“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.“ Pretty wise words from Aristotle. Malcolm Gladwell calls it the 10,000 hours you needed to gain proficiency at a skill. Cal Newport argues that skills and proficiency create passion, not the other way around. Good review for his book So Good They Cannot Ignore You here.
If I were to draw it out. Here is my generalization of consultants, lawyers, bankers, and the lowly analyst. Consultants are PowerPoint.
Yes, I was delayed 7 hr and 45min on Wednesday night. My flight was scheduled for 4:45pm, and instead left at 12:30am. There were 58 people on the standby list.
During this horrific wait at O’Hare, I had the good fortune of traveling with a work colleague. We talked, worked, ate, complained, and generally kept each other from going crazy. It was like being trapped on an island for an episode of Man vs. Wild. We got so bored that we ate dinner twice: sushi at 6pm , then cheeseburgers at 9pm.
Recruiters look for “fit”. When picking new consultants, recruiters look for the basics (intellectual horse power, business acumen, academic success, polish etc), but they are also looking for fit. Fit with the company culture, fit with the team, and generally coolness. No one wants to work with overly intense, self-involved, or annoying people (especially if they are junior to you). If they are your boss, hmm, might have to deal with that in a different post.
Airport Test: Could I take being stuck with this person at the airport for 7 hours?
My teammate is a good guy. We have worked together for 8+ years. He is easy going and a good person to hang out with, even at the dumb airport. He passed the airport test.
On some level, I must have passed the test too. My buddy looks over and said, “Thank goodness, you are not Sam (pseudonym). He’s usually unhappy and complaining even when the plane is on-time.”
Crazy idea: Judging from the divorce rate in the US, I wonder if the airport test is something we should make all engaged people go through. It would be a fast and less damaging way to find out if the couple has a good fit.
Started writing this blog a year ago. At the time I had no idea where it would lead, but after 40,000+ words I still enjoy the work. As consultants, we are paid by to think rigorously and creatively through problems – and yet, it’s a shame there is not a place to catalog thoughts. Folders full of PowerPoint presentations seem insufficient and hollow.
What did I write about? Looking back, these are the topics. If any of that is of interest, you can type in key words in the search box on the top right of the site. I see there was a lot about random topics like Amazon.com’s tax rate, half marathons and MOOCs. I suppose that is the nice thing about a hobby – you can follow your interests.
How many people visit? There were about 27,000+ views over the last 12 months. While that might seem like a lot, it isn’t. My wife frequents a recipe website run by a home-cook that gets that many views daily. I guess if I measured success by page views I would have lots of Chicken Florentine, and cous cous recipes. heh heh.
Where are the visitors from? Since I write in English, it’s no surprise most views come from English-speaking countries ( US, UK, India, Canada etc). That said, honored that people are also stumbling across the blog from all over the world. 100+ countries.
What were the top 10 countries? One of my friends is a huge advocate for tables. He rightly claims that people spend too much time pretty-ing up charts or maps (like the one above), when a simple table conveys more information. Here is shows that 52% of page views came from the US, followed by UK, India, and Canada. There is a long tail.
How many views were there each month? Like many things, the growth is non-linear. Starts off slow (non-existent really), then starts to accumulate and grow (more posts + better Google search rankings + RSS + email readers).
The blue chart shows the total number of monthly views.
The red chart shows the average number of monthly views per post. As a consultant, I would probably focus more on the red chart since it normalizes results for the number of posts. Comparing May & October you can see on the blue chart it shows more than double the number of views. Lots of growth, right?
Well, when you adjust for the number of posts that were written during those 5 months, you can see that the average number of views per post (shown in red) was actually less.
What’s next? Look forward to melding my passion of consulting with education. Will write more about the disruptive innovation in education and applying consulting to everyday problems. My friends and I have some of the best conversations – and look forward to sharing some of that on this site. If you have topics you want to discuss or think through, please let me know. Best regards,
This week I thought a lot about leadership and ran across these quotations. . .
What is leadership?
“Leadership is influence” – John Maxwell
“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
Is leadership inherited or learned?
“Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.” – Vince Lombardi“
“Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.” – Norman Schwarzkopf
What do leaders do?
“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” – Colin Powell
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
Am I a leader?
“Whatever you are, be a good one.” – Abraham Lincoln
“We must become the change we want to see.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.” – John Wooden
What’s the difference between leadership and management?
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker
“Management works in the system; Leadership works on the system.” – Stephen Covey
“The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.” – Warren Bennis
What is the sign of a good leader?
“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” – Ralph Nader
“Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.” – John D. Rockefeller
Are leaders always successful?
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein
What is the risk of being a leader?
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“When a man assumes leadership, he forfeits the right to mercy.” – Gennaro Anguilo
“Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.” – John Wooden
Superbowl Sunday. For many in the US, there are only 2 parts of the day. Getting ready for the Superbowl, then watching it. Interestingly, most people don’t care who wins, and a large number of people are just watching for the ads. (66% female and 47% males say they will tune in for the commercials as much as for the game itself).
If you want to see all the Superbowl ads, click here.
So how do Americans spend their time? The Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts a time-use survey every year. It is pretty dry reading. Thankfully, the Economist put together this summary graph that shows how the average American spends their day.
A few takeaways:
People work at home: “21% of employed persons did some or all of their work at home”
Men still don’t do housework: “On an average day, 19% of men did housework–such as cleaning or doing laundry–compared with 48% of women.”
Men cook: “40% of men did food preparation or cleanup, compared with 66% of women.”
Lots of eldercare: “Eldercare providers are those who provided unpaid care to someone over the age of 65 who needed help because of a condition related to aging”
Management consulting video. Just watched my first video advertisement for consulting. It was entitled The Science of Management Consulting; it was cool, visually appealing, and a bit inspiring actually. Done by Accenture and on their website.
It covered a lot of the best things about consulting. All these things about management consulting are true. These things are hard to find and valuable:
Easy to watch. It is only 2.5 minutes. Has a good soundtrack, and good visuals. I have seen lots of Accenture billboards (who hasn’t?), but never a video. Give it a look.
Difficult to Understand. So here is the irony. I understand what the advertisement is saying because I know Accenture and the type of work. Many wouldn’t. Lots of consulting jargon and business-y talk. Lots of Fortune 500 executive speak.
It’s a running joke among consultants that none of their parents actually knows what they do. I can already hear my father’s refrain: So, what exactly do you do?
Just watched the Alabama-Georgia game. For international readers, this was the equivalent of the semi-finals for college football between two rival teams who both had a winning season so far (11wins-1loss). It was a very close game which Alabama won (32-28).
College football is huge business. It generates enormous money for the universities. Forbes magazine listed the most valuable teams based on enterprise value, revenues, and profits. Typically, revenues come from ticket sales, alumni donations tied to club seats, corporate sponsorship, licensing, and television distribution rights. I am not convinced on how they calculated profits, so I only show revenues.
The top 10 teams generated revenues of $742 million in 2011. The University of Texas was the clear leader with $96 million in revenues; they received corporate sponsorship from Coca-cola, Gatorade, and have their own cable channel in conjunction with Disney’s ESPN called the Longhorn Network.
College football is more profitable than Microsoft or Google. Forbes estimated the profits of each team in the same survey. For the top 20 teams, the average profitability was about 63%, which means that 63cents out of every dollar was net profit. Crazy. To me, this seemed outlandishly high. After all, college football cannot be 3x more profitable than Microsoft (MSFT net margins of 21%), or can it?
Forbes does great work, but I can only assume that they did not factor in all the fixed costs that might be shared by the university (e.g., depreciation of the stadiums, training facilities, etc). As an alumnus of one of these top 20 revenue-generating football teams, it makes me pause to think that the university is largely funded by the football team.
Should college athletes be paid? There has been a long-running debate among sports lovers on whether college athletes should be paid. Currently, they are not compensated for playing sports (other than their year-to-year scholarships). I am not a huge sports fans, but there is not shortage of polemics on this topic; you can find well-argued points supporting both sides of the debate: New York Times, Sports Illustrated, ESPN.
Economists would say something needs to change. Whatever the solution, some changes are needed. It is no surprise that the richest football teams (e.g., Penn State, Alabama, Texas, Southern California, Auburn, Georgia, Ohio, Florida etc) also had football-related scandals recently. You cannot have an multi-billion dollar industry where the main assets are people who cannot be officially paid. It is a powder keg waiting to explode. Eventually, there will be too much at stake and people will rationalize cheating. We are not setting up people for success.
Coaches are paid. Unlike the players, coaches can be paid. USA Today put together this database of football head coach salaries here. As a bit of a libertarian, people should be paid for their work and it is a free market for labor. If you can get this kind of pay, good for you. Even so, take a look at these numbers and you will find them a bit surprising, even by American executive pay standards.
Coach pay is not equal. Nor should it be. I believe that good coaches make a difference, just like good leaders make a different in organizations. Good ones should be paid more. Here is the graph that shows how football head coach salaries drop off by 50% around the 20th team, then drops off another 50% by the 60th team. The pauper in this list of salaries is for the head coach of Louisiana-Monroe. Don’t feel sorry for him though, $250K is not bad.
Post script: How Can a New College Football Coach Avoid Getting Fired, Freakonomics
I ran the Philadelphia Rock and Roll half marathon last month. Felt great to finish, but it was pretty painful at mile 11 and 12. There were a lot of people there, and it made me wonder how popular are half marathons? So here is what I found out at www.runningusa.org:
The world’s largest half marathon = Goteborg, Sweden. It is held in mid-May and has 42K+ finishers. The one in 2011 was the largest one ever.
The largest US half marathon = Zappos.com Rock and Roll in Las Vegas. The race is at night in December and the course is naturally focused on the Las Vegas strip – MGM, Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace, Wynn, Paris etc. Great views.
The half marathon I ran in Philadelphia was crowded too; the one from last year had 16K+ finishers. Since it was one of the Rock and Roll races, there were bands every mile.
In 2011, there were 1.6M+ half marathon finishers. Even though there could be some double-counting (people running more than 1 race), that is still a lot of people.
With 1,500 half marathons in 2011, there are dozen of races going on every weekend. Looking at this calendar of half-marathons here, there are 63 races going on this weekend (Oct 20-21). Some of the more notable ones:
The half marathon format is popular. From 2004-2011, the number of half marathon runners grew by about 1 million, or a compound average growth rate (CAGR) of 14.6%.
Women are running more than men. So who is running these races? Approximately 60% of the half marathon finishers are women. So guys. . . stop watching so much sports on the TV, and put on your running shoes. The women and showing us up.
Get motivated and sign up for a half marathon. Use this calendar to find a race close to your home here. Looks like there are 55 half marathons in North Carolina, and only 50 in South Carolina annually.
If you think half-marathons are boring, consider the Tough Mudder. This takes the brutality of a half marathon to a different level. The length (10-12 miles) is similar to the half-marathon, but it has 25+ different military-style obstacles in your way. It is based military courses use by the British special forces (apparently). Click on some of the obstacle names in blue, and you can see videos and photos of this crazy stuff.
Can me conventional. Call me a wimp. I found it hard enough to run the 13.1 miles on the smooth pavement with perfect weather. Will pass on the tough mudder for now.
Consultants use jargon as if it were a second language. It serves as a short-hand way to say boring things in a more pseudo-intellectual way. It is a chummy way to talk. It is if consultants were jealous of doctors & lawyers who have their own technical vocabulary.
Generally, using jargon is a bad habit. It is nonsensical, and a bit annoying for the listener. That said, jargon is still something you should know, even if you don’t use it.
I grouped this jargon into different buckets depending on how much analysis was needed vs. how much analysis was done. This simple box is called a “two-by-two” matrix and is a favorite among consultants. It narrows down the key factors into the X and Y axis and forces you to group this into something easy to understand.
Bottom left (little analysis needed, little analysis done): At the beginning of a project, it is often necessary to just ballpark the number or do a back of the envelope calculation to get some initial estimates. Sometimes consultants guess at the answer early in the project and then continuously refine their hypotheses as they get more information.
Top left (analysis needed, but not done): Here the consultant made a mistake. Either they ran out of time, got lazy, or forgot to do the needed analysis. As a result, he is taking a SWAG at the answer – which is never a good idea. It is a lose-lose. Either the consultant tells the client that he guessing (lose) or hides the weakness in the analysis (lose).
Top right (analysis needed and completed): These two expressions are very common. After completing a broader analysis, it is often necessary to do a deep dive in specific areas. You often have to drill down into the the data to really find out what is going on. Deep dives are good things because they have a lot of rigorous analysis, but they are also very targeted.
Bottom right (analysis not needed, but done anyways): Here the consultant is wasting time. She has spent hours gathering data or doing analysis without a purpose. She is trying to boil the ocean, instead of thinking through the problem in a structured way. If the partner says you are boiling the ocean, it means that you are lost. Not a good sign.
Frankly, all of us spend too much time in meetings – so it is no surprise that there is a lot of jargon around this topic. Some of this jargon applies to things that happen before, during and after the meeting. You will find this straight-forward. . .
The list of business jargon is endless. There is a website called The Office Life, which has a reservoir to 900+ “cringe-worthy” consulting-y words. If you listen closely, you will see how business jargon is used at your work. It can be overwhelming. Remember: the client wants you to speak clearly and with authenticity, not with business jargon and slang.
Related posts:
This blog post is ostensibly about how crowd-funding websites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter are democratizing innovation by creating ways of individuals to support new products, ideas, bands and charities. Raising capital online. Grassroots style.
In reality, this blog post is about a plastic gun that shoots table salt with enough power to knock out a fly. Not very deep, I know. But it is nerdy and fun. I am planning to buy one. See the video on how the inventor – Lorenzo Maggiore - took it from concept to prototype to market here and there is a good chance that you will want to buy one too.
It is a fascinating to think that someone like Lorenzo could take their unique idea to market online (web 2.0 style) and get enough pre-orders to confidently make production runs.
Clearly, this has been a run-away success. Lorenzo was originally looking to get $15K in seed funding, but as of 8/31, he raised $430K. More than 8,600 people ordered these. . .and 8 people bought the “arms dealer” package where you get 144 guns for $2,500.
Oddly, the $30 sent to creator, is called a “contribution” and the Bug-A-Salt that I get in the mail is called a “perk”. This may have to do with some regulations and inter-state commerce etc, but it certainly an odd way to describe this purchase.
Crowd funding is the “new thundering herd” – The Economist
The Economist called crowd funding the “new thundering herd” in a recent issue. According to one source, crowd funding will raise $2.8 billion in 2012 vs. $530 million in 2009.
Kickstarter raised $323 million for 10,000 projects. The most lucrative 10 are listed are here with the most successful one (Pebble watch) raising more than $10 million.
There are 500+ crowd funding platforms and counting. This includes Sellaband which helps music bands raise funds, and Spot.us which touts itself as community-funded journalism. Raising money is not easy street though. Kickstarter apparently accepts 1/2 of the projects that are submitted, and only 1/2 of those raise the targeted amount.
PS: I received the Bug-A-Salt by Fedex 1/21/12. It is bigger than it looks online, but fully-featured and cool. Very professionally put together, and could easily sell at a toy store.
