Certainties & Serendipities

As a consultant, I deal with ‘Best Practices’ often.

What were the practices followed in other successful e-Governance projects so that we can emulate them?

How are the other IT companies managing their internal tools development?

What Steve Jobs did that made him the richest man on the grave, though he didn’t pursue making money?

There is nothing wrong per se, about this quest. After all, we want to learn and when we learn, let us learn from the best.

But so often, this pursuit blinds us from the context. What was best in another context may not be applicable in the current context.

Before I delve into this further, let me pause to narrate a comedy scene from one of Tamil movies that I believe brings out the point well.

There is a pair of comedians in Tamil movies, who can be compared to Laurel and Hardy. They together have produced many hilarious scenes, some of which evoke laughter even today. Below scene appears in one such comical scene. I hope to do justice in words what they did in acting.

In this movie, Goundamani (Hardy) is head of a village and Senthil (Laurel) is his assistant. Goundamani is smart, knows what to say in any situation, and is well respected in the village. Of course Goundamani is haughty and never misses a chance to deride Senthil. Senthil envies him and want to prove he is smart too. He accompanies Goundamani everywhere and observes what he says in every situation.

In one such situation, an elderly women of the village passes away. As usual Goundamani is invited and Senthil tags along. “She wasn’t just a mother to you,” he says to the family that lost their mother, “she was a mother to all of us.” He goes on with his eulogy, but Senthil notes down this point.

At the climactic scene, another lady, a wife this time, dies. Goundamani is sick and can’t leave the bed. Senthil recollects the earlier scene and offer to go to the funeral.

You guessed what he would have said, didn’t you? “She wasn’t just a wife to you” he cuts & pastes the words, “she was a wife to all of us.”

I can’t count how often I encountered Senthils walking in Goundamani’s suite turning whore of the best practices. In retrospect, may be even I have been a Senthil, quite a few times.

It’s indeed regretful that, consulting profession is crowded with sheeps in lion’s cloth.

I entered consulting with a technical – to be precise software – background. I was surprised to learn that technical competence alone does not guarantee success in consulting assignments. I quickly learnt to augment technical skills with soft-skills and witnessed increased success rate.

Here are the soft-skills that I learnt over the years:

• Being comfortable with uncertainty : Certainty isn’t certain in consulting. A cloud of uncertainty is ever present in all stages – from sealing contracts, obtaining data, implementing requisite change and so on. Many-a-times, I have heard other consultants complain about chaos in client’s organization. Truth to be told, if client’s are certain then there is no need for consultants! So I say, get on with it.

• Perception is Reality : As a consultant, you are dealing with the perception of the stakeholders. The stakeholders perceived employees are missing an essential skills and signed you to train them; or he perceives that the new system will bring the much needed efficiency and you are the change agent or whatever else might be the perception for reaching out to you. You are there to match reality with the perception.

Its not only about the state of affairs. The perception is about you too. He is either happy that he got a competent consultant or regret getting an incompetent idiot. Its up to you to manage that perception. In any case, know that perception eclipses reality.

• Be a self-starter : Assignment, motivation and  monitoring are for employees; measurement of outcomes are for consultants. So you should be proactive in getting to the outcome as quickly as possible. If you are not proactive, you won’t last long in consulting business.

• Relationship Building : As the Million Dollar Consultant, Alan Weiss, says you are not in consulting business; you are in relationship business. Many consultants are happy with building relationship with gate-keepers and middle-men. My efforts are always concentrated with economic decision-makers. Because if the economic decision maker perceives you as an incompetent idiot, no other help can force him to sign the cheque.

• Learning on the fly : Consulting profession demands broad range of skills – interviewing, negotiation, decision making, information technology and so on. So you need to constantly update yourself. If you are not updated, you are outdated. And in consulting, being outdated means you are on the way out. You should view every challenge as an opportunity to learn something new. To quote Alan Weiss again, “I’m constantly surprised how stupid I was two weeks ago.”

Consulting is the only profession where you are paid to learn on the job. It is exciting as well as frightening. But if you got a right mind-set, there is no other profession like consulting.