Brian's Rules of Consulting

This is the first in a series of posts describing my perspective on behaviors and attitudes critical to achieving success as a consultant. Although some of this material is presented somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the substance is real and the advice has been validated time and again over the past 20+ years. So here I present Brian's first 3 rules of consulting:

On project management: If you think everything is going well, you're out of touch.

• Projects don't run themselves;
• Most of your direct reports don't share your vision of the answer;
• If you don't have a vision of the answer, you're in deep trouble.

On having the right answer: Arrogance will always come back to bite you. And yes, publishing your own rules of consulting does constitute arrogance.

On participating in meetings:

• Don't interrupt other people while they are speaking, particularly the president of the organization;
• Don't monopolize the conversation;
• Learn how to listen;
• Understand, completely, the question before you answer it;
• If you're doing more than your share of the talking, then shut up and listen to what others have to say;
• You don't have to answer every question. There are other people in the room;
• You don't have to be the first person to answer the question, even if you know the answer;
• Focus on the purpose of the meeting. Don't dwell on things that aren't on the critical path to achieving the objective.

On the importance of strong writing skills:

• Always, always, always take the trouble to spell names correctly. A misspelled name is almost as bad as pronouncing it wrong;
• The impression our documents give is the impression people form of us as qualified professionals;
• The purpose of our documents is to communicate! Documents that don't communicate clearly and concisely call into question our abilities and the reason for our participation. Every piece of paper we give someone has an impact;
• USE SPELL CHECK!

Up next: Brian's view on client relations.