Words
Someone speaks and nobody listens ... is that communication.
The Power of Listening, a Ted talk by William Ury coauthor of Getting to Yes my favourite book about negotiation.
How predictable is your performance?
One of the ‘thinking games’ I play with clients during the annual planning process is called “What’s predictable? What’s possible?” The first time I played the game was at a group strategic offsite in York. Attending were a group of service managers who had a small SAP business
The biggest mistake groups make at strategy workshops
I facilitate two distinctly different types of offsite workshops. One focused on group dynamics and the processes people use for working together. One focused on business strategy. If the group are feeling brave we might mix the two together. During the business strategy workshops we'll define the general
Personal impact
So, a final thought for 2015. How clear is it for you ... what you must do ... to create the future you want?
Selling is a game
Have you noticed how a label begets behaviours? Children get labelled naughty. Adults difficult. Dogs dangerous. And because humans have a tendency to generalise things (see I’m doing that now) the child is seen as always naughty, the adult as intractably difficult, and of course all dogs are dangerous.
What to do when a deal stalls.
This week a mentoring client has a deal that’s stalled. The prospect put them off until the new year. They’ve given two reasons for this. Firstly new budgets become available in April and any new expenditure won’t be approved until then. Secondly they are currently very busy
Stop being a process junkie and become a client issue expert
Consultants love to talk about their unique process, even when it’s not that unique. When asked, clients will generally tell you they’re tired of hearing about 4, 5, or 6 step processes. You might even notice them glaze over when charts with right facing arrows come out. Regardless
Erasing the discomfort of feast or famine in consultancy
What kind of a week did you have this week? Were you nose down working flat out on service delivery? Or were you worrying about where your next project is coming from? Some consultants experience a feast and famine cycle year in, year out. Yet they’ve done nothing to
The sound of silence
You know how it is. You’ve figured out how to do the job and written a great proposal. Under time pressure you’ve worked late into the night because the client wanted something urgently. You delivered the proposal … then nothing. Welcome to the sound of silence. We’ve all
Are your executive conversations compelling or commonplace?
Walking into a C-Level executive’s office to sell consultancy takes two things, competence and confidence. Nearly all the consultants I meet have both these things in abundance when it comes to their subject area. So, what goes wrong when they get into the boardroom and try to sell? In