I have worked in consulting for quite a while now. Although I don’t know any better, I do think it’s a typical industry. We hire typical people who get excited about typical things. My coach can get really excited about an excel sheet, or a beautiful powerpoint slide, me too by the way. So what does that lead to… well a couple of things that I would like to share.
Dead Birdies
There is an expression in Dutch language. Making somebody happy with a little dead bird. Sounds awfull right? It means that you get somebody all excited about a bird they’re gonna get and then at the end they get the bird, but the bird is dead. Big disappointment. Zed is dead. Would have been better not to give them anything at all, right?
Nowadays, with all these pandemic viruses coming from dead animals, Corona, bird-flu, this expression is even weirder than it already was. (Makes you wonder where it came from. Did somebody at some point in time sell somebody a dead bird (and then they got a deadly virus)? Maybe).
But to clarify. I was working on this project for a client and my colleague was creating a powerpoint presentation. The client wanted to do the project ultra cheap and ultra fast. We didn’t think that was wise, but we scoped it down as small as humanly possible and offered it anyway. They bought it.
So now we were stuck/honored trying to deliver something very small and limited, whilst my colleagues are completely obsessed with showing how smart they/we are and how much we know. Why do we always hire these (insecure?) overachievers? Showing off our expertise as though we have an uncontrollable and subconcious urge to prove ourselves over and over again when we don’t have the time or the budget to deliver all that expertise.
Anyway. So my colleague had made a dead-birdie-slide. A slide that showed the best way how to do something. Look at how much expertise we have. We know the best practice. If you had more money, you would have done it like this. Yes, ok. Beautifull, but the thing is, they didn’t buy the best practice. We tried to sell that. They didn’t want it and then we sold them the minimum practice. They bought the quick & dirty, and we didn’t mind selling it. So now we show them the living bird slide and they are gonna think they need the bird, they are gonna expect the bird, want the bird, think that anything less than the bird is not good enough (which quite frankly is what we do believe) and then we tell them: oh no sorry, you bought the quick-and-dirty dead bird.
They’re gonna feel robbed. And yes, it’s true, their boss didn’t want to pay for more than quick & dirty. But bottom line: don’t show a living bird anymore after you sold a dead-birdie.
Stroboscoping
A stroboscope is that machine they have at house parties. The light goes on and off so fast it makes you feel you’re walking around in…. I don’t know… a weird world. Some people get epileptic attacks from those things. Can’t be healthy.
Again, my colleagues (me too sometimes by the way, but it’s easier to see the mistake on others), are trying to show all we know. Aren’t we smart and knowledgable and wowsie-the-wow-wow? We got 20 minutes to explain something complicated to an audience with an average age of 35 – 50 years old and new to the topic and we have created 40 slides. Forty beautifull slides, with a lot of interesting text, but come on. You’re gonna make these people feel either completely stupid and overwhelmed because they can’t follow, or just really sick from an epileptic attack. Especially if we start of with a slow and interactive introduction with 3 minutes per slide at the speed of 1950 and then suddenly warp them off their chairs with the stroboscoping. Take your slides seriously. If you believe they have good content, they deserve the time on stage to be read and digested.
Cutting Cake
Being able to cut the cake in many different ways is a fantastic consulting skill. The cake being the organisation, the problem, the solution, whatever you wanna analyse. It’s important to be able to cut it horizontically, vertically, by ingredients, by color, etc. But… again…. if you have 10 slides to tell a story, don’t cut the cake three ways in 10 slides. It’s gonna be a total chaos to read and it won’t be logical. And don’t insult your audience by thinking they won’t notice that you cut it in different ways on every slide. That’s not very friendly.
Yes, it’s good that you are able to cut the cake in multiple ways, but the value comes from knowing how to cut the cake in the best way given the audience and the message you wanna bring.
I must say though, for once in my life I would love to make a big mess like that, with a pink chocolate cake wearing a white dress 🙂