Personal development

After recently watching every James Bond movie in sequence, it occurred to me that 007 has a lot of lessons for those of us in consulting.

We all know that sport is essential for our wellbeing. And it is especially true for consultants. By eating out, staying at hotels, and surviving under high levels of stress, we expose ourselves to the problems of an unhealthy lifestyle. To cope with that, a sporting lifestyle is a good way to keep us from falling out of shape.

People organize and set priority the wrong way. They tend to look at their desk and calendar and attempt to sort the myriad issues, notes, projects, tasks, and dust bunnies into some cohesive framework, which is like pushing cappellini with a straw. Professional organizers often seem to think that organizing your head is like organizing a desk drawer or a garage—pencils here, paper clips there, chain saw under the bench.

Imagine two lists: One contains the qualities that a business person should have, and another includes the attributes that most business people would say they wouldn't want to have. There's only one term I can think of that might top both lists: vulnerability.

You got the consulting job you wanted. Now what? How do you make your mark without looking like a novice? Here are seven tips for jump-starting your consulting career.

For us consultants, being able to communicate via email matters a lot. Just to illustrate this, just count up the amount of time that you spend reading or responding to emails over a 5-day period. A large organization conducted a similar test and found that the amount of time that each employee spends on his/her email accounts for an average of $15,200 of their yearly salary, representing $152 million a year in wages!

Over the years, I have had to opportunity to manage different groups and perhaps more importantly observe how different managers and consultants face obstacles. Often these techniques for addressing obstacles are passed down through mentorship or peer exchanges, and as such, these techniques are less documented.

Jim Furyk did his level best not to lose the U.S. Open Golf Championship, and he would up doing exactly that: losing it. That's because he didn't try to win it, merely not to lose it when he had the lead. Football teams in the U.S., when leading near the end of the game, often establish a "prevent defense" designed to allow the opponents to move the ball but not score, rather than continuing the aggressive play that...

Why would someone leave a cushy government job to chase clients? Because typical consultants just didn't cut it. Colleagues in the public sector couldn't understand why I was taking a risk. Other consultants I knew were having phantom sympathy "start-up pain", and they wanted to know why I would move from being an in-house consultant to one that had to "chase" clients. I had a few visions of people in suits playing tag...

The process of achieving an understanding of conflict management comes from our initial education on the playground and in utilizing these same perfected techniques, I was able to avoid conflict with various managers and clients throughout my consulting career.

Throughout Bschool and at work, we are repeatedly told that collaboration with a team is a key element to successful develop any project. However, observing clients' employees function (or rather dysfunction) over the years, I have come to realize that numerous people become inefficient when asked to work in a team. In fact, researches have shown that when a team is slightly defective, individual performances of the entire tea

The art of persuasion is used in the workplace for everything from getting someone to buy into ideas, complete their work satisfactorily and on time, or to increase sales by persuading someone to buy from you. it's crucial for consultants to master this skill to survive their job. Whether it is in order to convince your clients or team mates of your ideas, as a consultant, you will need to know the following seven ...