Manichaeanism of the most feeble sort

When a consultant is sifting through his client's problems in real time there is an impulse towards diagnosis that is hard to resist.  After all, we are paid to be smart, which really means that we're paid to be smarter than everyone who has already looked at the issue.  The easiest way to appear smart is to think quickly: Even if I arrive at the same conclusion that you guys did, I got there in a fraction of the time and all on my own.  Impressive, huh?  Except that we've still only arrived at the same conclusion, which means that nothing whatsoever has been achieved.

The next trick that most consultants pull is some sort of reorganisation of the facts.  The SWOT analysis is a great way of restating everything we already know but feeling smart about it because we've identified some polar opposites: strengths v. weaknesses and opportunities v. threats.  It all feels very honest and important and forthright: We are strong and decisive people!  We aren't afraid to name our weaknesses!  We face down our threats and categorise them!  Except that in order for a SWOT properly to work every relevant issue needs to end up in a quadrant and only one quadrant at that.  Remember that dirty feeling everyone got when we finally agreed that the sales team was both a strength and a weakness?

Outside of the IT department binary categorisation is rarely your friend.  Polarities feel cool because they remind us of all those epic, Manichaean stories of childhood where good triumphs over evil and where you're either with us or agin us.  But sooner or later every binary analysis collapses under the weight of its own metaphor.  Sure, internal staff and external customers are kind of opposites as are debtors and creditors but seeking meaningful alignment between these four ideas is insane.  Which is not to say that I haven't seen someone attempt this very feat.  Right before a long overdue coffee break it was.

There is a point in any meeting where we start looking for a way of arranging things: Jim Halpert's failed attempt to lead the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin is mired in an endless list of pros and cons.  Oftentimes the consultant's job starts by putting a stop to the oversimplification: we live in a complex world and as adults we should maybe use that fact as a starting point.

Natural, complicated, simple

The cricket writer Peter Roebuck committed suicide a few weeks ago in South Africa.  His death is rightly mourned by the legion fans of his astute and erudite writing.  As he taught English at my school and lived in the boarding house, despite being an especially mediocre cricketer I had quite a bit to do with him.

Of all the tributes that have been written my favourite is by Ed Smith, the former Kent and England player who writes for the times.  In it he recounts some advice Roebuck had written to him years before: -

A player goes through three stages - natural, complicated, simple - not many reach that last stage but the journey cannot be avoided

As ever cricket acts as a mirror to all of life.  As a consultant my job is to usher people and organisations to that final state and I've learned not to trust anyone who declares with relish that some process or situation is necessarily complicated.

I especially like the idea of an unavoidable journey to simplicity.

Why consultants aren't popular

I spent much of the week working with a team of experienced and largely successful salespeople.  As my job was to change them in some way they rightly resented me from the off.  Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, said it best: -

People hate change and with good reason.  Change makes us stupider, relatively speaking.  Change adds new information to the universe; information that we don’t know.  Our knowledge – as a percentage of all the things that can be known – goes down a tick every time something changes.

And frankly, if we’re talking about a percentage of the total knowledge in the universe, most of us aren't that many basis points superior to our furniture to begin with.  I hate to wake up in the morning only to find that the intellectual gap between me and my credenza has narrowed.  That’s no way to start the day.

On the other hand, change is good for the people who are causing the change.  They understand the new information that is being added to the universe.  They grow smarter in comparison to the rest of us.  This is reason enough to sabotage their efforts.  I recommend sarcasm with a faint suggestion of threat.

The Dilbert Principle (1996)

The cliches imply that unless you 'embrace change' and 'face the fear' and 'seek out new experiences' and so on then you're some sort of loserish Luddite.  This is offensive towards anyone who aspires to be good enough at her job to get paid fairly so that she can channel her enthusiasms elsewhere.  Like raising a family.  As a friend of my father's used to say: -

You can't argue with decency

Every time I walk into a new room my first task is to overcome the natural, rightful resentment of the decent people whose behaviour I've been paid to change.

Subcontractors II

More pan-European training projects = more non-English delivery = more hassles with bilingual subcontractors.  Good problems to have but problems nonetheless.

Last week it was a 'pilot' with a German team in Munich.  The rub was that this time the client sourced their own external trainer to deliver my programme.  Nice guy, 20+ years in sales training and pharma industry experience before that.  Was it ever going to be a decent fit?  Not even close.

Why is it that no 3rd-party trainer can stick to the script?  Every one of them is somehow compelled to 'add additional value' with some banal personal touch right at the beginning of my programme.  There appears to be two main reasons for this: -

1. The trainer needs to start with some element of content that he knows and trusts before diving into all this new stuff belonging to the pushy Australian taking notes at the back of the room
2. Putting his own spin on things is the best way for the trainer to make himself irreplaceable

As the guy who has to deliver a product that's replicable in any European context your motivation for dicking around with my stuff is pretty much irrelevant to me but even so reason 1. is more excusable than 2.  There's a case to be made for you getting comfortable in your own skin as you start, whereas trying to make yourself irreplaceable is always going to piss me off.  And I'm always going to have enough influence over the roll-out for you to want to keep me onside.

What really confounds me is the hackneyed nature of the stuff they crowbar into the precious first minutes of my carefully crafted programme.  Lately it's been decades-old vision intended to soften up the participants with some message about how nobody-knows-everything-so-everybody-can-learn-something-from-today or all-the-best-sportspeople-still-practice-the-basics or whatever.  It's a video for Christ's sake; the sort of one-way stimulus that hasn't worked in a high school or university in years.

By introducing himself in this way the trainer is making a performance error so basic that no stand-up comic makes it after even a few months: you're apologising for being there.  Worse, not only are you starting on the defensive by pleading a case for being listened to, you're outsourcing that rationalisation to a fucking video.

At the heart of this rant is a recognition that few trainers see the world as I do.  I doubt that my oh-so-experienced German colleague considers himself a performer.  Which might be why he made so many annoying technical errors such as sitting down whilst speaking and allowing the focus in the room to splinter during group discussions.  To be fair he only lost me completely when he introduced his collection of novelty sound effects (motorbike starting, jet taking off, air raid siren).

I'm guessing that even in German there's a difference between amusing and bemusing your audience.

David Heinemeier-Hansson

Yesterday I went along to the Regent Street Apple Store to listen to David Heinemeier-Hansson speak.  I'm not a programmer so until yesterday he was someone who existed only on the edge of my radar.  This was the descriptor for the talk: -

David is the developer behind the hugely successful software Ruby on Rails and Basecamp. Join him as he discusses 37signals’ business manifesto, co-written with Jason Fried, Rework: Change the Way You Work Forever.

It was a free talk so that he could spruik his GTD book so what was there to lose?  As with any other free event nothing but my time.

Even an hardened stand-up would label the lecture theatre at the back of the Apple Store 'a tough room'; substandard acoustics and an audience full of nerds accessing the free WiFi but that doesn't begin to explain the underwhelming non-event that followed.  A profound inability to engage with the audience, an absence of stagecraft and a monotony of delivery all gave the impression that the speaker was focused on nothing more than his final PowerPoint slide and the customary yet desultory round of applause.

Leaving aside the props that Heinemeier-Hansson gets for being sickeningly fluent in English, he wasted my time.  The content of the talk was not so much 'how to improve my personal productivity' but rather 'how to behave if I worked at 37signals'.  I was less likely to buy the book at the end of the talk that at the beginning.

When will people realise that all public speaking is performing?

Train-the-Trainer 1

Train-the-Trainer sounds like such a simple, logical idea: -

Because of language issues or the overall scale of the project or whatever, doesn't it make sense for you to just transfer the skills to deliver the programme to our people and we'll take it from there?

It's very hard to argue against this logic yet it has some wide-ranging implications for my business that I sometimes struggle to fully appreciate.  Perhaps its because of my background as a performer that I am most comfortable delivering my stuff directly to the end user.  My job is to facilitate behavioural change and it's easier to do when I can look in the eyes of the person whose behaviour is meant to change.

The usual analogy for Train-the-Trainer projects is that of the children's party game 'Chinese Whispers' (aka 'Telephone') and it's hard to dispute.  Information mutates as it passes along a chain and the longer the chain the greater the mutation.  As the supplier of the original content I find myself trying to second guess a raft of possible issues faced by a deliverer who isn't me.  This 'second guessing' must account for an astonishingly wide set of variables: -

• Does that person share the underlying values assumed by the programme?
• How competent is the trainer as a presenter?  As a facilitator of discussion?
• My programmes always feature drama-based elements.  Will the trainer enthusiastically embrace, half-heartedly attempt or drop them altogether? 
• Can I assume that the programme will be given the right amount of time?  Will my room layout and other staging requirements be adhered to?  Will the handouts be properly prepared?
• How hard will the trainer fight to ensure that these project parameters are in place?

The integrity of my programme can be compromised in many ways and I have to do what I can protect my creation.  My first instinct is to proliferate documentation; try to anticipate every possible problem and script a remedy.  The obvious problem here is that I'm assuming that the trainer in question even cares enough to read my carefully constructed notes.  Another unhealthy byproduct is that my value proposition is now attached to what I write rather than what I say aloud or even what I think.

A better solution is to engender an attitude.   Instead of offering a set of mechanical solutions, if I can instill a passionate belief in the programme then the trainer is much more likely to allocate enough preparation time to deliver it well and also to fight to ensure that parameters such as programme length are kept.

I do this by investing heavily in my own branding throughout the Train-the-Trainer.  I need to endow my work with as much value as I can so that the participants leave knowing that I'm trusting them with something precious to me.  At the close I openly admit that I'm like a nervous parent sending a child out into the world for the first time and that I need each of them to do the right thing by my brand.

Always endowing our ideas with value is a big step towards ensuring that they are treated with respect.

Interpreters

In my last post I owned up to being 'depressingly monolingual'.  I envy anyone who speaks multiple languages and deeply regret not studying harder in Latin and French classes at high school.

It is remarkably easy to thrive in a global consulting environment speaking only English.  I make all the typical tourists' effort of learning 'please', 'thank you', 'hello', 'yes' and 'no'.  As most of my clients have a stated policy that all multinational meetings are conducted in 'business English' this is rightly recognised as a pretty minimalist courtesy.

However, when I'm working with sales representatives I sometimes come up against a genuine language barrier.  Salespeople conduct their calls in local language and often only the ambitious bother learning English.  This is more likely to be the case in the major northern Asian countries, China, Japan and South Korea.  In such circumstances I have to work with an interpreter.  A piece of advice: -

Be cognizant of the interpreter's fatigue level and manage it

This is blindingly obvious when you think about it because interpreting is such an exhausting job.  Everyone else in the room is speaking freely (and quickly) in their native language and the interpreter has to continuously rearticulate every thought as eloquently as he can.  And because interpreters are meant to be unobstrusive they are often instinctively 'low status' personalities (see previous posts), but this also means he'll never interrupt the flow of conversation to say he needs a break.  

A bilingual trainee in Beijing put it like this: "As the day went on he got worse and worse at translating your jokes."

All of the usual rules about managing fatigue (ie introduce new concepts as early in the day as possible) apply, only more so.  Keep a close eye on your interpreter from lunchtime onwards and if he looks tired assume he is and call a break.  Don't bother asking him directly because he'll most likely wave you away and soldier on to the overall detriment of your session.

Translation services

Over the coming weeks I am delivering facilitated workshops to non-English speaking teams in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Korea.  As such I have recently spent a lot of time working with translation services getting my documents rewritten in the local language.  I find this work quite boring and very time-consuming.  It also presents some quite specific challenges.

Timelines

Translation forces me to focus on supporting documentation ahead of actual delivery requirements (ie my facilitated workshop).  This disrupts my 'project rhythm'; that internalised sequence of tasks that experience has taught me must each be completed a certain number of days ahead of the delivery date.

Furthermore, as a small-shop consultant I pride myself on flexibility, being able to nimbly adjust to last minute changes from the client more easily than my larger competitors.  Translation timelines threaten this flexibility and therefore my competitive edge feels reduced.

Who To Use

There is massive variability in the quality of translation services both between countries and within a given market.  Cost is only a rough indicator of quality at best.  Being depressingly monolingual means I can't assess the quality of the work ahead of the workshop itself and so this is one area where I don't necessarily advocate the use of other small-shop suppliers.  We've all laughed at those books of signs that have been badly translated into English and I don't want to be the butt of a joke going in the other direction when I flash up a particularly vital PowerPoint slide.

One answer to this would be find a proofreader to check for clangers but that adds to both cost and timeline and now I'm sourcing two new suppliers instead of one.  Instead I prefer to go with a single, larger organisation that is more likely to stand behind its reputation.

When I'm working in a brand new country there is the additional challenge of finding anyone at all so there is always the temptation to use some one recommended by the client.  The upside of this approach is that the risk of poor quality work is somehow spread ("Hey, it was your suggestion...").

One downside is that the recommendation may be personal not institutional.  Unwittingly I may have been put in touch with someone's underemployed brother-in-law, resulting in poor quality work and even less leverage over my supplier than usual.  An even bigger threat is that the translator is loyal to the client not me thus creating a nasty triangular relationship with the risk that my IP is shared without my knowledge or permission.  Of course every translator signs a confidentiality agreement but I still feel exposed, especially when working in Asia.

There are two solutions: -

1. I can deliver documentation in English and hand over all further responsibility to the client.  This absolves me of any responsibility whatsoever for quality, however, I have lost additional control over my product and there may be a sense that the client somehow 'owns' more of my IP than the license indicates.  That said, I am okay with this approach in Europe
   
2. I find a 3rd-party supplier via my own network (other suppliers and even old clients) and establish an entirely separate relationship with the translation service.  I also insist in physical delivery of documents with no PDF files released to the actual client.  From bitter experience I have learned to go this way in Asia and in developing markets

I have worked hard to create a global presence in my business niche and I genuinely enjoy working with new teams in new parts of the world.  Resolving translation issues ahead of time means that I can spend my time in-country concentrating on similarities not differences.

Status 3 (facilitation)

This is my third post on the idea of 'status' as explored by Keith Johnstone in his book Impro.

As well as high and low status 'players', Keith also identifies 'status experts' who raise and lower their status at will.  Why do this?  Because low status is better for gaining information efficiently whereas high status is better for giving commands.

I remember an account by one of Margaret Thatcher's aides that sums this up perfectly.  When she wanted to know something of you, you felt like the most important person in the room.  The information was simply sucked from you.  Then in a heartbeat she would reassert her authority and issue you with orders to be followed without further debate.  This ability to alter status at will is a trait of all good leaders.  Some do it instinctively but many more have learnt it over time.

I think that facilitation requires something similar.  My definition for facilitation is as follows: - 

"Facilitation is the art of helping experienced people articulate intelligent conclusions"

I am not paid to simply tell people what to think and do in a high status manner but rather to usher them towards the 'correct' conclusion.  This requires me to: -

• Provide the group with new stimulus (requiring me to be high status)
• Get them to articulate an assessment of that stimulus in the light of what they know already (I have to be low status)
• Then insist that certain activities and exercises are undertaken so as to enact behavioral change (high status again)
• Finally I need them to voluntarily commit to applying what they've learned in my session in 'the real world' (low)
  

As an external consultant I don't have the luxury of demanding a commitment to change.  Instead I have to earn that commitment.  Yet even when people recognise that I'm deliberately altering my status to achieve this goal they're usually happy to go along with it.

Status isn't a 'trick' to be pulled so much as an insight into human interactions to be understood.