for bad traffic in Hyderabad.
  
• The Web - Google search. Bloglines. Blogger.com. Ryze. Linkedin. Orkut. Recruiting.com. Google Reader. Flickr. Wikipedia. Wikimapia. The web is my virtual location. I keep reading most from here. This is where I respond and react to my various media stimuli.
  

So in turn I am tagging these folks (also to check if they really read this blog ;-) :

• Anuradha
• Bill Ives
• Michael Keleman
• Dina Mehta
• Sucharith Menon

Hey, anyone who reads it can take this meme forward too !!

The future of college recruitment

I was flattered when Curt Schafer of the National Association of Colleges and Employers in the US approached me to contribute an article on how college students and employers will match ten years from now.

Well, I hardly consider myself a futurist (did you know that most futurists get it wrong?) or an expert in the area of campus recruitment. However as an interested observer of the process, I had fun writing the article and I hope Curt's organization feels it adds some value. What is interesting is that all the articles would be compiled for the NACE annual conference at New York City in May.

If any of you are planning on attending the conference, I would love to hear from you.

How to ask for help

I'm starting to switch off from conversations where someone wants me to help them.

Don't get me wrong.

I like helping people. Heck, I like it so much that I made it my job :-)

*Rant begins*

However, there is one fundamental difference when you are paying me for my help, and when you want me to help you without payment.

That difference is, when I am being paid, it's my job to understand your needs. However, if you are seeking someone's help and are not paying them for it, the onus lies on you to articulate your needs.

For example, take a look at an email someone posted on a training emailing list:

Till date, i was a Sales Training Manager, recently i am given the
responsibility to handle all training fucntions of my organisation.

Can anyone help me in the following regards.

*1) Training Needs*
a) Training Need identification format
b) How to prepare Training Need identification form?
c) What are the things required to be considered to prepare the same?
d) Kindly provide me with some sample Training Need identification for

I mean, these are topics on which folks have written tonnes of books. This chap needs help on email? I can guarantee that either someone on the list will guide him to the most basic training textbook, or (more likely!) he won't get any response.

When you ask for help, specially on any online forum, make your needs clear. Don't ask questions for which there can be 2 pages long answers. Questions that will help you get answers are the "Who" and "What" variety "What books are great reference for Training Needs Analysis?" or "Who are the best trainers for Consultative Sales Skills programs?" will evoke an answer.

If your question is more complex, give as much of a background as you can without becoming boring. Yes, folks, that means you should have some great writing skills.

Unfortunately seeing what passes off for emails on some egroups and on online forum like Orkut I am starting to lose hope :(

And the most basic of all: Check if the person you are asking help from is the person who can help you in anyway. There is nothing as irritating as asking "Oh, you don't do that? Then what exactly do you do?"

Rant over.