Term: "geeks on a parachute" A few geeks who drop in and make win happen. (Usually a preparatory team to impress the client with a fast result so that the company may be thought of favorably in the future.
It's crucial to make good informal connections with clients so that you will be able to move past your differing technical opinions with good will- whereas if the technical argument is your only interaction, neither of you will feel connected to the other, or very happy about them.
"Get a Linkedin and connect with everyone in this room."
Here, we listen to a recounting of a cocksure young consultant's first two projects and the mistakes that we should avoid repeating. Lesson: don't interrupt clients when they're talking.
Complexities of engagement with the client:
- there is usually internal conflict in the client company.
- understand the politics behind the scenes.
- consultants have influence, not power. The goal is to have a lot of influence.
Book: Flawless Consulting (There are two books by this title on Amazon and I don't know which one he meant.)
In general, there are only 3 reasons that anyone hires a consulting company:
- Genuine desire for outside expertise (they give you power)
- Political (infighting)
- Dirty work (firing people. similar to political.) <- in general TW avoids this strongly
Here, we hear the story of how TW ended up with a certain large contract, and the mess that we had to deal with when it finally arrived at our door. It is long and complicated.
Next, we hear a story about negotiation at the highest levels about toxic individuals and project style.
"Nothing in large organizations happens very quickly."
"Most of the toughest problems we face are non-technical."
Next, we hear a story about a mobile app and the political situation which surrounded its creation and who could access its database.
Skills: trainable vs. non-trainable (can only gain through experience)
Strategy- building influence through excellence. And then using the influence to affect goals.
We went over the TW categorization system for accounts, in brief. It'll make more sense when we're actually working on a project.
We discuss stereotypes about Indian culture using the example of a shopkeeper who keeps a customer waiting rather than telling him that the item he wants to buy is not in the shop. We must tell the customer "no" and "can't" when those things are true. No beating around the bush. A lot of times, what the client is asking for isn't what they want. Keep asking "why". If you have doubts in a client meeting i.e. something seems impossible or undesirable, TELL your fellow coworkers + leader. Never agree with someone just because they are above you. Also, when telling the client no, offer options and alternative courses of action.
We watch a video about TW and a satisfied TW customer. The satisfied customer still has complaints, and we analyze those. Quote: "choose to understand the craft."
Consultant vs. contractor: respected expert vs. body shop. TW avoids being used as a body shop unless we're doing it as a way to build the client's respect for us so we can have a good consulting contract.
We hear a funny story which warns us against accidental unprofessionalism, and also against lax security permissions on your computer.
What is a risk log? We went over it at a very high level. "A risk log helps to quantify risk."
We did an exercise "how to put on my shoe" which taught us about how people can (willfully or through ignorance) misinterpret instructions. This uses what I like to call the duty of creative disobedience for the purposes of education- i.e. exploit every loophole in order to show how a thing can be improved.
We did a session called Roles on a Project, which was pretty interesting and elucidated many acronyms.
We did an exercise involving making paper hats and submitting them to a trainer posing as a client for evaluation... the client valued different things and we got to figure out what they were by question-answer.
Session on how to give good feedback: art critic exercise. There was much hilarity. Renaud's picture was the best. "I think you should make it more clear that this man is vomiting." and "Is that blood???"
thekua.com/atwork is an excellent blog for consulting skills
Sumeet recommends books:
Sumeet recommends a lecture by Randy Pausch called The Last Lecture. It's about "achieving your dreams" and that sets off my fluff-o-meter but the clip he showed of it was pretty excellent.
Written feedback is often unspecific and has adjective overload. But this is ok or at least not that bad as long as you give good verbal feedback.
Constructive feedback as the number of incidents increase: first talk about content, then about pattern, then about relationship.