Most new consultants are obsessed with creating good power
point presentations. While there is much emphasis placed
on this skill, there is another one that is ultimately more
important -- especially in the long run.
It is the skill of getting clients to implement what you recommend.
Someone recently asked me how I created my LOMS program
and why I did it the way I did.
It turns out there was a specific reason and it has to do with my
on-going fascination on how to get humans being to change their
behavior.
The explanation that follows is excerpted from my answer
to this question. It also reveals a lot about how people (your future
clients) do or do not change their behaviors.
I suggest reading the following excerpt with this perspective in mind.
That charity has trained over 1 million children globally on
personal space assertiveness training (for young kids) and
self-defense training (for older kids, seniors and the
disabled).
What I found incredibly remarkable about kidpower was the
incredible retention rate of what they teach their students.
For example, she was explaining to me how one of their very
first students was a 13-year-old girl who they taught in a
three-hour one-time class how to defend yourself when being
attacked by a male attacker.
Fifteen years later with no additional training, this girl
(now a 28-year-old woman) was taking a walk with her
boyfriend.
The boyfriend had recently fired an employee at work, and in
the middle of this walk, the disgruntled employee comes
charging at the couple with a baseball bat -- with the
intention of bashing the boyfriend's head in.
The boyfriend is of course stunned and paralyzed by the
shock of the unexpected attack.
So the woman, without even thinking about, takes down the
attacker in a single move, disarms him, and incapacitates
him, all in the span of about three seconds.
Keep in mind, the only training this 28-year-old woman has
had was a one-time, three-hour class fifteen years ago!
Do you want to know the secret to this incredible retention
rate?
Well I did too... so I took a version of that class for very
young children (where the focus is not on self defense, but
rather protecting your own personal space... which if a young
child can do -- without even realizing why they are doing it
-- will ward off about 95% of the violence committed against
young children).
And once I took the class, in about fifteen minutes, I
discovered kidpower's incredible secret of skill retention
under real world conditions.
First, they told us what to do.
Second, they showed us via demonstration how to do it.
Third, they made us do it six times!
Every phrase. Every hand gesture. Every change in body
language.
Literally every specific thing we were supposed to do, they
made us practice it in real-life role playing.
So even though I am a business adviser to kidpower (they are
a pro bono client), I rely on Irene to be my teaching
adviser, particularly in the area of skill retention (which
I have come to realize is quite different from knowledge
retention).
So her advice to me is you need to get your students to
actually "do" the skill, not just take notes on how to do it.
So linking this back to case interviews, let me explain the
role of my various case interview training suggestions, and
how it maps back to what kidpower does.
My Case Interview Secrets videos explain what to do in a
case.
Going through Look Over My Shoulder the first time shows you
via demonstration how to do it.
Practicing with a live case partner or going through LOMS
multiple times while practicing out loud every step of every
case is my version of making you actually do what I told you
and showed you how to do.
Because doing well in a case interview is a verbal skill as
much as it is a thinking skill, it is important that your
case interview prep has a verbal component.
It is for this exact same reason I strongly discourage LOMS
members from passively listening to the cases in it, and
instead encourage people to use a stop and go approach...
hitting the "pause" button on the recording and
askingyourself, "Did this candidate do it right or not?"
If not, "What would I have done differently?" ... and then
(very important) actually say out loud what you would have
done instead, as if you were the candidate.
This is learning by actively "doing," rather than passively
listening.
If you have access to a practice partner, it is quite useful
to practice these skills -- once you've learned what to do in
Case Interview Secrets, and have seen how it is supposed to
be done via demonstration in LOMS.
But, some people simply do not have any access to - or only
very limited access to - practice partners.
In those cases, going through LOMS multiple times using a
sort of "re-enactment" approach is an effective alternative,
as demonstrated by the person who sent in today's email.
I still think best practice is a 50/50 split between LOMS
and live practice, up until about 20 live practice cases,
and then focusing only on live practice after that. But if
the live practice is just not an option given your
circumstances, then LOMS alone is a good second best choice.
I have elaborated on this thought process behind my
recommendations for several reasons.
1) If I tell you what to do, but do not explain why... you
won't do it. But if I do explain why, you are much more
likely to do it.
2) Once you start working in consulting, do not forget this
rule -- if you want clients to buy in, don't just make
recommendations... explain why you recommend what you
recommend.
If the reason just makes an incredible amount of sense, it
substantially increases your odds that the recommendation
will be accepted.
3) When you do strategy work, one of the most common
engagements after a strategy project is implementation --
getting your clients to actually do what you previously
recommended.
If you expect them to execute your strategic recommendations
just because you recommended them... well guess what, you will
be in for a rude surprise, because many will not do it.
If you want them to make this change in their operations,
you have to show them how to do it... and if you need specific
employees like sales people, research engineers, etc.. to
change their behaviors, you need to create a way for them to
practice these new skills (required to implement your
strategic recommendations) without fear of failure and
embarrassment.
It is far easier for a front line employee to ignore your
recommendation (or shoot it down, or explain why it won't
work, or argue as to why it is a bad idea) than it is for
them to do something that is out of their comfort zone.
So if you encounter a client that is resisting change, keep
in mind the source of this resistance often is not an
objection to the logic behind your recommendation, but is
rather due to the factors I've just outlined.
I am actually in the middle of a strategic planning session
with a client quite ironically in the moving industry
(ironic because one of the cases in LOMS is in the moving
industry and after weeks of analysis, this real life client
is virtually exactly like the case in LOMS... even though this
client found me after LOMS came out).
And one of the requests from the CEO was to have me
demonstrate an alternative sales approach to key members of
the sales team tomorrow morning.
So don't say, "We need to have the sales team execute
differently," show us (or rather show them) how it is done...
so they can visualize how they could do it. So I will be
doing exactly that.
Now one of the dirty little secrets at MBB is that the
percentage of clients that implement recommendations from
MBB is nowhere close to 100%.
I do not know the actual number, but a surprisingly high %
of clients either do not implement at all or implement so
slowly that it takes years to do so... and the lack of results
in those years leads detractors to point out that the
strategy clearly does not work.
You can minimize some of this tendency by keeping the points
I mentioned above in mind. Don't just make a
recommendation, help the client visualize what the
recommendation in practice would look like.
It is stuff like this that separates consultants that create
good slides vs. consultants that make client businesses
better.
I recommend being the latter.
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