Steve Shu's Blog

A Perspective On Client Facilitation Skills

When I first started as a management consultant back at Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath, one of the hardest things for me to grasp was the concept of "client facilitation". Many of the consultants I knew where eager to apply standard MBA frameworks like Five Forces (for competitive and profitability analysis), NPV and financial analysis tool, statistical regression, and the marketing 3Cs/STP/4Ps, but few talked about client facilitation in explicit terms.

In my mind, client facilitation refers to the processes (and skills) that a consultant uses to get a client organization to critical decision points, deep understanding, and committment to move forward or redirect.

A master of client facilitation is a person that can:

• Master analysis skills of the trade: use top-down logical reasoning, use many analytical frameworks, work analyses from multiple directions
• Communicate well: whether it be via face-to-face conversation, writing, phone, or instant messaging (yikes)
• Teach and frame things properly: because interactions with parties may be varied, quick and because parties may have varying levels of knowledge, one must be able to ramp-up conversation levels quickly and put them in the proper context
• Recognize where the organization is at and how decisions are made: is the marketing department behind in their understanding? who does the CEO look to as his/her right hand? if so, what are the steps to getting the right hand on-board or up-to-speed? how do we get things to tip? can we get there in one step or will it take two steps?
• Lead people *without formal authority*: can you educate people, empathize with the organization, get the organization to trust you, and pave a vision and/or outline a set of tradeoffs with such clarity that motion must happen?

In my opinion, the last skill is probably the most important aspect to master regarding client facilitation. I daresay it is the essence of client facilitation, but I am pretty damn close to it. Client facilitation skills are specialized leadership skills which are all about leading people without formally being in charge.

Update 2/20/08: Gautam Ghosh points me to one of his posts that does an excellent job of discriminating between other types of "consulting" and "facilitative consulting". Again, this topic is not one that I've seen many people write about outside of more terse, academically-oriented publications. That said, the subject of facilitation is a very, very important aspect of management consuting and in my mind applies to more than 90% (just to pull a number out of the air) of the engagements I have ever been on or run.

The Kellogg Post MBA Program

I just ran across Kellogg's Post MBA Program, which is targeted at people that have MBAs that have aged more than ten years. This is an interesting market to target, and not one that I've seen before.

A more detailed curricula is outlined in their brochure, which is prefaced by text including the following:

The curriculum for the Kellogg Post-MBA Program has been created for executives who already have earned an MBA degree and want to gain a fresh perspective on leadership. The first two weeks of the program address a broad range of recent management developments such as globalization, hyper-competition, outsourcing, the shift to a knowledge-based economy, the growth of innovative financial instruments, the appearance of truly global capital markets, distributed information processing capabilities, and new communications technologies. Five months later, participants return for a leadership week that focuses on developing one’s own personal leadership capacity while also equipping people to lead change in today’s complex environment.

What is interesting to me is the characterization of recent developments. As time passes and if people don't adapt, it can be easy for workers to get stuck in old ways, whether that be having historical prejudices, using traditional management styles, or carrying about old conceptual models on how things work.

The spirit of the Kellogg program seems good. It is great to reflect on how things have changed over the years and how one needs to adapt continuously.

Of course seeing the first curriculum item of "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act" nearly made me pass out ...

Delaying Decisions As Opposed To Being Indecisive

My family's vacation was marked by an incident that led to my first 911 call in my life. I have reflected upon this incident for many days with a mixture of thankfulness for the safety of my family  (and others on the boat) and personal anguish that I could not have done more.

We were on a whale watching cruise miles off the coast of Monterey with about 40 other people on a 50-foot some boat. On the return trip back to shore, there was a malfunction that caused the exhaust pipes and roof to catch on fire. The engine was cut by the captain as it seemed it might have been a driver for the fire coming out of the exhaust. Life boats were on top of the cabin on fire. Life preservers were all in the cabin on fire (with the exception of the two preservers my two kids were wearing who had put some on at the beginning of the trip). All the fire extinguishers were spent quickly, and the flames just got worse as time passed. Shore seemed to be a long ways away, but at least we were not out 30+ miles (I'm guessing) from where we started. There were very few boats that we could see, and there was a lot of smoke coming off our boat. A 911 call was made from my mobile phone, and I handed the phone to the naturalist on the boat who was (potentially) better equipped to identify our location and condition. A number of people were panicking, and many gathered in the very back of the boat to distance themselves as much as possible from the fire and smoke. Things did not look good by any measure.

I had been in the water a few days before. The temperature was not too discernible from ice water from my perspective. I had seen seals, so I was hoping that there were not any sharks in the water.

A question raced through my mind a number of times. Was the situation bad enough that I should I pitch my kids into the water? Then there were intervening questions entering my mind ... what happens if something explodes before I make a decision? The boat is rocking pretty violently ... can I actually pitch them far enough from the boat that they won't get walloped by the swaying boat? Would they survive long enough in the cold water? The questions going through my mind were endless.

I chose to delay my decision to throw them into the water. (After the trip, I realized my wife had the same thoughts going through her mind)

The fire continued to spread. Eventually the life boats were released. No sign of the Coast Guard. A small boat came alongside and threw us two fire extinguishers. The other boat was too small to take many people, and very soon the new extinguishers were exhausted. Smoke got worse. Maybe five minutes passed.

What to do?

At some point, the captain decided to restart the engine. Though I didn't speak with her after the trip, I presume that she decided our chances were better if we tried to gun it to shore (even though speeding up the engine could have increased the fire). We gunned it towards the nearest point on shore. The increased exhaust may have served to cut some of the flames, but who knows.

We made it to shore to be greeted by the fire department and the local news (the incident was the lead story on the news that day and made the front page of the paper the next day). Coast Guard arrived 10-20 minutes later. Everyone was safe. No one needed to go into the drink.

Did I make the right decision to delay throwing my kids in the water? Was I indecisive? Did the captain make the right decision to take command and gun it to shore?

In my opinion, the captain made the right choice. We were out of options to put out the fire, and it was not clear that we were going to get any help in the near term.

As for whether I should have delayed my decision to throw my kids in the water, I am still at odds with that. True they are safe, and the direct threat at the time may not have been imminent, but in reality, I am a layman about boats, and the threat could have been imminent for all I knew. But delaying the decision to throw them in the water allowed me time to gather additional information, such as whether some other boat might come to our aid, whether the fire was spreading, or whether we would get feedback from the crew about our distress calls.

In numerous business settings, I have found that delaying decisions can be beneficial, more often in cases when one is trying to gather additional information that will make subsequent decisions more informed and definitive (e.g., you should posture yourself as ready to make a decision once information comes in as opposed to just being indecisive). Sometimes this can be counterintuitive to those in the business world, where things seem to be driven by a culture of being decisive and making decisions with whatever information is on hand.

Why I Dislike Microsoft Project for Management Consulting

Sort of as a follow-on to the post about project management and b-schools, I thought that I would post something (a bit one-sided) about the use of Microsoft Project in management consulting projects. I dislike the tool and sometimes even discourage the use of the tool by consultants running projects. Here's some reasons why:

1. While project management is a function that moves things ahead, Microsoft Project as a tool can create barriers to communication. For the average user, there's generally not enough flexibility to do things like highlight workstreams in an engagement, create a view of danger/risk points in a project, show progress to plan plainly, and summarize a project plan on one chart.
2. Because the tool is not part of everyone's basic software configuration, there are additional barriers to communication because the native file format often cannot be easily exchanged with clients, colleagues, etc. who need to work and update things in real-time. Project plans in Microsoft Project need to get exported to things like PDF files, etc.
3. Updating the project plan can become a project in of itself and prevent the project manager from doing other important things like communicating with stakeholders, managing risks, working to solve problems, and completing tasks.

Getting the theme behind my dislike for the software?

I much prefer using something like Powerpoint or Excel for developing project plans. I like Powerpoint because of its visual nature (which can be helpful in managing projects and leading people). I like Excel because of its greater structure over Powerpoint and ubiquitous availability to business people.

Am I right? Probably not entirely, but I have definitely seen the types of recurring problems described above in many engagements. The negatives often outweigh the benefits of using a more structured tool fit for purpose.

Interesting Observation That Project Management Is Something You Won't Learn In Business School

First saw this post at Virginia Postrel's site. The originally referenced post is by her other half, Dr. Steven Postrel here. Dr. Postrel writes:

A peculiar fact about business schools (at least in the USA) is that project management is not part of the regular MBA curriculum. Why is this peculiar? Only because a huge percentage of the work managers do is organized into projects, the success or failure of strategies often rests on the quality of execution of projects, and many of the principles and techniques of good project management are not immediately obvious. But hey, if anyone needs to know about this trivial stuff they can always go to a two-day workshop and get a certificate (probably from an engineering department). Or learn it on the job, which in this context often means screwing things up and trying to guess what you did wrong.

I guess on the one hand, I would agree that core management "science" topics (a bucket in which project management perhaps fits into) should be covered in business schools. That said, similar to a somewhat controversial post I wrote here on ethics courses in business schools, my perspective (from the vantage point of an MBA alum rolling back time and putting himself in an MBA student's shoes) would be that I would not have wanted to shovel out top dollar for that type of course as a customer of the business school product. Project management is a knowledge base and skill set that many people pick up on the job, regardless of whether effectiveness of process, tools, and outcomes are measured systematically. At least I would not have wanted to pay for a project management course in a naked form. The topic could be combined with some other product, such as a product development/management, consulting methods, change management, operations, or governance course. Although I am clearly biased, I think it could play well in a consulting course, especially since projects and engagements are related (but different animals).

Thoughts On Job Changes And Job Interviews

There are many variations on interviewing people, but practically across all methods I have used whether case study or more traditional "walk me through your resume" style, I find myself examining two areas very closely. I don't know if they match up with other interviewers' experiences, but in any case here are the two areas:

• Has the person succeeded in the past with skills and responsibilities that are needed for this job, and how many degrees of separation are there between the old job and the new job? For example, a person that needs both sales and consulting skills for a new job and comes from a sales background may only have one (potentially large) degree of separation from a new job. On the other hand, someone that has performed sales in one job and consulting in a separate job, well in that case, the degrees of separation may be viewed as smaller. It may not be too hard for the interviewer to envision the person being able to handle a new job that incorporates both functions. On the other hand, someone that has a background in R&D only, well there may be at least two degrees of separation from the new job because that person may neither have sales, consulting, nor extensive customer-facing experience.

Just because someone has greater degrees of separation from the job they are applying for does not mean that they should be precluded from being hired. However, when that person is selling me on whether they are appropriate for the job, they need to recognize that they may need to either sell me on other skills that I value or try to frame their background in such a way so that the degrees of separation seem as small as possible. Drawing similarities between work done in the past with work needed for the new job is one potential way of doing this (e.g., "I performed competitive analysis of product offerings as a product manager - these types of tasks likely share a number of similarities with competitive analysis performed by consultants").

As another approach, some people may want to view career changes as a continuum. If the degrees of separation for one job change are too large, then perhaps that person should seek an immediate job position that is closer. Such a step may make it easier to change to the other job at a later point in time.

• What is the overall career path that this person is seeking? It is nice to see some logic behind why a person changed jobs, in a large part to figure out whether the new job fits into a logical pattern that is aligned with both the candidate and company (hiring people can be an expensive proposition and mistakes are not good). Although somewhat of a contradiction to my first point above where I like to see how a person's past experiences can map into those required for a new job, I am not a big fan of functional resumes that organize a person's job experiences into skill clusters but that cut across individual jobs and timeframes such that chronology is convoluted. I have seen some people use this resume style to grab people's attention, but I think there are better ways of driving home the point of skill match while still preserving the importance of chronology of job experiences. One method that I prefer to see is a one-line blurb that paints a picture of how one's past experiences together match a new job's requirements in a deft way. For example, the blurb might be "experienced sales executive and consultant seeking consulting practice leadership role" or "experienced telecom product line manager seeking wireless strategy consultant role".

In closing, I will say that have deviated from these two frames in some circumstances because there are blind spots. For example, it is possible to simply wind up finding someone that is energetic and can excel at the job. Some people may simply want it enough. In these cases, I may prefer to set up some sort of trial environment, inspect past deliverables/work products, and/or do deeper digging with background checks (e.g., checking customer references).

On "Busyness" In An Increasingly Global And Technology-Oriented World

It's results that matter - not activities.

That statement encapsulates a "widely-held" management perspective that managers should evaluate workers based on the effectiveness of output produced and not by how much they are working. But is it such a widely-held belief? Dr. Andrew McAfee writes in an older post (and in the context of E2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, etc.):

Companies that are full of knowledge workers and that have built cultures that value busyness face a potentially sharp dilemma when it comes to E2.0. These companies stand to benefit a great deal if they can build emergent platforms for collaboration, information sharing, and knowledge creation. But they may be in a particularly bad position to build such platforms not because potential contributors are too busy, but because they don't want to be seen as not busy enough.

Dr. McAfee's post made me back up and think more generally about busyness and cases such as the following:

• where managers use instant messaging and presence to monitor whether employees are at their computers (as a proxy for work activity)
• how those in Western cultures may tend view someone just sitting at their desk and thinking as being lazy and unproductive whereas those in Eastern cultures may potentially view such people as being productive
• where consultants or analysts generate tons of paper or analyses (and which may vary by geography), but fail to tie things together into a set of cohesive key learnings or recommendations
• how some workaholics may criticize or think less of the Levis 501 worker types (those that line up at 5:00pm and leave at 5:01pm)
• where salespeople are viewed as wasting their time by sending cute emails to people or talking constantly about non-work matters with colleagues in their network

So I dunno. It seems plausible that busyness might be valued both to the detriment of productivity and with insufficient respect for technology limitations and global cultures. Are times and contexts changing?

Articulating and Rearticulating Problem Statements

Engineering and management consulting share a core aspect in that each discipline tends to be very problem-solving oriented. In engineering, one may be posed the problem of trying to figure out the optimal circuit or filter for removing or minimizing noise from a radio station transmission. There are structured, mathematical ways for doing this. As another example, management consultants may be posed the problem of trying to figure out the market opportunity and business strategy for a company to extend its product line for a portion of a client's customer base. There are common business methodologies for addressing these types of problems too.

To pick on consulting for a moment, sometimes it's very tempting to disappear and run off and solve the problem that's been articulated in the statement of work signed with the client. But I think that it's also important to have a good client relationship and regular communication structure that enable the problem statement to be adjusted and refined with the client. As an example for some of the engagements I oversee, I ask consulting teams to write down the problem statement in their own words near the beginning of the project (which may sometimes be a list of key questions in paragraph form that the customer has asked plus the objectives of the project) and refine the problem statement to a finer level of detail throughout the project. The end result of these efforts often culminate at the final executive presentation where the consultant can put the refined problem statement as either slide one or two of the slide deck. The problem statement reaffirms the need for the project and consultant.

So while at the beginning of an engagement, a problem statement might be something like, "Purpose of project will be to determine the technology strategy for XYZ", in the end, the refined problem statement might be "Purpose of the project is to address the following: 1) determine the business attractiveness of A, B, and C services in XYZ market, 2) identify technology options for approaching the market and tradeoffs, 3) perform full financial assessment of options, including worst case/walkaway price for auction PDQ, which is prerequisite for one of the options, and 4) determine optimal business model for approaching market, which includes consideration of leasing and buy/own models with respect to CBA.

By both breaking the problem statement down to a lower level of granularity and repositioning the statement for accuracy, it becomes easier to determine whether the team is solving the right problem and to divide the problem in such a way so as to let numerous big brains attack the pieces.

Although I'm not much into social commentary, I was in part motivated to write this post based on what is going on in Iran with nuclear fuel and the interests of both Iran and the United States. From the perspective of the US (though I'm no expert) it seems as though some have articulated the problem statement as being, "how do we prevent weapons-grade nuclear fuel from getting into the wrong hands?". Just for argument's purposes (since this may not be the right problem statement), what if the problem statement was rearticulated to be, "how do we help countries to achieve their nuclear energy goals while preventing weapons-grade nuclear fuel from getting into the wrong hands"? With a refined problem statement, one might think of more tailored approaches for addressing each issue, such as supporting or even funding nuclear energy goals, while requiring monitoring for process control purposes.

The real point of all of this rambling is that rearticulating problem statements can often lead to better outcomes, stimulate creative ideas, and offer opportunities for teams to get around roadblocks.

Update (4/12/07): I wanted to elevate the visibility of an excellent point made below by Michael Stein. He writes "the problem statement is often different for different stakeholders, and to articulate a statement that encompasses the entire picture may be in itself a major step towards a solution."

Musings On The New Loyalty In Business

Note: I was motivated to write the following post based on interacting with a few ex-military people in the UK and getting a sense of their notions of loyalty in business.

In the late-80s, I took a college course on Business Ethics. I remember coming across a characterization of a type of employee that may be close to extinct in this world, the "Company Man" (or Company Woman).  This is the type of person that is so dedicated to a firm that they breathe the company mantra, let the company guide both their professional and personal lives, and would fall on a sword to defend the reputation of the company. The reason why this type of employee may have come close to extinct (at least in the US) is in part due to the era of downsizing in corporations. Many companies let devoted employees down by laying them off without warning, without recognition, and without compassion. Some companies backed down from previously protecting their employees (which might have been ok), but then some companies went completely off the other end by being negligent and losing their employees pensions or retirement assets. Yet other companies squandered company resources at the expense of working employees and shareholders. All of these types of things rattled (if not completely shattered) the notion of loyalty from an employee to a company.

I can appreciate the notion of people being loyal to themselves before a company, but I struggle with that simple resolution a bit because I have seen a loyalty voids shatter business relationships. Legal contract asides, here are some areas where a lack of loyalty rubbed me the wrong way:

• subcontracting partner decides to go around the prime contractor and solicit the end customer directly, cutting the prime out of the loop of ongoing sales and taking away business
• customer verbally cuts a deal with a partnership, but then tries to go back on its word by edging out one of the partners through playing one partner off of the other
• project member that is key to a project proposal (and sets themselves up that way) decides to move to a competitor late in the ninth inning before a contract is signed

Whether a person is loyal to the business they work for is one thing, but I think that I have stronger feelings about whether a person should be loyal to others that they work with or that they work directly for. I think that loyalty, at a micro-level, helps to ensure that people are aligned to get actual work done. To me, a "new loyalty" in business lies between loyalty to oneself and loyalty to Big Brother.

Musings On Article Citing Americans Hating Their Jobs

MSNBC had an interesting article last month which cited that American job satisfaction hit new lows, especially for younger workers. Although it is hard to make inferences from articles like these for a number of reasons, the following items struck me as key issues in many of the work environments that I have been in (whether corporate, consulting, or client):

The thing that bugged most workers the most about their jobs were bonus plans and promotion policies. Workload and potential for growth were rated poorly also.

On the item about bonus plans, I would venture to guess that a large portion of the time dissatisfaction arises (excepting sales positions) because one feels that they cannot control their own future. If you subscribe to that point of view on the bonus front then that may beg the issue about whether bonus plans may be overengineered in many cases. Why should companies design complex plans if people feel they cannot influence them? Is it mostly related to fairness and good company hygiene considerations?

On dissatisfaction with potential for growth on the job, while the nature of the work, company, and industry certainly play a role in what might be available to employees, growth potential seems to me to be more controllable by an employee's direct manager. Things like job rotations, temporary delegation of management responsibilty, lunch-and-learn sessions, mentorship, more employee-manager communication, and simple job recognition can go a long way. Maybe I oversimpify, but it's too bad that Americans are rating work environments poorly here.

So the message is that we've hit a new, all-time low. Maybe each of us can find a little something that we can do about it.