Foreign.

Welcome to Consulting for Humans.

You're with Mike and Ian.

In each episode, we explore a new topic that gets to the heart of what makes consultants happy and successful.

That's right.

On the Consulting for Humans podcast, it's our mission to add just a little bit more humanity to the lives of consultants.

And we love bringing the skills and perspectives of consulting to human lives, too.

And this week is one such.

Right, Mike?

Exactly.

So if you're a consultant who's trying to be more of a human, or, hey, listen up, a human who's trying to be more of consultant a.

Then we think you're just our kind of person.

So in the last episode, we began our Becoming a Strategic Partner series covering building trust without Authority.

On that episode, we talked about how internal advisors can build credibility, navigate organizational politics, and influence decisions without formal authority.

That's right, Mike.

And today it's time to dig deeper.

In part two of the series, we want to talk about the internal advisor method mindset.

What is it about the way that we look at ourselves and our work that can really help us grow this aspect of us professionally?

Many of us are probably already doing it, acting consultatively, as you might say, without realizing it.

But how do we get to know it when we see it?

And how do we cultivate more of it?

Well, if that's interesting to you, then stick around.

We're going to share our strategic partner pyramid model, our thinking framework for looking at why many people have been motivated by to try to climb that pyramid.

Yeah.

Using that pyramid and some work around that.

We'll discuss how to take inventory and evaluate the consultative work that you're probably already doing.

We'll look at some common traps and pitfalls for being an internal advisor, and we'll wrap up with some practical exercises that can help you own your journey, working at all levels of that pyramid.

So, Ian, get us started.

What might it feel like if someone is ready to start developing an internal advisor mindset?

Well, Mike, thank you.

Let's get into it by thinking about a typical everyday.

Let's make it Tuesday.

Consider a Tuesday.

You're probably sitting there fielding requests for reports, answering technical questions, providing recommendations to others that might or might not get implemented, and helping colleagues get think through challenges, often challenges that need your expert input.

If you're doing things like this, then maybe without realizing it, you're already functioning as an internal consultant.

This internal advisor mindset that we're talking about here is about recognizing that you're already in this business, the business of helping others to succeed.

And Then starting to become intentional about the value that you add.

And whether you're in finance or IT or HR or operations or R and D or any other function, mid level or senior level, individual contributor, project or program manager, if people are coming to you for expertise or insights or guidance, then you're probably already being consultative.

You're probably already being that internal advisor.

And if you like that about your work, then there's an opportunity to add even more value.

The question isn't whether you're already doing consultative work, the question is whether you're doing it strategically to enhance its impact and enhance the value that you and your customers and colleagues get from it.

Yeah, that's right.

And this mindset shift is crucial because it changes how you approach every interaction.

Instead of just responding to requests, you start thinking about the bigger picture.

What's really driving this request?

What does success look like for the person that's asking, how can you add a little bit more value than they're expecting?

And this shift from reactive to strategic thinking distinguishes high impact internal advisors from those who remain confined to purely functional or transactional roles.

And as Ian mentioned, we have a model for this role evolution, the Strategic partner pyramid.

Mike, I love this and I love the fact that you and I can't remember where it came from exactly.

I was saying before we started the show, didn't you work on this?

And you were saying, no, no, yeah, I think this was you.

It began life somewhere probably as a doodle on somebody's notebook somewhere or on a flip chart or on a post it note somewhere.

And it's a pyramid that has three levels and you know the kind of thing, why there's a base level and a mid level and then the pointy bit at the top, the kind of nirvana level.

And the pyramid is a really good analogy for this because it implies progress as you go up, but it also reminds us that the whole thing collapses if we don't have the foundation as well.

So we're going to talk about these three different levels of value creation, each one, like I said, building on the previous one.

And we found it really useful for our clients and our coaches to help them use this as a roadmap for professional development as individuals or as teams.

And as well as being that kind of general framework, it's also useful as a diagnostic for assessing where you currently are and what might it mean to go to the next level.

So, Mike, I'm going to try and build the foundations here.

It turns out that, you know, besides WI fi and oxygen and all the other things that are necessary for human life.

There is a base level of professional interaction, and the base level is just answering the question.

People come to us with questions and we do our best to answer them.

And if this is you, then you're probably valued for the expertise that you bring.

Just answering the question doesn't mean that you're junior or that your work is inconsequential because answering a question requires technical knowledge.

It requires attention to detail.

If this is you, then your role probably revolves around responding, responding to somebody else's inquiries, responding to the need to collect and and analyze data, being good at summarizing work and being precise and accurate and careful about how you summarize.

This work is necessary and it's valued, but it's at the base level.

And that means that it's reactive rather than strategic.

Mike, I was thinking about who have I seen who does this and when have I seen it in myself?

I think people who work at this level are necessarily good at what they do because as we said already, they're producing accurate reports and it's reliable and it's valid and.

But the downside of sticking at this level is that you tend only to accept requests at face value.

You don't tend to question underlying assumptions.

You don't tend to ask much about context.

And we're going to get into context a lot, right.

As we get up the pyramid here.

People who are good at this level of operating can deliver what's asked for without challenging whether it's actually needed.

It's not wrong, it's not inadequate, it's just a foundational level of work.

Every internal advisor needs this competency of being able to understand a question and answer it directly.

The challenge comes when professionals get so focused on just delivering accurate answers, even if they're very high value, very kind of esoteric answers, that they miss opportunities to add even more value and also I think, therefore to get even more back.

So, Mike, we've talked about the good things and the slightly, the limiting things about the foundational level.

What's on level two?

Yeah, Ian, I'm just reminded as I was listening to you talk through the foundational level of Scott Alldack, who was my first partner that I ever worked directly for, and he actually handed out a little cartoon for us all to pin on our walls or take with us wherever we were working, of somebody's car with a star shaped hole in the windscreen on the windshield, as we would say.

I know the cartoon you right, exactly.

And the question is can you cut a piece of GL glass to fit this hole?

The answer was of course, yes.

But that's your point, you know, foundational.

Yes, that's it.

Well, there's a better answer, you know, we shouldn't try to fit a star shaped piece of glass.

While we can do that, that's not the best thing.

It'd be better if we can move up a level to understanding the problem.

And that was, he was trying to remind us all the time to say, no, no, no, no, no.

The problem is bigger than can you cut a star shaped piece of glass?

So at the middle level, you know, you add greater value by contextualizing the request and reframing them, you know, making sure that you're addressing core issues, pulling out the assumptions, targeting specific problems or opportunities.

What are we really trying to do here?

And you use judgment and experience, yours, your teams, even the person that is coming to you, the request, to move beyond merely delivering answers or information to offering up synthesized and actionable insights.

Boy, that's where we want to get to here.

If we can put it in a broader context, ensure that the real problem is identified and addressed, that we understand perhaps what decision the person's trying to make when they've made that request, perhaps what constraints they're working under, what success means for them.

Well, when we do this again and again ourselves, our team, the people we work with, we can see many more patterns across requests and we can start connecting dots that others might miss.

And that's where in doing this, we're really adding value all the way around.

And we start to demonstrate that internal advisor mindset.

And if you're doing this really well, as you said, foundational, we can do this better and better.

Next level, we can do this better and better.

Now let's get to that point.

Pointy bit at the top, right?

So we've done the base level, we've done the mid level of understanding the problem a bit more carefully.

At the top level is the level where we're actually provoking new thinking.

So we're absolutely not being reactive, but we're going out to our colleagues and our stakeholders and our internal customers and saying, hold on a second, I might have noticed something here.

Maybe this is worth taking a look at.

And at this level, you're valued not only for your expertise, but for your ability to bring a fresh perspective, to use an overused word, like a strategic perspective, which means that you get seen as somebody who brings their experience and uses it well.

You're savvy, you're a collaborative thought partner, in the right moment, you can challenge conventional thinking and inspire people to try new things, to innovate.

And that is where you get lasting value from expertise.

I think answering technical questions over and over again, in the end, the value of that starts to decay away.

The real value of somebody who's got technical knowledge is when they can say, hey, I think something new is going on here.

Let's take a look at it.

That means being able to anticipate a little bit finding and earning the right to take a moment to say, hey, I have something new here to articulate and identify opportunities that other people might have missed to help shape the questions that the organization should be asking.

So to go back to the question thing, base level, answer the question, mid level, understand the context behind the question and reframe it, top level, bring a whole new question and challenge things constructively.

This level is about being the kind of internal advisor who is also a really true strategic partner who influences direction rather than just responds to it.

And I think it's worth taking a moment here to think about what it takes to want that.

I think lots of people start out, especially in a career, whether you're in a technocracy and you and your expertise and your training are valued because of the technical attributes that you have.

It's sometimes easy to feel that you don't want to bring a new idea that that is somehow somebody else's job.

And we're going to get into that in a second.

But I think you've used this phrase a few times, Mike.

Having the right answer and making the answer right, like making it right for the organization and right for the situation, is a really valuable thing for us to aspire to.

Yeah, Ian, I absolutely agree with you there.

I mean, it's both.

Sometimes we think about strategic thinking as like coming up with the right strategy.

And that is great, you know, having the right answer sometimes, look, the answer's already been made.

We're committed on a path.

How do we make that work?

Maybe if we had it to do over again, we would do it differently.

So also making the answer right, all of this, that collaboration with these different stakeholders to do this is so important.

But you and I, this all makes sense.

But we've worked with a lot of these people at a lot of different organizations and kinds of organizations, and some people get stymied at up at a foundational level, perhaps at a mid level.

What are the kinds of things that we've seen that stop people from wanting to move up the pyramid or being able to work at multiple levels of the pyramid.

Well, I think one of the basic things is feeling unsure.

When we're sure that our technical and scientific expertise is what's got us there, it's very easy to think that that should be what will keep us there.

So feeling unsure about straying outside of our lane, outside of our area of expertise.

You know, I'm a, I'm a clinical operations person and I shouldn't stray into epidemiology or I'm an IT security person.

I shouldn't stray into the realm of, I don't know, user interface design.

But I think that overcoming that uncertainty about straying out of your expertise is a really important part of this.

And seeing yourself in your role in a new way is an important part of getting out of that kind of stymied feeling that you talked about.

If we get there, then I think we feel differently about ourselves.

Rather than feeling like order takers with little participation in the process, we get to feel like we have a bigger picture and we're bringing a bigger picture perspective.

And maybe also we're bringing our expertise earlier on in the process.

Many, many times I've heard smart, well qualified people say, ah, if only you'd asked me earlier on if you'd involved me, I could have given you better advice.

Wow, okay.

That's a challenge on us as well, to bring a perspective that gets us involved earlier in the process.

And Mike, sticking with this idea of the fear of trying something new, I think that people in this situation might not realize that there's value being lost, that continuing to do the things the way that we've always been doing them, this transactional, somebody asks a question and we answer it method, that we're losing value there, that we get held back by a limited vision of what's possible.

And in the end, when organizations stagnate and businesses start to lose their edge, I think that's often one of the sources of where the stagnation comes from.

And then finally your question was, what's stopping us?

I've focused on ourselves.

Let's talk about the people that we're responding to as well.

I think it's also sometimes about the perception of the person who's asking for work.

They might not understand much about the value that the answerer, that is to say you, is capable of providing.

And with a bit more context and a bit more collaboration, they might be able to think the opportunity, think the problem or opportunity through more clearly together.

So what's stopping us is, I don't think it's expertise.

I don't think it's access to data.

I think it's different people's perspectives of who should be answering what question and who should be bringing the new ideas.

Yeah, I agree with you.

I think so many times people also don't value the, the questions of the brand new.

People who've walked in those naive things that all of a sudden cut right through all of our assumptions.

Those people who don't realize that, oh, the answer to this question is always more or it's always north that say, well, why couldn't it be this?

And sometimes it's those people who've got that long history that realize, oh my God, the world has moved on.

And sometimes it's a naive question that realizes that.

I guess it's always been that because we've always done it this way or we hadn't thought about it.

So yeah, I love that.

How we stop ourselves, right?

And there's an interesting challenge for us if we should all be better at asking the naive questions.

I think we feel a bit of pride and a bit of anxiety about that.

Aren't I going to look stupid if I ask the naive question?

Am I not going to annoy my internal customers who would just like me to answer the darn question?

If I keep pushing back and keep reframing the question?

Am I not just making my life more difficult and my stakeholders more unhappy here?

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

So many people are like, you know, that's not what they want.

That's not what they expect to be.

You know, it's that stay in the lane and they're thinking there.

And you know, in our experience that, you know, the people who bring the answers to the question, that work is still being done.

Moving up the pyramid means that you actually get a lot more efficient at doing that and a lot more efficient, effective at doing that.

You know, you start to build in things like automation, process standardization, delegation.

You also get more used to developing that by getting a little bit above that, just that foundational level.

And that we as the answerers and the people who are doing the asking to us also learn to ask more interesting questions along the way.

And like you said, sometimes that's the people coming to us asking bester questions, sometimes that's us asking better questions, which may frustrate some of our internal customers who haven't seen or participated in what's impossible.

But our increased efficiency and efficacy helps to make up for that.

Plus, what we found in so many organization is Nothing succeeds like success.

All of a sudden our group or ourselves or one of us has had a big breakthrough, and then other people who are the people who typically come to our team or us, go, well, why am I not getting that?

Actually, because of some of the stuff that's been going on with this stakeholder that doesn't go on between you and me.

So we're trying to work.

We're trying to develop people, we're trying ourselves to work at multiple levels of the pyramid, whichever is required for this situation, and developing the capabilities and relationships to do that here.

So this doesn't mean labeling yourself as a pain in the ass for asking questions.

This means turning yourself into a successful pain in the ass.

And a successful pain in the ass is not a pain in the ass.

They're a leader.

Maybe a maverick, but a leader.

Yeah.

And not thinking.

I can only answer questions that I know the answer to.

This is not a lawyer asking a witness a question on the stand.

Some of it's just being curious, and that's great.

I mean, some of the best people who, you know, it's not that I'm going to think of what that answer is.

It's that person that's coming to me to ask, has this in their mind.

I'm just, just helping them to bring that out or to communicate it to me.

They may already have that figured out.

But me knowing that is going to help put me in a better position here.

Yeah.

So, Mike, another objection that I've heard is people say to us, I'm junior.

Like, I'm early in my career or I'm early in this particular professional stage of my life.

And this internal advisor elevating up the pyramid stuff seems to me like it's the territory of senior people or subject matter experts or pushy extroverts.

And I think this perception that it's not my job or that it's for somebody else is a big hurdle, especially in big matrix organizations like pharma companies, like banks, like certain kinds of tech companies, where we are encouraged in some respects to stay in our lane.

What do you think about that?

It's interesting.

I mean, how much individual and team development actually happens on the job.

80%, 90%.

Some of the organizations that I've known, probably 99%.

It's pretty much swim or sink, but the strategic pyramid and this approach makes this development much more intentional.

Look at the career path of most folks working at that foundational level of asking questions.

At the very least, this kind of thinking really dramatically increases the Rate of speed at which those individuals get up to proficiency and are starting to really add value back to the people that they answer questions for it also by doing it across a team increases the team's effectiveness and efficiency.

So I think that's, you know, that really says juniors are particularly appropriate for this because we don't want them sitting on the back burner for a year until they can really be effective.

And by doing this as a way of life in our groups, we're bringing everybody up to speed quicker with this contextual thinking and that.

But now we'll say that not everybody that's asking the questions, you know, are all the same.

Sometimes there's some, it depends here.

So yeah, some of the folks might have that you're a junior, you know, if I, if I want you to help me understand what I think, I'll tell you.

But we'll come back to it depends in a minute here.

So, Ian, we've talked about the concept of the pyramid and potential benefits from moving up the pyramid.

How can our listeners get started if some of this is ringing like that might be a possibility in my position?

I think the first thing to do, I think in our introduction we called this taking inventory.

A good first step is to take a look at the work you're doing and look at it from the perspective of how far up the pyramid am I already.

Because I think you might be doing more advisory, more consultative work than you already think.

You're probably functioning as an internal advisor or an internal consultant any time that you are helping your colleagues think through problems.

Anytime you're providing recommendations beyond just handing over data, anytime you're getting asked for your opinion on decisions and execution of decisions.

So we're sitting here, Mike, It's July, it's coming up to the summertime, people are going on vacation.

It's the time for the kind of mid year reflection.

Maybe this is a good time to do a little bit of an inventory, take a look at the work that you're doing.

Common signs that you're already doing advisory or consultative work include being somehow the go to person for certain kinds of decisions.

People coming unannounced to seek your perspective on challenges that lie outside your formal job description.

But where you're known already to have some qualifications and some expertise.

It might be that you're finding yourself in meetings where you're helping others think through issues rather than just reporting information.

And I think taking a moment to step outside yourself and spot those is really key.

Become a bit more intentional about how you Approach them so that instead of just responding to requests, we start thinking about the broader context and how you can add strategic value.

So I think the first step is taking a look at the work and spotting the exciting opportunities for.

For extending your consultative or your advisory mindset.

Here.

We've got some exercises coming later to do with practicing the skill and the mindset itself.

But, Mike, I think that's where we should start with recognizing the consultative nature of the work that we're doing right now.

Yeah.

And if you're looking at that and say, well, that's not me, but that's other people in my group, that could be you.

And so I think that's another thing to say, yep, there are people in my group that do that, and we're in there.

They perhaps have been doing this longer, or they do it differently, or they do it with certain other stakeholders.

But that doesn't work that way with our stakeholders.

Ah, these are some great areas of opportunity.

Now, we always remember that the person we're providing answers to has a great deal of context knowledge from their domain and experience, but they may not have shared that with you.

They may not have realized that could be really helpful to you doing an even better job.

You having a better idea of what's the target that you're shooting for.

You know all about the data and the analytics.

You know all about how you do certain things in your function.

But what is it that they're really trying to get to?

But you also have a lot of knowledge and experience and context information from inside your team and your team's domain that's going to be very helpful to them.

So if you're doing, for example, contracting, that person does contracting every once in a while for something that might be a commercial partner of yours.

Your team does contracting every minute of every day in lots of different situations.

So you can be learning from that as well.

Now, this, we keep talking about context knowledge.

Context knowledge is the stuff that makes you say it depends.

It makes you recognize that there's often not one best answer, not one golden nugget silver bullet to all situations, but that in any one situation, not all answers are equally good for that situation.

So if in answering the question, you find yourself saying it depends, whether that's out loud or in your mind a lot, that's awesome.

You're our kind of person.

If you don't find yourself saying it, then you should pay especially close attention to this episode, because that's the way the world is.

Yeah.

So be aware of how you know how that context knowledge is shared with other people in your team, how that context knowledge is shared with other people in your network, how that context knowledge is shared with the stakeholders that depend on you or that you work with to serve other stakeholders.

And as a result, a lot of that context knowledge is available to everybody already.

We just have to focus on it and those kinds of questions and what we're talking about here and is what gets that out and upfront and really adding value.

So, Ian, we're focusing a lot on the benefits of this internal advisor mindset to the person making the request, the person that came to us.

What about to the benefits of our listeners here?

The benefits to the person who are fielding the requests, who have up to this point, primarily been providing answers.

I think this is another reason why it's good to take a moment to reflect on which of the many possible benefits is playing the most strongly in your mind.

People that we've worked with who have been trying to turn themselves into more of a partner, more of an advisor, have found typically, number one, that the job itself becomes more interesting.

Lots of us are in the kind of work that we're in because it's intellectually interesting and stimulating, but actually thinking more carefully about context in this way makes the job itself more interesting.

Second of all, I think it increases learning.

And we know from really lots of research that human beings are very, very strongly motivated by the desire to master skills and improve themselves.

So if that's you, then learning something about context is a really important and valid bit of extra personal learning.

Number three, if you care about the value, the consequences and the impact of what you do and how it affects the rest of the organization, then I think it's really clear that thinking more carefully about your advisory work creates more value for you and for the team and for the company from a professional point of view and from a personal point of view.

So it makes the job more interesting.

We learn more, we get to exchange more value as a result.

And then finally, I think it brings networking into play.

And we've had conversations before on the podcast about how challenged we all are sometimes in our kind of technical and scientific world to take networking seriously.

If you ever needed a reason, then elevating yourself up the pyramid is a really, really good reason to pay more attention to extending the depth and the interest of your personal network, making relationship building part of the job and part of your value, rather than just an abstract exercise in, you know, how many friends have you got?

Those are some of the benefits of using and kind of moving up the pyramid, learning to work at different levels.

What should we look out for along the way?

Mike, this is a really good moment because we've kind of sold it quite hard, right?

We've said we've got these three levels.

It's really going to help us.

It's going to transform the way people see us.

We have some great benefits.

We should talk about where we might get stuck because knowing that, I think, is going to increase our confidence.

For me, trap number one is what I call the perfectionism trap.

Lots of professionals get stuck at the foundation level because they really want to be respected for delivering perfect completist answers to the questions that they field.

And that then takes priority over the value and the strategic context for the insights.

That means that we spend time, an unlimited amount of time, adding pieces of detail, adding pieces that make it both correct and complete.

And that means that we miss opportunity.

We don't have enough hours and minutes left in the day to think about the strategic value.

So being perfect and seeing perfect as being complete is a problem for us.

Of course, accuracy is important, but perfectionism can prevent you from asking the bigger questions or providing some contextual insights.

And an insight that's delivered on time with, with a bit of knowledge of context but is only 80% accurate is more valuable than a perfect analysis that's delivered too late for people to understand it or for it to influence decisions.

So we should not let the perfect be the enemy of better.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

I've got a couple of bullet wounds, scars that remind me of what I've done, just exactly that.

Yeah.

Eddie, I think the other one is this kind of scope limitation mindset, a pitfall that involves artificially limiting our scope to our formal job description.

You kind of alluded to this a few minutes ago.

Many professionals assume that they should only provide expertise within their specific functional area.

Missing opportunities to add strategic value by connecting their expertise to the broader organizational challenges or to the specific goals or challenges or opportunities of their stakeholders.

To say, I need to understand it about my area, but I also need to understand it about the people I'm answering questions for or working with to answer questions.

And by doing that, we start to think beyond just functional boundaries.

And our expertise becomes more valuable when we can connect it to these broader business challenges and opportunities, even if those connections, and I would say, especially when those connections cross traditional organizational silos.

You know, this is the.

From silo thinking to process thinking to, you know, our informational connection, all of this says we Know that to really do well, to really create and exchange more value, we have to be able to be both within and across this way.

Good.

So, Mike, one way to put that is it's a kind of skepticism, right?

We're saying we should be skeptical about boundaries and silos.

I think we can in general be skeptical of anything that we or somebody else thinks they know is.

So what do we think is true?

So this is the assumption acceptance trap or the assumption acceptance pattern.

This involves accepting requests at face value without ever questioning the underlying assumptions.

Like the star shaped hole in the glass of the windshield of the car.

Like not challenging the assumption.

Like, why are we not thinking about just replacing the whole windshield?

And assuming that people were correct and had all the right assumptions when they originally put their question to us is one of the things that is most likely to keep us stuck at the foundation level.

Because then all you're doing is optimizing your own workload in efficiently answering questions rather than thinking about effectiveness in answering the right questions and in particular in answering questions that solve problems.

So good internal advisors who have this strategic mindset have the habit of gently probing assumptions.

So they take a moment.

It could just be a few sentences, just an exchange of emails, or five more minutes in the call to look at assumptions before diving into the analysis.

So they ask questions like, what's driving this request?

Or what would change if we discovered something different?

Find out what your frame is for the answer that you're expecting.

This kind of probing helps you to ensure that you're solving the right problem rather than just answering the stated question.

And I think spotting that moment, Mike, where you can just gently uncover the assumptions and test them out is a really critical moment in the life of an advisor.

Yeah, I'll tell you, I remember going back a number of years, you know, both this assumption, the scope limitation, the perfectionism.

My daughter was having horrific medical issues and we were being sent from specialist to specialist to specialist to specialists, getting nowhere.

And we finally landed with one specialist who had a daughter exactly her age and stepped back and took this personally to say, wait a minute, what if this were my daughter?

And instead of doing what every other specialist had said, which was, nope, in my lane, I don't see this.

And I did this work based on this thing, and therefore my answer is, and went and looked across everything that everybody had done, and in looking across all that actually was the breakthrough that we needed.

So I think not only in organizations, but in real life, this ability to say, you know, let me start with the mindset of the person I'm answering the question for.

And, you know, really, I mean, the.

The value that they added to us and our family and my daughter's life is just unbelievable.

So this really rings home for me here.

It.

So we've been working with why to do this, what to do, some pitfalls to avoid.

Can we really get down to immediately applying these concepts and helping our listeners as internal advisors with some exercises that they can use as diagnostic tools and development challenges?

Mike, that's a really, really great question.

I think, like you say, we've talked enough about the why and the what.

Let's talk a little bit about the how.

And you and I work with our clients a lot on these kind of topics.

We know that they really start to see the difference when they start applying things.

I have a couple of ideas that I want to share, but I know earlier on we were talking about a particular exercise that you had in mind.

Tell us, what was that about?

Yeah, yeah, this is.

This is the idea of anytime you have a request, start reframing it.

So, say just for the next week.

And every time somebody makes a request of you, pause before responding and ask yourself three questions.

Number one, what decision is this request really about?

What decision you're trying to make?

What action are you trying to take?

Number one.

Number two, what constraints might be influencing this request?

And some of these we can ask directly.

Some of it we might be saying, well, let me think about it.

Yeah.

And number three, what would success look like, like, from the point of view of the person making the request from their perspective?

If we know this, if our team members know these things from past, that's great.

Even better.

Ask them.

And then before providing your standard response, ask at least one clarifying question that demonstrates that you're thinking beyond the immediate request.

For example, if somebody says, you know, I'd like you to run a budget variance report, you might say, what specific decisions are you hoping this report will inform?

Or are there particular areas of concern you'd like me to focus upon?

And this reframing, this request, reframing practice helps us move from that foundational level of answering questions up towards and into the middle level of understanding the problem or the opportunity by ensuring that you've got a bit more of the broader context before diving into a, if you will, a tactical response.

Yeah, that's great, Mike.

And it's a good habit to have, like you say, right at the beginning of any process of doing data analysis or report writing.

My tip is going to be for what we can do after we've done our piece of work, whatever it is.

I'm going to call this the value add identification.

So at the end of a piece of work, or even better, just at the end of every day, look at the interactions you had, look at the questions you have answered for other people, and identify some moments where you think you could have added more value, more value in the context of the bigger picture, more strategic value.

So this prompts us to think more widely than just satisfactorily coming up with the data to answer the question.

This prompts us to look for instances where I did provide what exactly was asked for, but I didn't explore something else that could have been more useful.

So write down an additional question that you could have asked with the benefit of hindsight.

Like doing this at the end of the day or the end of the piece of work allows you to have 2020 hindsight and credit yourself with all of that.

What additional insight do you think might have been available?

A retrospective analysis might allow you to look ahead at the beginning of the next opportunity to operate it a bit more strategically.

And if you're just giving a little bit of self criticism, self reflection, at the end of a piece of work, you might start to recognize opportunities as they come in, in real time.

But jumping straight in and identifying new context and new opportunities from the very, very beginning is going to take a little bit of a learning curve.

So give yourself the chance to exploit the learning curve by looking back at the end and saying, what could I have done differently?

What questions could I have asked that would have elevated my contribution somehow?

And I love this because I think the first one is somebody who's more like, I want to jump right into it and be a little more proactive.

Second one say, okay, let's say maybe you're still not ready to do that.

All right, let's look at it afterwards and ask ourselves and think about it and process it a little bit more, because then you will have that ahead of time.

I like that.

You know, I'm an old strategy guy.

Let me add a third one, a strategic context map.

Because of course, we've said strategic and we said context.

And I always love having a map.

So choose three of your regular, if you will, customers, three of the people that you are typically advising or fielding requests from.

They're coming to you for information analysis, perhaps recommendations, perhaps just data for each person.

Create a simple map, if you will, that includes what are their key responsibilities, what are their current challenges, what are their success metrics what do they get measured on and what are their upcoming decisions?

And this starts to, you know, you're doing a little bit of the work ahead of time for your three, if you will, best customers or most frequent customers, to build that context ahead of time.

It helps you to understand their world more completely, which allows you to provide more relevant and strategic support.

And when they make requests, you then connect your response back to this broader context rather than just fielding that immediate questions.

So continue to update these maps.

I would come back to them monthly.

And your organization may have certain cycles too, you know, really heavy, then we're in between.

You can use those cycles to learn more about evolving priorities and challenges.

And this helps you develop that strategic thinking that characterizes top level advisors.

If I was going to push it even further, if there's somebody out there who's an important customer or an important stakeholder and I've got a good relationship with them and they're likely to respond well, I could even take my strategic context, my map to them maybe when I'm doing a little bit of review and saying, this is what I think your priorities and your hurdles and your challenges are, help me make it better.

It might generate an interesting conversation all by itself.

I love that, Mike.

Like you say, I love a map.

Let's see if we can get a visual about that, share that online somewhere.

That's really great.

Let's look back at everything that we've talked about so far in today's episode and see what are our final thoughts.

It seems to me that the key to this whole internal advisor mindset is, number one, recognizing that we're doing already interesting consultative work and that it's about becoming intentional, about adding value rather than just seeing it happen by accident.

This mindset isn't about changing so much what you do, it's about changing how you think about it and what you do.

Kind of in the cracks to be more strategic about the value that you create.

I remember well, Mike, you said that the process of elevating ourselves up the pyramid isn't about abandoning the foundation, it's actually about building on it.

So we still need to be able to answer questions accurately, we still need to be able to provide reliable expertise, but we need to think strategically about how our expertise can address bigger problems and create greater value.

I think that's been the key thing for me, moving up from the foundation, building on it so that we're creating more value.

Yeah, I absolutely agree, Ian.

This internal advisor mindset is ultimately about seeing ourselves as strategic contributors.

Rather than just insert your job title or function here, functional experts, mid level managers, senior individual contributors, program project managers, whatever, those are your strategic contributors within them.

And when we make that shift, we find that others begin to see us differently too, which creates greater opportunities to have even greater impact and for career advancement.

So I think there's, you know, this is, this is one where it is absolutely win, win, win.

Very good.

I know we've enjoyed talking about it, Mike.

I hope listeners, we hope you are enjoying this conversation as well, especially if we've lit one or two light bulbs about how you work internally as an advisor and about what might be in it for all of us if we can get even more intentional.

Like you said, Mike, thank you very much for listening to this week's episode of Consulting for Humans.

Next time, our Strategic Partner Internal Advisor series continues with Part three, Asking Better Questions.

We've hinted at it a few times.

Next week we're going to get deeper into the mechanics of how do you ask really great questions.

Like the title says, we're going to build on the foundational skill of answer giving to the much more interesting and deeper skill of question asking and better diagnosis of problems.

We hope that you've enjoyed this week's episode.

We hope that you'll join us next time on the Consulting for Humans podcast.

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