Welcome to Consulting for Humans, a podcast all about life in consulting.

You're with Mike and Ian, and in each episode, we'll be shining a light on a new topic that gets to the heart of what makes consultants happy and successful.

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On the Consulting for Humans podcast, it's our mission to add just a little more humanity to the lives of consultants, and we'd love to bring some of the skills and perspectives of consulting to human lives, too.

So if you're a consultant who's trying to be more of a human or a human who's trying to be more of a consultant, then we think you're just our kind of person.

Absolutely right.

And Mike, in today's episode, we're going back to one of the themes that's emerged lately.

We loved talking about the one minute manager.

We had a great time in episode 19 talking about the one minute scope.

So today we're going to be giving recommendations, consulting recommendations, that One Minute treatment.

And after that, we're going to talk about a new format and schedule for Consulting for humans and how you can get more involved with the show.

Right.

So listen all the way to the end for more on what direction we're taking.

We Consulting for Humans.

Ah, Mike, let's get into this.

I love this One Minute thing.

I think it could run and run, but I'm remembering as well that when we started out doing the One Minute Scope thing, it was because there was a weakness, because there's something about consultants and the way that we think about scope that meant that we needed to pay attention.

So let's get into talking about recommendations.

Do you think recommendations could really be a place where consultants get all kind of out of control and messy?

Well, absolutely.

That could be.

Exactly so, Ian, first of all, they're difficult because many consultants really don't have a clue.

Amen.

You know, by definition, we have lived part of our lives in a bunker decorated with PowerPoint slides and Zoom calls and Billboard hour charts and two by two segmentation matrices, you know, only.

Only to be overcome occasional by a three by three.

Not many of us have ever made the decision to do something radically different or risky or even more so, to build a coalition of colleagues and business partners to kind of march down the road with us in whatever this radical, risky, or different kind of thing is.

Right.

And basically, Mike, consultants are teenagers.

And making recommendations and acting on recommendations is for grownups probably a little bit harsh, but I think that that's our first obstacle.

We are a little bit immature when it comes to actually Making plans and executing them.

We know it, and I think we know it even more deeply than our clients know it.

Well, I remember clients getting ready to listen to a final report of something that they paid pretty big ticket prices for.

Going one of them looked at the other and said, get ready.

This is where the rubber meets the clouds.

Yeah.

So maybe we learn a little bit from our clients cynical take on where our thinking comes from and where our recommendations come from.

So let's think about this for a second.

What are our choices here?

One of my personal favorites, when I'm not really sure, is just to hand over the analysis.

Hand it over without recommendations.

This works.

To be honest, some of the time we make a very compelling analysis of what's happening in the world.

Where are the problems, where are the opportunities?

And we kind of leave the clients to figure it out.

But they are ultimately going to ask every client's favorite question, which is, so what?

And this so what is a.

Is a fair question.

I think, Mike.

It's a.

It's a reasonable test of whether the work that we've done is relevant.

If the work that we've done can lead to recommendations, then something's going to happen in the client's business and they'll get a return on the money that they've spent.

I don't think we can really altogether duck that test.

So step number one here is I do think we need help and I think we owe it to clients to get help in expressing our recommendations clearly.

I remember one of my very earliest consulting projects for a client in the biotech industry.

And I had put together this long winded, very overcomplex analysis of all the different ways that they could set up and locate and organize a development laboratory.

And I had all these great PowerPoint slides and two by twos, and it was all super complex.

And she was asking these sharper and sharper questions as the meeting went on about so basically asking so what?

And at one point she leaned right over and speaking to me like I was deaf and an imbecile.

She went, what do you think I should do?

She was so frustrated.

I was helped out of that meeting by the partner who saved my ass.

But it was a good reminder.

We can't just leave our complex thinking on the table there and let the clients figure out what to do about it.

And it is so tempting.

I mean, you know, you wanted to spread it all out and say, hey, do you see a pony in there somewhere?

Anything in here you like?

Look at all this stuff.

We've Got all these other things that we have a tendency to fall back on.

You know, hand waving, consulting advice peppered with cliches and jargon that we talked about a few episodes ago.

You know, something about leveraging synergies and prioritizing low hanging fruit.

I mean, there are all these little formulas we have and sometimes we walk into the project with the answer already in hand.

Now we just have to make sure we fit it to the client so they understand why this is the answer for them.

I mean, I remember many days when we, if you will, had a horse in the race, right.

And you know, when it came for recommendation time, that's what we'd all been waiting for.

We go straight for the big win.

You know, recommending a big investment in whatever high dollar tech or implementation work that we or our FIR firm was going to make a big margin out of.

Right.

Not paying too much attention as to whether it stacks up as a good choice for the client.

But part of this was the old adage of if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Or convincing the client that they truly are a nail.

Yeah, it's fascinating.

You and I have both worked for firms with big old hammers, gold plated, diamond encrusted, 24 carat, gazillion dollar digital hammers.

And we're looking for anything that looks like a nail.

And it's a really big challenge.

Some clients are welcoming that because they know that that was what they were in for all along.

In effect their minds were made up part way earlier on.

But I think when it comes out of advice that we're trying to give as straight consulting advice, then ducking the recommendation doesn't cut it.

Giving the obvious self serving recommendation, even though we might feel great about it doesn't cut it either.

Right?

Yeah.

And I remember back in my own career too, this is when IBM was moving into consulting and services, there was a big emphasis on the waterfall.

And the waterfall was a way of expressing that, hey, if we could get in higher up in the organization and be part of strategic decisions, be part of big operational decisions way early on before we might typically get called in to fulfill some RFP requests with hardware, software services, that sort of thing, you know, we would be in a much better position so that even though consultant might not generate the big revenues that all the rest of the business generated, it would put us in a position.

And that waterfall was the increasing amounts of money that we could by saying aha, you know, here's, here's if you will A succession of hammers that we have for you and why this is all good.

Now, interestingly, this is a hard thing to resist.

We're acting like it's all intentional.

Companies want to make money and companies feel like what they have is good stuff and so they want to get it out there.

Now I remember as we formed strategy and change the E business consulting practice at IBM, we were always under the kind of compulsion to say where you can, you really should be bringing IBM in.

IBM should be the answer.

The answer should always have something in IBM.

Well, we decided we were going to be technology agnostic.

And yeah, we thought if we're going to have any kind of credibility in this, we've got to be technology agnostic.

Other firms realized that they could develop great partnerships with IBM and so we actually were in competition sometimes with other consultants who had great partnerships with IBM.

And some of those later PwC were acquired because of these great partnerships here.

So, so technology agnostic in part of a big firm, pluses and minuses.

But I think as consultants we gotta hold true to real good recommendations for this client in this situation at this time.

Good stuff.

And it's a trap, right?

It's a trap at the level of the whole firm to think we're gonna sink all of our effort into having one particular offering.

It's a trap at the level of the individual team and the individual consultant as well just to be lazy and say, well, we recommend that you buy more stuff from us.

So we can't just leave the recommendations to the client.

We can't just recommend whatever's in our firm's interests.

So we're going to have to keep working on this.

I think we're convincing ourselves here, Mike, that there's room for a one minute recommendation little template for us to use here.

I do think though that I'm sure lots of you are sitting yelling at your, your phone or your earbuds right now going, no, we don't do it like that.

Yeah, of course the smart move is of course to take whatever you've diagnosed about the client situation and say, okay, let's talk to people in our firm who've seen change through, people in the client's organization who've seen change through, put them in front of the big problems or the big opportunities facing the client.

This is more or less the right choice here.

But all of the fun that we've had so far, teasing ourselves about how sometimes selfish and sometimes anxious consultants are, that points to some underlying insecurities.

So it's no Wonder that even with good thinking and good advice, we still sometimes find it hard to formulate a recommendation that's logical and actionable.

We find it hard to express it with confidence and clarity and without too, too, too many PowerPoint slides.

Right, right.

So what do we need?

We need something simple, short and direct.

You know, something that a good consultant or a consulting project manager can use as a starting point and build on.

Sounds like a one minute recommendation might be just what we need.

Excellent, Mike.

So here we go.

We have for you listeners Ian and Mike's seven box model for a one minute recommendation.

Mike, what's going to be in box number one?

Well, box number one is a clear problem statement.

So we don't want to just jump immediately to the recommendation.

Let's begin by succinctly restating the specific problem we're addressing so that everybody remembers the context.

Could be a problem, could be an opportunity, could be both.

Excellent.

Which immediately raises the question, so what?

So box two, we've got to get straight in with our recommendation.

In natural English, succinctly stated.

Here's the action that we're recommending that you take.

We're not going to hedge it, we're not going to bury it.

We're going to make sure it's there, front and center, clear and direct.

Yeah, burying the lead.

How many times have we done that?

Burying the lead.

So that's box two, Mike.

The next question I guess is going to be why?

And that leads us to box three.

Well, yeah, absolutely.

Supporting evidence.

You know, briefly, we're going to mention the one to two key data points, findings or conclusions that support the recommendation.

This builds credibility.

It reminds everybody about how urgent the case for action is.

That's great.

And now we've probably got our audience to something like a stage of motivation.

So we need to say, well, what's going to happen?

Not the whole detailed plan, but some idea of the timeline, a realistic time frame for implementation, what kind of things need to get done right away?

What does a phased approach look like?

What do we have to plan for in the short term?

That sounds like it could be it, Mike, but we're only up to four out of seven, so I think we have to go a little bit deeper.

Right, right.

We know seven is the magic number, plus or minus two.

Right.

Well, what we want is the thing that we, I think, so often tend to forget.

And that actually is the spice that makes everything a better meal, if you will.

Expected benefits and outcomes.

I mean, you know, whether we're selling, whether we're performing.

Whether we're recommending expected benefits and outcomes should always be in our mind.

Clearly articulate what success looks like if they follow our recommendation and what comes from that.

Excellent.

So in box five then we've got ourselves sold on the potential future good things.

We also need in box six to balance that out with a reminder of what the potential downsides could be.

So box six is what's our primary risk?

Not every single risk, but what's the primary risk.

And say a few words about what mitigation looks like.

This shows that we're balanced.

It shows that there is some skeptical or risk aware thinking behind this whole thing as well.

Yeah, I love that.

Ian.

And then another piece of just consulting hygiene, project management hygiene.

Just good ways to communicate is end with next steps, end with the immediate next actions required to move forward for the client and for us.

If there are some.

If we're going to be part of that, let's talk about that.

But primarily directing the client where to go so that they don't grab us by the lapels and keep saying yes, but what do you think right here.

It is such a good discipline.

I'm looking forward to using this one on my next project.

Mike We've got then our seven boxes for a one minute recommendation.

We've got this logical flow.

This is going to allow us to be confident but also allow us to express something that's still adaptable in the light of what clients say.

So why don't you take a swing at it?

I did it last time.

I'm going to set the clock going and let's see if you can talk us through an example of a one minute recommendation in exactly one minute.

Are you ready?

Ready.

Go.

Our analysis shows your customer acquisition costs have increased 47% in the past year while retention has fallen to just 68%.

We recommend implementing a customer success team focused specifically on onboarding and first 90 day engagement.

Our data reveals that 62% of customer churn occurs in the first three months and exit interviews point to confusion about product implementation.

The proposed team would develop standardized onboarding protocols and conduct regular check ins during this critical period.

This can be implemented in two phases.

First, reallocating three existing team members to form the core team within 30 days.

Then hiring two specialists with SaaS onboarding expertise in Q3.

We project this will reduce churn by 15% within six months, resulting in approximately 78 million in preserved annual recurring revenue.

The primary risk is bandwidth constraints on your existing team during the transition, which we can mitigate through temporary workflow adjustments we've outlined in the full report as next steps, we suggest meeting with operations and customer support leaders this week to select initial team members and begin developing the standardized onboarding playbook.

Boom.

Boom.

Excellent job.

So the thing that I really like about all these one minute frameworks is that if you can say it in one minute, then everything has a chance of sticking in everybody's memory.

Like, by the time you get to talking about risks, we can still all remember what is it that we're going to do and why and what problem does it solve.

I like that it forces us to use all of our short term memory to go, okay, now I have a picture of this whole recommendation and I can do it without a big complicated set of PowerPoint materials or a big complicated story or whatever.

Great job.

Well, edit it.

I think it underscores a couple things, Ian.

It underscores that the real hard work of consulting is, you know, we're reminded of Voltaire's, you know, I wrote you a very long letter because I didn't have the time to write a short one, that when we're really adding value to a client, we don't take them through the whole thing.

Yeah, we can do this.

And this is a test to ourselves to say, have we synthesized this and made it understandable and relevant and valuable to the client?

I love that too.

About one minute.

And it's a, it's a tough test to measure up to sometimes.

And by gosh, it means we got it.

Well, it's, it's funny, Mike.

The thing that comes up next in our show today is updating the listeners on our new timeline for broadcasting Consulting for humans episodes.

And I thought, well, let's apply the same thing.

And I've written it down here in one minute recommendations, format.

And you're exactly right.

Forcing myself to write about it this directly and this simply forced me to choose simple language, forcing me to remember to connect it to benefits and connected to next steps, made me come up with some things that actually fleshed it out and made it a better plan.

So, Mike, let's update everybody on how we're going to be updating the show format and the episode timeline.

First of all, our analysis shows, our analysis shows that the vast majority of you, our listeners, are enjoying the regular episodes, but not so much accessing the luminaries tier, even though the luminaries tier takes about 50% of our effort per week to put the show out there.

So from now on, we're going to roll up the luminaries content into the main show episode and have just one series of episodes that are going to be free to all the listeners to the Consulting for Humans podcast.

Our analysis further shows that if there were any a single episode stream, it would encourage more listeners to engage with the show.

So beginning this week, we're no longer recording Luminaries episodes.

If you're a Luminaries member, we'll be in touch soon about your subscription.

And as a thank you, we're keeping the existing Luminaries episodes exclusive for a few more weeks so you can get as much as you can from your support of the show.

And we're going to thank you again later.

But thank you right now here.

Absolutely.

That means that what's going to happen is we're going to publish one high quality free episode on a new timeline on a fortnightly, that's to say every two weeks timeline, so that we have time to work on the great ideas that we've got for new episodes and bring you podcast episodes that we think you're going to love.

We also hope that this is going to generate even more chances for a direct connection between you, our listeners, and the ideas and the topics that Mike and I are bringing to you on Consulting for Humans.

Now, there's a risk too, right, Mike?

Right.

The risk is that going once per fortnight for those people who are used to an episode dropping every week or every more often might actually reduce listener retention.

Wait, what happened to that podcast?

Are they not on anymore?

So we're going to make sure that there's something going on in our social media channels, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube between shows for you to engage with and respond to.

Absolutely.

And as a next step, we are about to start work on our next episode which is going to be all about delegation in consulting, to be followed by a flip side episode where we're going to talk about managing upwards delegating to seniors.

And we're really looking forward to bringing that to you and we hope that you're looking forward to it as well.

Well, in return, we have a very big favor to ask you.

Please send us a message on one of our platforms.

Email, LinkedIn, Instagram.

All the details are given below in the show notes.

And tell us please just one thing you've enjoyed about the show so far and one thing you'd like to hear about in a future episode.

Excellent work, Mike.

We hope that you enjoyed our one minute recommendation.

Perhaps slightly more than one minute, but still nice and tight.

I really appreciated the framework there.

And once again, like you said, Mike, we want to really express a big thank you to our luminaries members who've supported us for many months now, just being part of that higher tier of the show and engaging directly with me.

And Mike, we really appreciate your support.

We hope you've enjoyed your time as members of our premier tier, and we hope that we're not going to let you down in the content that we produce in the coming weeks and months.

So it's a new chapter for the podcast and we hope the same for our listeners.

I mean, what's not to like about free consulting content?

Straight to your earbuds.

As a boomer consultant, myself or anybody familiar with the original three Days of Peace and Love, what we used to call and still call Woodstock might say, here comes.

It's a free concert from now on.

There you go.

It's a free concert now, Mike.

Right.

What could possibly go wrong?

That's right.

Yeah.

As those of us who were coming for those three days.

Right.

Yeah.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, we've got some time to get to our next episode and get it in the best possible shape, so please reach out and share some of your feedback with us while we're working on that.

Absolutely.

We'd love to hear from you.

And we're also looking forward to your company once again on the next episode of the Consulting for Humans podcast.