Adam Bager

The Art of Consulting – What’s the Role of the Consultant?

The Art of Consulting – Impartial, Honest and Independent

The Art of Consulting – Representation and Analysis

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Completeness & Simplicity)

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Affordability, Flexibility, Maintainability, Elegance)

The Art of Consulting – Managing Others

The Art of Consulting – Clients

The Art of Consulting – Selling

For many consultants the idea that they might sell their skills is anathema. They prefer to delegate such activities to sales staff, who, supposedly, aren’t offended by the grubby world of money – of price, of fee rates, of raising invoices, handling disputes and getting paid.

Consulting, they like to believe, is about ideas, about working in a collegiate, almost academic, atmosphere, with clients who are almost friends. And when do friends ever need to talk about money?

Your idea of a salesman?

Such consultants (and I have been one of them) will work extra hours without payment, and are motivated by their fascination with the work they do, rather than by the material rewards that follow. Their clients love them, and their work is often, but not always, profitable.

But the idealistic approach is ultimately dangerous. Your client may love you, but you’ve still got to pay the rent. If there are consultants of this kind, doing far too much for their clients, willing always to accommodate additional demands, to extend the scope of a project without commercial discussions, I can only think that this must reflect some kind of insecurity, as if they are uncertain of the value of the analysis and advice they are delivering. It certainly isn’t the basis for a healthy relationship between consultant and client.

And if a consultant thinks of sales activities as in some ways contemptible, this merely reflects a misunderstanding of sales staff and what they do.

My own experience as a manager and entrepreneur is that the best sales staff are those who have formerly been consultants, though I shared some of these ‘uncommercial’ views when I was a young consultant. Like consultants, sales staff must listen more than they speak, ask penetrating questions and demonstrate knowledge, wisdom and pragmatism. The good ones don’t sell the impossible, don’t promise more than their consulting team can deliver. They know what they are talking about, and they will only convince a client to buy their services if the client recognises that knowledge. After all, you can’t sell ideas if you don’t understand them.

Selling consulting services is a difficult task. You must be proficient, not only in the technical matters of your profession, but also in the particular skills of selling, which include:

Qualifying – determining if the potential client is serious, has a budget, needs the services you are offering, has the time to devote to the project you are proposing, and ensuring that the people you are talking to are in a position to make a decision
Scoping – agreeing as precisely as possible the scope of services being proposed, shaping them into affordable packages, especially if there’s a need to prove your value
Pricing – determining the price that a potential client is willing to pay (this is the area where the timid consultant is most likely to fall short!)
Persuading – understanding and overcoming the particular objections of those involved in the decision to buy
Demonstrating Competence – showing deep understanding of the client’s needs, and demonstrating competence by fielding all the appropriate skills the company has to offer
Providing References – using strong relationships with current clients to gain the confidence of the potential client

..and there are many more.

The point is that almost all of these are skills that are close to the non-technical skills that all consultants must possess. They are the usual consultants’ skills, simply extended by techniques such as ‘solution selling’. If you are a good consultant you can be a very good salesman.

But beyond the special task of working on a sales opportunity, there are sales skills that all of us must demonstrate daily as consultants. We must always be ready to promote our company, our brand, our special knowledge, our methods, or any of those other things which differentiate us from our competition. This doesn’t mean parroting slogans or nagging our clients for additional work, it means confidently supporting and promoting our skills whenever opportunities arise, and, through good questioning, seeking them out. After all, if the client is rational, he or she is buying your services because the benefits outweigh the costs.

A certain kind of diffidence is understandable. Many of us see every side to a question, and when we put forward advice to our clients we do so in the circumstances and with the view that on the balance of probabilities the course of action we suggest is the best. We are not always certain and we often lay out the risks as well as the options. But this doesn’t mean we should not be confident in our skills, and if we are confident in our skills we should be confident of the value that we offer to our clients, and reasonably expect payment for what we do.

In fact, we usually find that our clients want us to be successful, that they respect us well enough to want to pay us for our time. It isn’t a zero sum game and most clients don’t negotiate as if our gain is their loss.

If ‘selling’ means identifying opportunities that will bring benefit to our client as well as to ourselves, then we must all be ready to ‘sell’. And if someone suggests you might be a good sales person, don’t be offended. It can be a good career move into a very respectable profession.

See also:

The Art of Consulting – What’s the Role of the Consultant?

The Art of Consulting – Impartial, Honest and Independent

The Art of Consulting – Representation and Analysis

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Completeness & Simplicity)

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Affordability, Flexibility, Maintainability, Elegance)

The Art of Consulting – Managing Others

The Art of Consulting – Clients

If we’re honest, there probably comes a moment once or twice in our careers when we think we’d be better off without our clients. We’re tempted just occasionally to think that without our clients’ demands we’d be free to do really good work.

Of course this is nonsense. After all, the customer is always right.

Well, no, that’s nonsense too. The customer is very often wrong, but what this oft-repeated dictum really means, is that we must always treat our clients with respect, even if we disagree with them.

I have friends who have worked as receptionists at hotels and I’ve heard horror stories about how guests behave, angrily demanding favours from staff who don’t have favours within their gift (upgrades mainly), furiously lambasting them about problems they are powerless to solve, behaving rudely, impatiently, insultingly.

As consultants, we’re luckier than receptionists, on the whole. In our line of work our clients are usually:

Clever
Reasonable
Friendly
Efficient
Respectful
Helpful
Stimulating
Even fun

But the truth is that sometimes they can also be:

Lazy
Arrogant
Unreasonable
Disrespectful
Angry
Hostile
Predatory
Stupid
Misleading
Pursuing a surreptitious agenda
Contradictory
Political
Even drunk

Clients are rarely even one of these bad things, but the way you work with them must accommodate all of these from time to time.

A criminal lawyer has a hard time defending his or her client if the client doesn’t tell the truth. An architect can’t design a building if the client can’t decide how may floors are needed. A business strategist can’t present an idea to a group of drunk and angry men.

What makes the relationship sometimes additionally more troublesome, or complex at least, is that your client isn’t always a single monolithic, consistent entity. Your client is sometimes a group of individuals, each with his or her own knowledge, prejudices, fears, ambitions, and emotions.

But enough about those few BAD clients. Clients are, on the whole, wonderful. We depend on them for our livelihood, we depend on their knowledge, their ideas and their cooperation, especially if our consulting projects are to be successful. We depend on them for their approval and their recommendation. And we learn from them.

Over the course of thirty years as a consultant I’ve learned about the manufacture of televisions, of medicines, and of chocolate, about the extraction of sugar from sugar beet, about aeroplane refuelling, about the management of professional services, and about dozens of other disciplines, and in all of these fields I’ve learned not just about how these things are done technically, but about how the people who do them are managed and motivated. There is no better business education than the education a consultant is paid to acquire through contact with a multitude of industries. Better than business school any day.

As you learn about your clients you learn how to conduct your relationship with them too. You are at once a ‘supplier’, a confidant, an adviser, and an intellectual sparring partner. You must do what you’re told and you must tell your client what to do.

So clients cannot be, first and foremost, your friend. Your relationship is ‘professional’ and, of course, commercial. Clients may become your friend, but it’s not through friendship that you achieve your goal. Friendliness yes, but not friendship. Friendship can get in the way of your goal because it imposes constraints on your behaviour that undermine your impartiality.

The key to a happy relationship lies in the management of expectations. Client and consultant should both know what to expect of each other. Where instinct and experience don’t supply this, the rules must be written down.

In all circumstances the best approach is openness and honesty, enthusiasm but always a certain distance, precise documentation and communication, and a clear set of rules established from the start. To protect yourself and your project from all the bad things that clients might occasionally be:

You will insist on detail if it’s needed and verification if you’re not sure that what you’re being told is true
You will be honest about what you know and what you must find out. A client cannot expect you to know everything
You will respect confidentiality
You will be reasonable about delays but point out the inconvenience and the likely consequences, if an agreement has been infringed
You will draw attention to contradiction
You will accept criticism without defensiveness, but not if it is unreasonable.
You will apologise for mistakes, accept any liability, and correct them if you can
You will not accept anger, and will remove yourself from any situation where emotion runs too high
You will not be a witness to unreasonable behaviour by your client towards his or her staff, and you will remove yourself from the situation if possible
You will not be bullied into working unreasonable hours or into accepting unreasonable deadlines

A consultant is neither a hired hand nor a slave. He or she is a man or woman of independent mind.

Most clients and consultants have an instinctive understanding of the rules. But where there is even a suspicion that this is lacking I like to put forward a Consulting Charter that clarifies the terms of engagement between the two parties. This may cover topics as diverse as what may be considered reasonable use of a private mobile phone, how long a lunch break might be, and the proper procedure a client should follow when making a complaint. The rules may be hard to write down, and they are often unnecessary, but you must always have a common understanding with your client as to what is reasonable and what is not.

See also:

The Art of Consulting – What’s the Role of the Consultant?

The Art of Consulting – Impartial, Honest and Independent

The Art of Consulting – Representation and Analysis

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Completeness & Simplicity)

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Affordability, Flexibility, Maintainability, Elegance)

The Art of Consulting – Managing Others

Many consultants work alone. Whilst they must manage themselves and their relationship with their clients, they depend on no one else for their reputation and prosperity.

But many of us work in teams, and it is usual, then, that we should manage each other. Sometimes there’s no formal appointment of a team leader or manager, but this doesn’t work well if a team is much larger than two. Whilst it’s possible to imagine two or three experienced and independent consultants reaching an easy consensus on the division of responsibilities and the line to take with a client, when an organisation contracts to provide consulting services for a client, a team leader, or project manager, or account manager is usually appointed to represent the organisation and to take responsibility for the work.

Is management like this….?

Or like this….?

What are the responsibilities of a manager?

To get the work done,
On time,
Well,
To the client’s satisfaction, and
Profitably

These are a manager’s primary responsibilities. He or she must also:

Encourage the professional and managerial development of staff
Ensure that work is rewarding, even enjoyable
Ensure that criticism, when required, is constructive and helpful rather than discouraging

What skills does a manager need to meet these responsibilities?

You might think that you need to possess all the technical skills that the project requires, to be the best architect, engineer, programmer, or whatever is needed, but that’s not the case. You can often rely on your juniors to provide the best and most up-to-date technical skills. Indeed a manager sometimes best motivates his or her staff by deferring to their greater expertise.

In many organisations, the best technicians are relentlessly promoted, but sometimes their management skills don’t grow with their technical expertise and as managers of people, of projects, of teams, they fail. The wiser organisation provides two paths for its professional staff – a path into management, and a path into special technical responsibility (which usually trails ‘dotted line’ responsibility rather than line management responsibility).

As a manager, you must:

Plan well (understanding logical dependencies and judging your or others’ estimates well)
Understand, trust and motivate your team
Communicate well both with your team and with your client
Set objectives and responsibilities and delegate well
Judge the right level of detail and quality that will satisfy your client whilst ensuring profitability

These skills are needed for leadership in any context, but in the professional services organisation they must be exercised with a lighter touch. Consultants are employed for their intelligence, imagination, their technical experience, and they are at their best when they can be themselves, each different from the other, each with a different set of strengths and weaknesses. They can be ambitious, vain, intellectually arrogant, shy, dominant, team players, individualists, mavericks, and so on. The best ones are not easy to manage. And there are often some who want to be in your shoes (these, in particular, need encouragement!)

So how do you manage a team of experts?

Above all, you mustn’t think of yourself as the commander of an army, whose commands and whims are executed to order by a team of highly-trained and dutiful soldiers. Of course, I know also, that even soldiers must show initiative. But in the heat of battle there is limited opportunity for discussion and debate.

Think of yourself rather as the first amongst equals (as the British Prime Minister is considered to be in Cabinet). You manage by consensus. In consulting management is the art of getting others to want what you want, or failing that, it is the art of reaching agreement with your team on how best collectively to achieve your objectives.

To manage well you need to obtain the trust and respect of your team. These are earned by your showing understanding, providing encouragement, providing assistance in obtaining resources or access, accepting responsibility (even, sometimes, responsibility for their mistakes as well as your own), showing good judgement, delegating well, mucking in when necessary, and keeping consummately calm. If you must disagree with some or all of your team, you must do so with understanding and explanation, and you must deploy all your interpersonal skills to keep the team together however many disparate opinions it may contain.

Above all, making your team do things will never work. It is rare, in my experience, that consultants aren’t already highly motivated by their interest in the work they do. They can more easily be de-motivated by poor management, but you can almost always assume that they want to do the work, love the work, want to show off their skills, and are eager for responsibility. This is a fortunate starting point for any manager. The skills you need are to do with harnessing this energy and pointing it in the same and right direction. You may feel that you’re ‘herding’ a group of individuals, each with his or her own idiosyncratic sense of direction, but you’re herding high energy, highly intelligent individuals, not sheep.

See also:

The Art of Consulting – What’s the Role of the Consultant?

The Art of Consulting – Impartial, Honest and Independent

The Art of Consulting – Representation and Analysis

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Completeness & Simplicity)

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Affordability, Flexibility, Maintainability, Elegance)

The Art of Consulting – Persuading

In the mid-1980s I worked for a large IT services company in London. Every so often the company arranged an away-day, a sort of troop-rallying exercise in a good hotel with plenty of food and drink to lubricate the message. We troops would sit through a series of motivating talks, the usual graphs and bullet points, though it was before the days of PowerPoint, so all of these were printed on slides and projected using an epidiascope.

These were the relatively early days of the corporate presentation and I was new to the whole exercise. I almost enjoyed it. I remember the CEO’s presentation as especially impressive. There was a picture of the Queen at one point, and a dog, but I can’t now remember why. He brought a touch of irony to the proceedings that made his talk stand out from the rest. As I recall, he ended by asking all the salesmen in the room to stand up. A few rather self-consciously struggled to their feet (salesmen drank more at lunchtime that we consultants did).

‘What about the rest of you?’ the CEO asked, ‘Why aren’t you all standing?’

It’s a tired trick, but not so tired that I haven’t tried it myself from time to time. Yes, of course, in a sense we’re all ‘salesmen’ even if our job title doesn’t include the word. We must all present our company in a favourable light and keep our ears pricked for potential opportunities. Some consultants aren’t cut out for this, and however good they are at their job, they’re almost ashamed that money should be demanded in return for what they do. But some are good, or very good. Indeed, in my organisation some of the very best salesmen (even those with the word ‘sales’ in their job title) have formerly been consultants.

Selling projects is one thing, and not all of us are suited to the argy-bargy of negotiation, but selling ideas is another. If we’re advising our clients, and if we firmly believe in our advice, then at the very least we must persuade, and there’s an art to that too.

The most important point about persuasion may sound counterintuitive. It is that, as in almost all situations, it’s better to listen than to speak. You won’t win by wearing people down with words. And , after all, you already know what your opinion is (I would hope) and why you hold it. But you may not know in advance what your client’s opinion may be, how he has understood your reasoning, what his objections may be and what motivates them. He may disagree as to the facts, he may disagree as to your reasoning, or he may raise issues that you haven’t considered (certainly judgements as to the pragmatism of your advice may differ, since the client’s knowledge of his organisation is likely to exceed yours). Finally, he may object irrationally, for all kinds of emotional reasons.

So you must listen very carefully to understand the motives behind your client’s objections. Of course, you should already be aware of some of them, especially if they’re based on disagreement as to the facts. If you’re not aware of these, then your project hasn’t been managed well. By the time you come to make your case you should be aware of opposing views, findings and interpretations.

Listening is essential if you’re going to persuade. You can’t just disagree, and mount a direct assault on your client’s opinion. You mustn’t be aggressive but you mustn’t be defensive either. You must always behave and persuade in a way that allows for compromise and even defeat. You can be enthusiastic about your opinion, but not emotional. You mustn’t seem so wedded to your view that compromise or defeat will seem like a personal affront or contempt for your professional skills. Whatever you do or say, you must not put your professional relationship with your client at risk. As with all negotiations you must have a number of compromise positions prepared in advance.

I have always hated training courses that aim to teach you a thing or two about human behaviour. They’re often based on a few bogus ideas from behavioural psychology. I studied psychology at university and developed, during those three years, a lifelong aversion to the subject. But on one ‘interpersonal skills’ course I attended in the early 1990s I learned something useful. The subject was ‘how to be assertive’. If you want to assert your own point of view, to persuade others of its merits, and to prevail, we were taught, you must strenuously demonstrate that you understand your opponent’s (or client’s) point of view. You begin your argument by showing that you have listened to and understand your opponent’s point of view. You might even flatter.

‘It’s interesting that you see it that way,’ you might begin. ‘I can understand that from your point of view, with all your experience it would seem obvious that it should be done that way rather than the way I’m recommending. Indeed, I’ve seen similar circumstances where that is exactly the right course of action, and where what you’re recommending has worked. It often makes sense. BUT……..’

And then you go on to explain why the circumstances, or the logic are different in this case. It doesn’t always work, but often it does. And even if it doesn’t, you’ve demonstrated an understanding of the client’s point of view, perhaps even to the point that you may be persuaded of it. Whatever happens, you’re more likely to reach a compromise without endangering your relationship.

Arguments and ideas are lost if your client thinks you don’t understand his position, or if you seem too emotionally attached to your own, or if he thinks you’re concealing some deeper agenda, or if you’re arrogant, or if he suspects you think he’s stupid. You’ve got to be reasonable and likeable at all times.

When you’re persuading, always take account of what will work for your particular audience. Get the level of detail, and the level of informality right, and always understand the motivation of your audience.

Persuasion is most effective when it quiet and reasonable and acknowledges alternative points of view.

See also:

The Art of Consulting – What’s the Role of the Consultant?

The Art of Consulting – Impartial, Honest and Independent

The Art of Consulting – Representation and Analysis

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Completeness & Simplicity)

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Affordability, Flexibility, Maintainability, Elegance)

Many of us approach the end of a consulting project with a sense of dread. Not because we fear the unemployment that might follow, but because we must usually write a final report for our client, and most of us don’t like writing.

Part of the discomfort we feel may stem from the fact that a final report must be definitive. Until we put pen to paper, or fingers to the keyboard, our ideas are provisional, our arguments sketchy, our evidence incomplete. We may have formed a well-founded opinion, perhaps even an instinctive one, but we may not yet have fully marshalled our arguments and our evidence. The report we must write must demonstrate conclusively, consistently and coherently that we have brought knowledge, experience, imagination and reason to the process of consulting. This requires intellectual effort, and getting the brain started on the business of thinking hard isn’t always easy. It’s like going to the gym after a long day at the office.

Which is why it’s often a mistake to leave report writing to the end. My own experience of consulting is that writing things down, or representing and analysing them is part of the sifting, constructing, creative, solving process. Often I don’t know what I think until I put my thoughts into words. On the page, on the screen, words must meet higher standards of coherence, clarity and logic. Faults in reasoning, weaknesses in solutions, become apparent when we put them into words and represent them in pictures.

So it’s best to start writing at the very start of a project. Write down your assumptions, your findings, your ideas, the issues you haven’t yet resolved as soon as you can. It doesn’t always matter if your jottings lack structure. As things come into focus, you’ll find that you can rearrange your text, delete what isn’t useful, and gradually arrive at a structure that makes some sense. Writing is part of the intellectual and creative process.

Of course, some don’t need to do this. Think of Mozart. He could imagine an entire symphony, complete with orchestration, and writing it down on paper was merely a chore. But few of us are Mozart!

Although I advocate a piecemeal, early start to report writing, a final report should conform to some sensible conventions. The best test of what it should contain is to imagine an interested but uninformed reader who will come to your report knowing nothing about the project.

The reader will want to know:

Why the project was commissioned
What was the project’s scope
What was assumed
What was deliberately or inevitably excluded
Who worked on the project (from the client’s as well as the consultant’s organisation)
Who wrote the report (and who revised it)
What was the project’s method
What were the findings
What are the recommendations
What are the next steps
What are the dissenting views, if any

I like to present everything at three levels of detail.

A summary (often, inexplicably, called an Executive Summary as if senior managers need read no further)
The main body of the report
Appendices containing supporting detail

Summary

The purpose of a summary is twofold. First, for some (lazy?!) readers it may be sufficient (as the Bluffer’s Guide to Opera might alleviate the social discomfort of an evening of Grand Opera). Second, it signals in advance the direction of the complete report, so that you can read at the second level with the authors’ conclusions in mind.

So, for example (using the traditional bullet-point style):

This project was commissioned with Board Approval by the Logistics Director to examine the cost and reputational damage resulting from inaccurate stock data relating to the company’s ten warehouses
The project team investigated and documented current stock management procedures, visiting each warehouse and interviewing all staff involved in stock movements, and was able to determine the probable source and consequences of mistakes
Stock handling procedures are inconsistent and prone to inaccuracy. Stocktaking, as well as reconciliations between issuing and receiving locations, are not methodical. Current problems result in losses of sales (estimated at 140 K EUR annually), overstocking (average 12%, representing 80 K EUR of working capital) and reputational damage (unquantifiable)
Manual procedures should be replaced by a simple company-wide off-the-shelf computerised system
The cost of implementing such a system need not exceed 100 K EUR, with ongoing annual costs of 25 K EUR and an implementation project could be completed in six months, requiring the full-time attention of one senior manager in the logistics department for that period, and two days a month of IT time
The next step should be to commission a description of the stock management procedures to be supported, and then to seek tenders for software and implementation consulting

The Main Body of the Report

The main body of the report will elaborate on this summary.

Background will describe in more detail why the consulting project was commissioned, citing examples of the issues it should address
Scope will define the limits imposed on the project (e.g. it should exclude certain kinds of warehouse (stationery, for example) and should not tackle the issue of item identification, etc.). It is as important to exclude explicitly as to include explicitly
Participants will list members of the project team, what they do, and what their role on the project will be, and all contributors to the project (for example, those interviewed for their opinion)
Author(s) will list all contributors to the document and the dates of versions and revisions
Assumptions will list agreed assumptions relevant to the project (e.g. that the company has provided a complete list of relevant staff to interview)
Exclusions will list any relevant data or opinions that cannot be obtained, and the reasons (e.g. that the logistics department were unable to provide any documentation on inventory procedures)
Method will describe how the project team carried out its work (referring to any supporting documents (e.g. questionaires) in Appendices)
Findings will summarise all facts relevant to the report’s recommendations (referring to detail in Appendices)
Recommendations will lay out a number of suggested courses of action, with priorities and costs
Next Steps will lay out what should be done next in order to implement the recommendations
Dissenting Views (a rare section) will identify disagreements as to findings and recommendations

Appendices

These provide additional information that a reader may examine in order to judge the reasonableness of method, findings, recommendations, etc.

In all cases language should be plain and simple, persuasive but not emotional. Brevity, clarity, and readability are the goals. Do not be dull, if you can avoid it.

See also:

The Art of Consulting – What’s the Role of the Consultant?

The Art of Consulting – Impartial, Honest and Independent

The Art of Consulting – Representation and Analysis

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Completeness & Simplicity)

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Affordability, Flexibility, Maintainability, Elegance)

As consultants we spend much of our time thinking, researching, calculating, designing, devising, writing, and doing other tremendously serious, but usually solitary, things. There comes a time, though, when we must present our findings to our clients and make our case. We sometimes do this through a report (which I’ll blog about separately) but very often we must present our findings in person, at a meeting, either through informal discussion, or formally using a ‘presentation’, often a PowerPoint presentation, full of bullet points, graphics and other tricks of the trade.

A presentation must:

Inform as to facts
Advance an argument (with stated assumptions)
Persuade as to a course of action, or clearly lay out choices

It’s not so different from selling, in that whilst serious substance is undoubtedly necessary it is almost never sufficient. People buy from people they like. Similarly, people are persuaded by people they like.

Oddly, this is true also of musical performance. LLP Group used to sponsor an instrumental competition (I am an oboist myself) and I attended every competitor’s performance. After a while I could predict an interesting and successful performance before the music even began. It was a matter of how the musician moved, engaged with the audience, and so on. There are, of course, some notable exceptions to this rule, not least Susan Boyle, whose dowdiness gave no hint of her glorious voice. But the point is that presentation isn’t just about substance, it’s also about style.

As for PowerPoint presentations, I am one of the world’s worst audiences. PowerPoint has made us all dull. It fools us into thinking that it’s what’s on the screen that matters, not how we present ourselves.

I attend software conventions all over the world and after more than thirty years in the business I feel almost physically sick when the lights go down and the bullet points start rolling. If I can, I sneak out of the auditorium and fortunately I’ve never had to sit an examination on the content.

So, whilst cogent argument and succinct presentation of the salient facts are essential, you must also entertain. Never be dull. Presentations are a performance and must be approached as such. This doesn’t mean knock-about humour. Rather, it means being brief, being personal, being enthusiastic, being yourself and above all it means engaging with the audience.

Not everyone is initially good at this, but these skills can be acquired, and practised, and perfected.

I’ve often suggested that a PowerPoint presentation should never be longer than ten minutes, but I regularly exceed this limit myself. The important thing is to try to make it as short as possible and keep it simple.

What are the important questions to ask yourself and things to think about when preparing and presenting a PowerPoint presentation?

Who are your audience? What are their expectations? What style do they expect (in Zurich they’re formal, in Naples they’re not)?
Who are the most important members of your audience?
How much time do you have? Always check with the audience before you start.
Adopt a simple structure that reflects the logical structure of your argument (for example, scope, assumptions, facts, options, priorities, recommendations).
Start your presentation by saying what you’re going to present (so that the audience knows your direction of travel), present your case, and then end your presentation by saying what you’ve said. People remember structures and shapes more easily than facts, so if you make the shape of your presentation clear, they might even remember some of the detail that hangs off it.
Don’t present detail if it can’t be grasped immediately. You can always provide detail separately, later.
Don’t be repetitive.
Never write long sentences on your slides
Never read what’s on the slide, especially if you’re presenting detail. Your audience is probably literate and can read for itself. For example, you can just say, ‘Here are some facts relevant to my argument,’ and then leave a few seconds for the audience to read them. Your bullet points are for talking around, not for reading verbatim. How often I’m in an agony of boredom whilst a presenter laboriously drones through bullet point after bullet point when I’ve already read them.
Use simple graphics where possible but don’t cram them with detail. They must make sense from the back of the room.
Be consistent in your use of fonts and styles, and make sure everything is visible to everyone in the room.
Don’t be tempted to use too many clever effects – bullet points that bounce, screen transitions that resemble shutters, etc. Such things were fun fifteen years ago, but nowadays they are tedious.
Never turn to look at the screen. Check that the technology is working when you’re setting up, but then trust it. Better to look at your audience if you can see them, and, when you need to, at the notebook in front of you that’s running your presentation.
Communicate with your audience. Force reaction to your most important points by looking your audience in the eye, and even asking for feedback. Ask, ‘Is that clear?’ from time to time before moving on from one point to another.
Don’t be derailed, if you can avoid it. If there’s interruption or heckling from the audience, then engage with the speaker briefly and then ask that discussion be postponed until you’ve finished. ‘Let me just get through what I wanted to say, and then I’ll happily discuss what you’ve said in more detail.’ Or, ‘I’ll get to that in a few minutes, so please just bear with me for a while.’
Talk simply and as if you’re talking one-to-one, as if it’s a conversation. Leave pauses, when you must. Rapid panicky patter is disastrous.
Be amusing if that comes naturally to you, but don’t tell jokes if that’s not something you naturally do well. Be yourself.
Reinforce your company branding, values and guidelines, or, at least, don’t breach them.
BE BRIEF
BE CLEAR
DO NOT BE DULL

If you follow some of these guidelines there’s a chance that something from your presentation will stay in the minds of your audience.

See also:

The Art of Consulting – What’s the Role of the Consultant?

The Art of Consulting – Impartial, Honest and Independent

The Art of Consulting – Representation and Analysis

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Completeness & Simplicity)

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Affordability, Flexibility, Maintainability, Elegance)

If it didn’t sound bossy I would have adopted a strapline such as ‘We tell our customers what to do’ for LLP Group. It reflects our inescapable responsibility as consultants, our duty to advise. When we’ve collated the evidence, evaluated the objectives, determined the priorities and analysed the constraints, we must make a judgement as to the best course for our client.

As I wrote in my first post on The Art of Consulting:

A consultant uses his knowledge, experience, intelligence and imagination to investigate, understand, and advise on the resolution of problems brought to him by a client.

The art of good judgement is probably the most difficult we must acquire. It certainly isn’t acquired in the classroom, but rather through years of experience, and, sad to say, through our mistakes as well as through our successes.

As young consultants we’re usually too obsessed by theory or by technology, too willing to take a risk on unproven solutions, and we overestimate the capabilities of our clients and their eagerness to embrace new ideas.

As we age we get better at balancing perfection and pragmatism, at aiming for the achievable rather than the ideal, and in understanding the limitations of our clients and ourselves.

A junior consultant can be trusted to:

Solve a technical problem
Provide important research

An intermediate consultant can be trusted to:

Determine what a client wants or needs
Devise the most expedient solution
Divine or determine priorities
Perceive dependencies
Calculate the risks
Estimate effort
Judge whether the client is right or wrong

A mature consultant can:

Judge what is really in the client’s best interests
Advise on what is practically achievable
Decide whether it is in the consultants’ interest to deliver the project
Determine if a client is ready for the solution
Determine if the consultants can do a good enough job
Motivate the client and the consultants involved

When we advise, our judgements must be:

Reasoned
Discussed
Documented

And, like it or hate it, with judgement comes responsibility, and often, indeed, legal liability (whether limited to a large number or unlimited). This is why consultants often obtain professional indemnity insurance as protection, and this is why we reserve the right to refuse, to say no, to withdraw in some circumstances, if our advice is ignored.

It’s important we remember that a consultant is responsible for his or her advice in the circumstances. We cannot take responsibility for issues over which we have no control.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we should always insist that our advice be followed to the letter. We must often make compromises. After all, we are sometimes wrong in some particulars.

But if we feel that an important aspect of our advice is ignored in a way that we cannot mitigate, then, if we do continue to work with our client, we must document our misgivings and advise our client on how we believe the outcome will be affected.

We must also always be willing to admit that we are wrong or have made mistakes. Even our clients might admit that it is human to err. Admitting mistakes as early as possible, however awkward, reduces the risk of failure, and on occasion, might even earn you some respect.

I remember many occasions in my work as an IT consultant where things went wrong because I made a mistake (it is actually quite impossible to get complex business systems to work perfectly the first time). I’ve learned to avoid being defensive. It’s always better to say, ‘Sorry, I made a mistake.’ In most circumstances clients accept that this is inevitable and that they, too, are not immune to error. In most cases they are sympathetic, forgiving and supportive.

On the other hand, if you are evasive and concealing, trust might be forever lost. We can also avoid mistakes by admitting our limitations. Our clients must know what we know and what we don’t know. If you’re not sure of something – say so, and say why. Never lie – you’ll be caught out sooner or later – and don’t hide something that you think might hurt you later.

But, even so, remember you’re always, at least partly, a salesperson. Make the best of the circumstances you’re in. See the glass as half full, not half empty and don’t advertise problems if you can solve them quietly. We also have a responsibility to put the best gloss on things that we can.

See also:

The Art of Consulting – What’s the Role of the Consultant?

The Art of Consulting – Impartial, Honest and Independent

The Art of Consulting – Representation and Analysis

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Completeness & Simplicity)

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Affordability, Flexibility, Maintainability, Elegance)

Designing well means designing something that does the job as simply as possible and is also easily used by its intended users. Good design also means:

Affordability
Maintainability
Flexibility
Elegance

Affordability and maintainability usually go together, and both are often related to simplicity and pragmatism. A good design will do as much of the job as it is sensible to do, as simply as possible, for as long as possible.

In the physical world there’s usually a trade off between high quality of materials (and consequently a long life) and cost. Choosing how well to build something is a matter of cash flow, the pattern of expected return on investment, required lifespan and available resources to invest.

For most people who need to go from A to B, this is a better choice…

than this…

And something like this…

is easier to maintain than this…

In the abstract world of software design, maintainability also requires that know-how persists in your supplier or your workforce. Bear that in mind. Sometimes all the money in the world won’t buy the knowledge that the original designer had.

Flexibility is a more difficult concept. Good design will enable adaptation as requirements change. But anticipating the future, which flexibility requires, is always tricky.

Suppose you are designing an invoicing system and it must be completely flexible, then you must choose a word processing tool such as Word (not in fact a ‘system’ at all), though this comes at the cost of there being no constraints and controls on what a user might do.

Flexibility is expensive. I am a designer of a software package for Professional Services Management and Expense Management (see systems@work). This software must work for many kinds of companies so I must design it to be flexible. This costs a lot more overall than it would if I were designing just for one organisation, even if I designed a certain level of flexibility for that organisation. But even so, our software will sometimes hit a brick wall of impossible requirements and we can’t always do everything that a client might want. Sometimes, if this is a showstopper, we lose the deal.

Judging just how much flexibility is needed in good design is an art. It comes with experience, but you must take account of this. Not to do so can mean enormous expense when requirements unavoidably change.

Finally, elegance. This is an insubstantial concept, and perhaps, if all other principles are adhered to, elegance simply emerges. The most efficient, pragmatic, simple, maintainable, affordable and flexible design may also turn out to be the most elegant. But, for sure, elegance involves art. It is a matter of aesthetics and it is as difficult to prescribe as it is to write music as well as Mozart did.

See also:

The Art of Consulting – What’s the Role of the Consultant?

The Art of Consulting – Impartial, Honest and Independent

The Art of Consulting – Representation and Analysis

The Art of Consulting – Designing (Completeness & Simplicity)