On Increasing The Value Of A Consultant

My boss's question, "How can we increase the value of our consultants?" prompted me to write this. She knew the answer of course, but you know how bosses are -- they throw around questions designed to make you think, hopefully solicit your suggestions and make you contribute something new and meaningful.

Why have the desire to increase the value of consultants? Because the total value of its consultants has a direct relationship to the value of the company.

V = P + R

In my constant attempt to simplify things, I came up with the above equation,

where:

• V - Consultant's Total Value
  
• P - Consultant's Perceived Value
  
• R - Consultant's Real Value.

A definition from Merriam-Webster Online:

value
- relative worth, utility, or importance
- something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable

Next, my definition of Perceived Value and Real Value in relation to a consultant's role.

Perceived Value is the type of value that is subjective and is not easily tangible or measured. It is derived from things that make a client feel good, things that do not necessarily have a direct contribution to the required output. From a client's perspective, this can be a set of traits that distinguishes a consultant of one company from another (given that both can satisfy the client's requirements).

Real Value, on the other hand, is the type of value that is objective, tangible and most times, easily measured. It is derived from things that can satisfy the client's original requirements. From a client's point of view, anything a consultant possesses, does or produces that has a direct impact on solving their problems or meeting their needs forms part of his or her real value.

Going back to the question as to how to increase the value of a consultant, my short answer is, as the equation above tries to convey, that it can be achieved through increasing the consultant's perceived and/or real value.

Can the value of a consultant be increased merely by focusing on the factors that affect Perceived Value? The answer is of course, yes. But this isn't a sustainable strategy. Dealing with things on the superficial level is not a substitute for those things that provide Real Value and give lasting results.

What are the things that contribute to Perceived Value?

• Appearance (Grooming, Clothing, etc.) - Image is everything? Nope. But almost.
  
  Whether one likes it or not, people are judged by how they dress look. Unless your good reputation or that of your company's precedes you, it's not easy to get away from this. This is especially true during the first few meetings. Over time, once you have proven yourself as a worthy consultant, you can be a bit more relaxed (or rebellious, if you prefer that term) in your manner of dressing. Unfortunately for some companies (referring to both the vendor and the client), they require the consultants to be stiffly dressed at all times so dressing down may not be an option.
  
  Getting discriminated because of (young) age is a different topic altogether, but dressing up is one way to disguise the age up a bit. I remember a former boss's advice.
  
  "Looking young can sometimes be to your disadvantage, so I suggest you guys dress up a bit when you face our clients."
  
  Bottom line, it's not a matter of wearing expensive clothes but wearing the appropriate ones. Do take note that appropriate varies from one client to another. It all boils down to the culture of the company.
  
  Grooming is simply being neat and as attractive as possible; doesn't everyone try enough of this considering love of one's self is natural? So here are just a few reminders: tidy hair, clean finger nails, good smell, ironed clothes, shined shoes.
  
  
• Speech/Accent - Being a good speaker is not only advantageous to politicians but also to consultants (and managers, teachers, other leaders, etc.). Good speakers are usually thought of as intelligent people, being able to express themselves well. If you're new to a country and your accent is not easily understandable to the people you are talking to, it would be a good idea to slow down and enunciate the syllables. If you have a tendency to stutter or eat your words (not in the other figurative sense), slowing down or taking a slight pause before each sentence would also help.
  
  For meeting and presentations, nothing beats being well prepared. I guess the same could be said of just about anything.
  
  The good news is, speaking is a skill. It can be practiced and improved.
  
  
• Confidence - This is about how one carries herself. Of course, confidence stems out from several factors, and not to preempt the other points way down below, but working on those factors affecting Real Value will have a significant effect on this.
  
  Taking the time to learn your stuff really well is one way to boost confidence. When answering questions, being able to admit what you don't know is not a sign of lack of confidence but of the opposite. Being able to BS your way may sometimes work but is not guaranteed to work every time. As a proactive consultant, you can always exercise the option of saying "I don't know but I'm going to find out" or "I don't know but I know someone who does".
  
  Confidence starts by knowing what you know and what you need to know. Focus on your area of specialization and talents and be aware of the strengths of your team members.
  
  
• Attitude - Much has been said about how attitude towards life and things in general affect what actually happens. The same things could be said about dealing with clients.
  
  A positive attitude helps one get through difficult situations, allows one to see things from a better perspective and enables one to learn from mistakes. There's the attitude of constantly showing the willingness to help and make things happen, the attitude of taking criticisms positively and making adjustments when necessary, and the attitude of showing the willingness to make every penny count.
  
  I once worked with a group of consultants from another company. To the customer's questions or requests, their default answer was, "That's not in our SOW (scope of work)". They said this even when everyone else was just looking for a possible solution to a difficult problem. It's not wrong to tell the client that something is not part of what was agreed upon, but the manner of telling is important, and it's not wise to shut the doors just because something is not part of the original scope as it may show unwillingness to be open to further negotiations.
  
  That said, having a positive attitude doesn't mean becoming overly optimistic or being a pushover.

What about the factors that affect Real Value?

• Knowledge - Acquired through education, books, interactions with other people and experience, knowledge, especially specialized knowledge, is among the key reasons why the services of consultants are acquired in the first place.
  
  Taking time to reading books or articles, or to interact with the bests in your company are some ways to increase knowledge. Trainings, seminars and certifications are worth spending for.
  
  
• Skills - Are you really good at the tools you are using or the products your company is selling? Does your team have the skills necessary to implement the project? Specialized skills are also among the top reasons why consultants are engaged to begin with.
  
  While it is true that skills improvement happens mostly while on the job, a bit of regular practice outside office hours will also help. For IT consultants, unless you have a special reason for preferring to remain average, having a set up at home of your tools of the trade to play with is not a bad idea.
  
  This is where passion for what you do comes in; when you love what you do, you will always have the desire to improve yourself and do what it is you ought to do.
  
  
• Intelligence - And I am not only referring to I.Q. Having the ability to deal with new situations is part of intelligence and so is applying knowledge. As defined by Merriam-Webster Online:
  
  intelligence
  - the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations; reason; the skilled use of reason
  - the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria
  
  Intelligence doesn't have to be an individual kind of thing. It can be collective. It can be collaborative. In a team, knowing who is good with what is valuable knowledge. Think in terms of intelligence in CIA.
  
  
• Talent - People tend to do a great job if their work involves the use of their talents. Marcus Buckingham in his book First, Break All the Rules (What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently), does a good job of explaining what talents are and why it's important for companies to make sure every role has talent to match.
  
  Some examples of talents that don't include singing or dancing:
  - being able to explain complicated technical stuff using plain ol' English
  - learning a new language in lightning speed
  - dealing with difficult people and making them agree to what is reasonable
  - finding out why a thing that's supposed to be working is not
  
  If you are not making the best use of your talents at work, it might be a good idea to switch to another role or, in extreme cases, find a new job.
  
  
• Output - Accomplishing the objective of a project or an engagement is the most important thing. At the end of the day, being able to deliver gives the highest value.

What Else Can Be Done?

According to Marcus Buckingham, a company cannot expect its employees to give stellar performance without satisfying their basic needs first. The basic needs are more than just a matter of money. They include, also according to the best-selling author, letting the employees know what is expected of them at work, giving them the equipment and support to do their work right, and answering basic questions of self-worth and self-esteem by giving praise for good work and caring about their development as people.

When consultants do their best at work and yield excellent output, Real Value is produced.

While a lot of people still give too much credit on appearance, the world is learning that the tag price cut of one's clothing has little to do with what in the person's head and heart. Appearance can be deceiving. I made early mistakes of judging people based on their appearance. In high school, I mistook the Assistant Principal On Discipline to be a messenger. In college, I mistook a doctor for her assistant. Thank goodness, I've learned my lesson since then.

You have to believe before you doubt that most companies are reasonable with their requirements when it comes to dress codes. There's little reason to be overly formal in the manner of dressing when the client themselves are a bit casual in their style. Smart casual Fridays is a good practice as it allows employees to be a little rebellious relaxed once a week while giving them room to express themselves and reveal a bit of more of their personalities. It is expected that companies who require their consultants to dress well, in compliance to their own definition thereof, ensure that they pay their employees at par with industry standards at the very least. With that, there's little for consultants to complain about, unless of course the opposite is true.

Equipment provided to employees, such as laptops for IT consultants, can reveal a little something about the company to its clients. For example, it can send any of the following messages:

• A company cares about its consultants enough to give them exactly what they need


• A company is doing well enough to be able provide its consultants better-than-average equipment


• A company has a culture of being the best in everything including providing the best equipment to its best employees

Paul's story on how he got his company to replace his malfunctioning laptop comes to mind. He was asked to do a presentation to a potential client. He got to the meeting place on time and started his presentation without problems. But at the middle of it all, his laptop conked out and he had to reboot. He apologized to his lone audience and said it will probably take about five minutes to reboot his battered laptop.

"I'm sorry Paul. But can I just ask you to come back when you have your laptop fixed? I'm having second thoughts about hiring consultants from companies who can't even provide their employees with decent laptops."

Paul told his boss and was naturally given a new laptop.

It is not unusual for companies looking for consultants to work with to ask for their CVs during the proposal stage. The Pre-sales/Sales team who provides them should take care that the CVs are not only updated but are also in the best possible condition, content and format-wise. I once had the unfortunate experience of finding out that the CVs of our consultants were circulated when they were not in their best possible state. I was expecting that of all people, the sales people were aware that they were selling not only their products but their consultants as well and knew the importance of the CVs in the overall scheme of things.

For some companies, they care too much about their image that they don't allow their consultants who are assigned overseas to stay in hotels which are not in their list of acceptable accommodations.

When a culture of excellence permeates in a company, the tendency is for consultants to absorb this via osmosis and exhibit this same standard when they're out in the field. In the same way, companies who know how to keep their promise can expect their consultants to keep their end of the deal, producing excellent output that gives Real Value that benefits not only the consultant and the client but also the company.

Some steps that can be taken to steadily increase the Real Value of consultants while progressing towards building a culture of excellence:

• Hiring an HR Manager that has experience in the specific industry or one that has both the aptitude and open mind to learn as well as to make a meaningful contribution


• Providing regular trainings, workshops and certifications


• Requiring periodic readings


• Building a knowledge base within the company. Having something like a knowledge bank where lessons learned from previous projects and new discoveries in the field are stored and made accessible to everyone. This can be implemented at a negligible cost.


• Regular sessions with in-house experts and bests in their areas to discuss best practices, both company-wide and industry-wide


• Setting KPIs, and giving regular (once a year is not enough according to Buckingham) performance appraisals


• Ensuring that shadowing and mentoring happens between junior and senior consultants


• Avoiding the Peter Principle, or promoting employees to their level of incompetence or promoting employees for the wrong reasons

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Consider this a work in progress. I would love to hear your reactions and/or contributions.

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Of Mind Maps, Outlines And Personal Brain

I cannot recall the first time I used mind maps to do brainstorming. I do not even recall when I first became familiar with the term. I do remember however that early in my career (not that it has been that long), I started drawing mind maps in my notebook during long and boring meetings. I realized I remembered more of what was said in those meetings compared to the ones where I took down notes in the usual manner. Still, I didn't even know they were called mind maps.

Later on, I learned to use mind maps when conceptualizing a short story or an article. I found it was often better to draw mind maps before coming up with an outline especially for short stories. Because I didn't know exactly where to begin or how to end, making use of the tool somehow led me to discover the path where I wanted to go -- serving like a real map. It not only helped me with figuring out the plot but it helped reveal the connections between the characters as well.

At the peak of the conceptualization process for articles or blog entries, when ideas race through my mind and the need to capture the them quickly before they permanently dissipated was of the extreme urgency, I find that a mind map is more appropriate than an outline. It was simpler and faster to do because I didn't have to worry about the hierarchy at that stage. I just kept adding and connecting one thought to another, key word after key word. I also find mind mapping more stimulating as it seemed like new ideas popped out more easily than during outlining. Perhaps the linkages and the drawings tapped something in the brain that was left unstimulated during outlining. By the way, the picture imposed at the right of this paragraph was a mind map I did to plan this entry.

When I was new to it, I still had to write an outline after drawing the mind map to better organize my thoughts. There were also times when I just went straight to outlining because it was pretty much clear in my head what I wanted to do. Over time, I became more proficient with mind mapping and could afford to skip the outlining process. But then, a lot of my mind maps began resembling that of an outline, like in the case of the one in the image above that I had created using a free software called Personal Brain. I do have ugly drawings on my mind maps when I do them on paper though. Software or paper, my MMOHs (mind map outline hybrids) have been an indispensable tool for me.

I also learned to use mind maps in other areas that needed a bit of planning and thinking. I used it when making presentations, putting together technical papers or documentation, preparing for a brief talk and even studying. I wished I had learned the technique earlier so I could have applied it in school because I seem to retain more useful information from a books I've read after I've drawn some mind maps on what I just learned.

As for the software, I found Personal Brain 4.0 by TheBrain Technologies through Google Ads in my Gmail. It offered a free download so I thought I'd give it a try. Upon installation, I found out that Pro Edition features are available for 30 days.

I think it's a cool software and it looks pretty promising. I haven't finished trying out all the features but it looks to me like it has other practical uses apart from my original intention. I think it can even be an answer to a project I was proposing to a friend who is working for the media -- I was telling him it would be great to come up with a page in the news site that featured a visual linking system that can show how politicians are related to one another, including other prominent people in society. Anyway, some other interesting features of Personal Brain include being able to incorporate notes, link web pages, attach files, make use of a built-in calendar and integrate with MS Outlook. Of course, a lot of these will be deactivated when my trial period is over. But even with the Free Edition, I think it will still be quite useful. If it becomes something difficult to live without in the next few weeks, I may just purchase an upgrade.

Who could benefit from mind maps? Well, anyone who needs to write, plan, think or study. That's practically everyone. Need to build a web site, answer an RFP, plan a project or a trip? If you haven't tried it before or you've always made use of outlines, I urge you to do so and see how it works for you. Software or no software.

Of The Olympics, Unbiased Judging, And Technology

Over the years, the Games have not gone untainted. Incidents, controversies and scandals have hounded the Olympics, giving the media more news to report and people additional topics to talk about.

One such controversy occurred in the 2002 Olympic Winter Games figure skating competition, where the judges gave a higher score to the Russians over the Canadians despite an error committed by the former in the free skate routine and a flawless execution by the latter. The Russians got the gold medal while the Canadians had to settle for silver. The French Judge later admitted to having received pressure from the head of the French skating organization to vote for the Russian pair no matter what. In the end, the silver medal of the Canadians were upgraded to gold while the Russians were allowed to keep theirs. The French Judge and the head of the French skating organization were subsequently suspended. The long term effect is the revision of the sport's judging system.

Considering today's hi-tech world, shouldn't judging scandals be the easiest to avoid in the future? Wouldn't everyone be better off by keeping the subjective aspects of judging down to a minimum, if not totally eliminated? Can we consider relying more on computers instead of human judges?

Take a look at the advent of the Hawk-Eye system and it's part in the adjudication process in the game of tennis. The Hawk-Eye allows visual tracking of the ball's path, recording of data, and the retrieval and rendering of that actual path as a graphic image. The system, which was invented by UK engineers, are based on triangulation and relies on visual images and timing data from high speed video cameras around the court. With the Hawk-Eye in Tennis, players are allowed to challenge line calls they feel doubtful about. In the Olympics, I've seen the Hawk-Eye in action last night at the semi-final match between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

Of course such computer systems may not be perfect especially in their early implementations. Even the Hawk-Eye didn't go unscathed with some minor controversies in the 2007 Dubai Tennis Championships and the 2007 Wimbledon Championships. But over time, just like humans, they get better. Except that they don't die, get influenced or become biased.

Ian Ayres showed in Super Crunchers how number crunching is changing the world of decision-making. Super Crunching, also according to Ayres, is more a story of advances in technology instead of statistical techniques. It relies on tons of data (terabytes, to put it more accurately) and processing. That equates to disk space and CPU, both of which are relatively cheaper nowadays.

Ayres also gives an explanation why humans are bad at making predictions and how "our best and brightest experts in different fields are losing out to Super Crunching". Part of his explanation states that "the mind tends to suffer from a number of well-documented cognitive failings and biases that distort our ability to predict accurately." I agree with him and I argue that these same cognitive failings and biases coupled with our limitations in terms of perception give us reason to make judging errors. Is that an obvious point, one that justifies the familiar expression "We're only human"? Unfortunately, the athletes who practice day-in and day-out in their quest for near-perfection are the ones who suffer most because of such lapses. Quoting Alanis Morissette, isn't that ironic?

I thought about making this entry after watching a portion of a synchronized diving event. The four of us watching couldn't figure out why a pair who were obviously not in sync got a higher score over a team who did a better job than them.

"Aren't the judges allowed to look at the slo-mo replay?" one of my companions asked.

"It's because they're from _____________," another theorized.

My mind was already forming weird ideas on how to possibly automate judging in synchronized diving. The first that came to mind was making use of invisible lasers that registered and tracked movements as the divers moved through the air and into the water, similar to the ones used in museums to prevent theft only at a much wider scale. But couldn't the Hawk-Eye system be simply tweaked to cater to this? Are advances in face-recognition software helpful? Can this be applied to gymnastics as well?

What about boxing? Can they make the boxers wear a headgear plus some sort of body armor with embedded sensors that get turned on and register impact when either of the opponent's gloves makes contact? Can they re-hash the ones used for fencing? Can this be applied to judo, taekwando, wresting and other contact sports?

Rather than dropping judged sports from the Olympics as some suggest, I prefer making use of technology to give whole new meaning to the term judging. I don't think it's a question of feasibility; the technology to make it happen already exists. I'm guessing that it's only a matter of time. I'm not as worried about those people who would argue that this might signal the end of the artistic and human side of judging as I am about those who would reject the idea in the interest of greater glory.