Alan Weiss’s Monday Morning Memo® – 7/11/16

Long ago, I discovered to my shock that clients were stunned by common sense. No intricate models, no “needs analyses,” no six-month projects. (“A consultant is someone who arrives to study a problem and then stays to become part of it.”) I told people, in effect: Stop doing that if it hurts, start doing this if it feels good, understand that you’re here to contribute and make a profit only after that, and you have a duty to reward high performance and eliminate poor performance.

My intellectual property in my coaching today revolves around the same kind of common sense: Charge for your value, not your time. Deal only with economic buyers, not middlemen. Provide options, not “take it or leave it.”

Don’t assume that people making a lot of money sitting in huge offices with a private parking space are smarter than everyone else. My exprience in the board room is that there are the same political and emotional dynamics as on the front line—except with a lot more money at stake.

Use your head. People should be hiring your brains, not your hands.

Like most other things not apparently useful to man, it has few friends, and the blind question, “Why was it made?” goes on and on with never a guess that first of all it might have been made for itself.

John Muir on poison ivy

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