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How to Pick Firm Activities

2007-08-29T03:50:00Z

The experienced consultant will know that picking the right firm activity is a lot like finding a job: It should be sustainable, interesting, career-enhancing, and should provide you a solid role. Experienced practitioners only pick one or two big events to get involved with rather than applying the "peanut butter" method and spreading their efforts too thin.

The irony of participating in most firm activities is that they don't offer what firm activities are supposed to in the first place: visibility, career enhancement or a solid role. Often one-off events, unless you are leading the thing, you won't get anything out of it.

Almost every firm has "activities" or "extracurriculars" that are nearly mandatory for every practitioner. Not to be ignored, they can boost your network, probably apply toward year-end reviews and may weigh heavily in consultant ratings/compensation. In short, don't ignore firm activities. New consultants are often thrown a slew of new activities in which to become involved. Firm events generally fall into three categories:

Recruiting
Firm Events (quarterly meetings, education days)
Friday Fly-back Seminars

Then there are the hand-shaking events, generic industry or service-line dinners, cocktail events, etc. I don't have to elaborate any further - you've seen them. Now, what to look for and what to avoid.

Choosing the Right Firm Event

Firm Activity Warning Signs:

Activity is not in your local office.
Invite is sent out to a broad group by a non-senior practitioner.
Once-off event with a low-visibility role
Activity does not offer anything new or different

outside

Avoiding the above point, a simple metric I use to valuate firm activities is this: the higher the visibility/career-enhancing nature and the lower the impact to me, the better.

Preferable activities include those I would have a speaking opportunity, those with exposure to senior people from my home office, and those where I'm learning/doing something new or groundbreaking (think resume material).

Attributes of a Solid Firm Activity

Activities with those from my local office.
Events with lots of senior visibility.
Public Speaking opportunities.
Long-term events with role-progression.

Simple Ways to Stay Fit on the Road

2007-08-19T03:49:00Z

Studies have shown that people are more likely to trust, listen to and believe attractive people. Therein, you may notice that consulting firms tend to hire attractive people (that's not a coincidence). But like most business travelers, consultants live an unhealthy lifestyle and their bodies tend to pay for it. Most of the "How to stay healthy on the road" articles Isuggest a myriad of tasks is required to stay fit while traveling. These articles are usually written by fitness or health experts who rarely travel. They usually take their preexisting fitness plans and reapply them, taking their best-guess at what a business traveler's life is like. This is not one of those articles. Four things that will greatly increase your overall health, reduce fat and look better:

1. More sleep (at least 8 hours)

2. "Health-conscious" dinner choices, no food late at night

3. Daily vitamin and fruit if possible

4. 10 minutes of light exercise

Problem:

Business travelers live an unhealthy lifestyle and their bodies pay for it

Studies have shown that people are more likely to trust, listen to and believe attractive people. Therein, you may notice that consulting firms tend to hire attractive people (that's not a coincidence). But like most business travelers, consultants live an unhealthy lifestyle and their bodies tend to pay for it. Most of the "How to stay healthy on the road" articles Isuggest a myriad of tasks is required to stay fit while traveling. These articles are usually written by fitness or health experts who rarely travel. They usually take their preexisting fitness plans and reapply them, taking their best-guess at what a business traveler's life is like. This is not one of those articles. Most consultants start their careers as undergraduates with, more often than not, better-than-average bodies. But even the best metabolisms go all to pieces when faced with:

Lack of sleep
High-stress/high-burn projects with long hours
Poor diet: Large portions of fatty, carby, salty foods eaten in haste
Lots of time in stationary positions: planes, office chairs
Increased daily alcohol use
Increased daily caffeine use

4 easy things you can do to stay fit

1. More sleep (at least 8 hours)

2. "Health-conscious" dinner choices, no food late at night

3. Daily vitamin and fruit if possible

4. 10 minutes of light exercise

Solutions

Four things that will greatly increase your overall health, reduce fat and look better:

1. Sleep

Sleep plays a huge role in reducing weight and improving overall health. Lack of sleep directly correlates to increased weight gain, decreased muscle mass and decreased energy. If you do nothing else, getting more sleep is a simple, effective technique to getting in better shape. Really!

2. Consistent, Healthier Eating Habits

And how to find healthier food on the road without being obsessive about it

I know - it's tough to eat healthy. You've got back-to-back meetings all day and not an hour to take off for lunch. This means fatty, carby meals and frequent visits to the vending machines.

Some advice:

You should carry one of these around wherever you go.

Try to eat frequent, small meals. Eating big, infrequent meals is a good way to get fat. Eat a light lunch - even better, the same lunch each day, and something little throughout the day. Snacks can include fruit (if possible), nuts, or the healthiest thing you can find in the vending machine.
Drink water throughout the day and instead of soda. Water makes your body work more effeciently. This translates to weight loss and an overall healthy feeling. Carry a Nalgene bottle around or similar. Quit soda all-together.
No food three hours before you go to bed.This is all about digestion. Your body will not burn fat and rebuild muscle if you go to sleep on a full stomach. That means you'll gain weight a lot easier.

3. Vitamins and Fruit

If you're not already doing so, take a daily vitamin. It's easy, fast, and will give you great results. If you can, try to eat more fruits and vegetables. These contain vital nutrients and fiber necessary for a balanced diet. This is where I stray from most "experts" because they assume it is easier to find fresh fruits and vegetables on the road than is true. You usually won't have time or access to a grocery store.

Places to find fruit on the road:

The hotel. Most hotels you'll be staying at have fruit in the concierge lounge or the lobby. This is the best and easiest way to find fruit
The client cafeteria. While sometimes difficult to find, most client cafe's have spare apples and bananas laying around
Bigger gas stations (sometimes) I'm not going to lie - this is rare. But if all else fails this becomes more and more likely. Watch out for the gray bananas... seriously.

4. 10 Minutes of Exercise

This isn't as bad as it sounds, however consistency is key.

You can accomplish this in your hotel room if hard pressed. If i'm on a tough project I usually do two sets of sit-ups, push-ups and stretching in my room each morning. That's it.

This will usually be enough to keep you relatively fit.

The more ambitious may want to run on the hotel treadmill for 10 minutes.

R.U.D. - Reduce Uncertainty and Doubt

2007-08-10T01:54:00Z

What is R.U.D? R.U.D. is Reduce Uncertainty and Doubt. R.U.D is the act of reducing uncertainty and doubt, often called F.U.D. - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. F.U.D. will build up on nearly every project. Coworkers, clients and managers alike will fall victim to F.U.D. and it's ugly, project-unhinging effects.

"The admin thinks our server can't handle that many transactions!!" "The Finance group refuses to support us in the effort!" "We're running out of pens at an alarming rate!"

Pens are important. So is Finance doing what you want. You need all of these things to happen, and yet there is a seemingly immovable barrier standing in your midsts.

How to Reduce Uncertainty and Doubt

There are several situations where F.U.D. could come up, but they crop up more often than not IT-centric gigs. We'll use an example of some scheduling software not talking to the application software you need.

Remain calm

The first reaction is to run to the project manager and explain the problem to them. This is wrong, think about it. Put yourself in their shoes: how do you feel when someone presents a big problem and expects you to develop the solution? What separates a mediocre consultant from a great consultant is the ability to face a seemingly difficult problem and find a way around it. This sounds difficult to do, but is not. Before you go running to the project manager, have a solution, or set of solutions, in-hand...

Understand the issue

"The technology department says their scheduling software won't work launch an application of this type" So the IT guys say that the scheduling software won't work. IT departments are understaffed and overburdened. Find out what the application type is. Find out what the scheduling software is, version and all. Do a google search on what you need. There's almost always a work-around. School-up on the issue. The solution may not be great, but as a result you will become more knowledgeable about the problem.

Record and Analyze the Options

This will eventually become your "executive report" on the subject. Use the problem and project-appropriate tool/template (usually Powerpoint for largre-scale R.U.D.). List your options. Here is our's on the computer scheduling issue: 1. We found add-ons that allow the scheduling software to run our application. This add-on will support the underlying enterprise architecture (common), but will be costly (also common). This is the best long-term solution, but expensive. 2. There exists a software work-around that will allow us to do what we want, however, we'll need to stray from the underlying architecture. This will mean more work for your IT team now and in the future and take longer to implement, but is inexpensive from a purchase standpoint.

Present the Recommendations

This does not have to be formal, these things rarely are, this might come out during a team meeting or similar. Keep it short and sweet. Don't "lead the witness" by advocating (selling) or giving unnecessary detail. Seasoned consultants phrase their analysis in such a way that the manager/client comes around to their recommended position.

Afterward

Once you learn how to reduce uncertainty and doubt a few times, it becomes predernatural and analysis in this way becomes immediate. This is a guaranteed profject booster, and you'll be given more challenging (read: cooler) assignments in the future. If you can master R.U.D., you can master anything.