The Management Consultant as any professional strives for the best result. Whether she/he drafts a proposal, makes a presentation or creates a final report, there is continuously room for further improvement and putting in more effort is always an option. These type of situations led Cyril Northcote Parkinson to his famous observation in 1955: “Work […]
Sometimes when you see a dog-owner walking in the park, the question arises who is in the lead. Especially children and elderly people can find themselves in challenging situations. Despite the fact that they hold the leash they have only limited impact on the direction chosen by the animal on the other end. Dogs are quite […]
Sometimes it seems that all communication today is in sound-bites, 140 character tweets or blog posts. Anything beyond 500 words seems to be in the exclusive domain of poets, novelists and other professional writers. Not so for the Management Consultant. Creating a proposal for a client or drafting a report at the end of a […]
Every trade or industry has its tools. And apart from the IT stuff like spreadsheets, word-processors and a variety of presentation apps, today’s Management Consultant cannot work without conference calls. Communication is among our primary skills, and projects more often than not are spread over geographies. It is therefore almost on a daily basis that […]
The phrase “fact free politics” was made popular in 2010 by Bill Clinton when referring to the performance of Sarah Palin, then running for office as the Republican candidate for vice-president. To be precise, he warned not to underestimate her as we were entering an era of fact free politics. As I stumbled over the […]
In today’s traffic you can regularly see cars with a sign stating “Baby on board!”. It puzzles me greatly what moves parents to share this type of information with their fellow drivers. I do not intend to discuss whether this information is predominantly correct. Typically the sign is of a more permanent nature than the […]
A friend of mine from India recently forwarded me the story of the successful launching of Mangalyaan. This initiative is part of the Mars Orbiter Mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The ISRO is the Indian equivalent of European ESA and American NASA. First of al it is a great technological
Reports providing the RAG-status of a project are relatively common. When done correctly this simple way of reporting provides clear insight to anyone who needs it. But it is important to adhere to some simple guidelines when labelling anything Red, Amber or Green. Without agreement on the basics, providing a status report based on RAG is […]
In an earlier post I suggested it is important to challenge Management Consultants in any field to be specific about their advice and to prove their added value. Based on the feedback I got, some interpreted that as a generic statement against involving external experts. The opposite is true: I think there certainly is intrinsic […]
An important part of any sourcing engagement is the Service Level Agreement. The SLA lists the agreed (Key) Performance Indicators and the norm for each to which a vendor should comply. In some cases penalties apply when service levels fall short of the agreed norm. Despite the serious effort usually spent during negotiations into agreeing […]
In most countries with a Jewish and/or Christian tradition, the ten commandments are a known entity. These rules were supposedly given by God himself to Moses who subsequently managed to break the stone tablets on which he carved them so he had to do the inscriptions twice. And although we have been comfortable with only […]
Although it has been more than 20 years since I got my MSc-degree in Applied Physics, I think I can claim a basic understanding of the laws of Physics and I most certainly can confirm that these laws do not apply to the context of Management Consultancy. For that reason I would actively discourage my […]