Why Expert Consulting Mastery could be a good fit for you

Why Expert Consulting Mastery could be a good fit for you

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If you read my last email about Expert Consulting Mastery, you might wonder if this program is right for you.  Let me share a few things that might help you decide.

Expert Consulting Mastery is for you if you are a veteran who:

  • Wants to use your experiences to help people 
  • Values autonomy over being in a structure
  • Takes prudent risks
  • Desires to control your time, talent, and energy
  • Is willing to bet on your own success

This program is not for you if you:

  • Don’t care about helping others
  • Want to be a salaried employee in a company
  • Are highly risk-averse
  • Don’t mind being told how to use your time, talent, and energy
  • Lack the confidence to invest in your own success

Many former senior military leaders make terrific solo consultants and coaches. You’ve been coaching, teaching, and mentoring leaders, providing counsel, and offering trusted advice for many years. 

Those same skills are invaluable in the private sector.

Turning those skills into a meaningful, joyful, and profitable business is a matter of combining passion, market need, and competence.

You need all three to succeed.

If you have Passion and Competence without Market Need, you have a hobby, not a business.

If you have Passion and there is Market Need, but you lack Competence, you’ll have no impact.

Finally, if you have the Competence to meet a Market Need but lack Passion, your work will feel like drudgery, and you’ll lose interest.

You have a meaningful, joyful, and profitable business when you have all three.

The good news is that the market needs your wisdom, and you have the experience to be a competent consultant or coach. 

You wouldn’t have had a career in service if you didn’t have the passion to help people.

You have all of the ingredients to be a good consultant. What you need is a simple process that helps you be good at being a good consultant. 

Being a competent solo entrepreneur has three components: business development, internal management, and execution. 

You see the three elements in the prominent circles. Around the circles are some of the critical competencies you need to be good at being a good consultant. 

The good news is that all of these are skill-based, which means you can learn to master them. 

Most former military leaders find that they pick up quickly the behaviors around Management and Execution because they are pivoting their skills from the military into business.

Business Development scares many retired military veterans because you most likely haven’t developed these skills. You fear you cannot do marketing or sales without violating your values.

Rest assured, you can excel at these skills, too, and without being a pushy self-promoter. ECM shows you exactly how to convey the value you provide to others (marketing) and how to help people make informed buying decisions (sales). 

Being a good solo consultant or coach is skill-based, which means with the right materials and support, you can learn it, practice it, and get better at it.

That’s what Expert Consulting Mastery does for you.

This 9-week program gives you the process, guidance, and support you need to accelerate your business and create durable success.

100 percent of the people who have previously participated in this program and who have implemented each step of the process have been successful. Most find the program pays for itself in the first few weeks.

Each week you will watch videos (totalling about 30 minutes) and complete an assignment. You will meet with your group and me via Zoom to discuss your progress, answer any questions, and give you action steps that get results.

By the end of the program, you will have everything you need to move your consulting business from striving to thriving. 

If some part of the process is not working for you, here’s my promise and guarantee: I’ll work with you until it does – at no additional charge.

I’m very selective about who joins the program, so admission is by application only. 

If this program resonates with you and you’d like to know more, fill out this simple application, and let’s talk.

We’ll discuss your business and see if Expert Consulting Mastery is right for you. I’ll give you action steps to move your business forward, whether or not you decide to take the next step.

The disasters in Afghanistan and Hawaii have something in common that you need to know

The disasters in Afghanistan and Hawaii have something in common that you need to know

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General Douglas MacArthur explained that nearly every military disaster can be summed up in two words: Too late. 

As I write this, the Hawaiian wildfire’s confirmed death toll is 111 and may rise to over 1,000. Faulty, spark-emitting powerlines likely caused the blaze, in which strong winds fanned into an inferno that swept across the Maui town of Lahaina.

According to the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, Hawaiian Electric officials have known for at least four years that the power lines needed repair but invested a paltry $245,000 in preventative measures. The company waited until last year to request the State’s approval to increase fees to pay for badly needed maintenance – Hawaiian officials have yet to act on the request.

The State government, meanwhile, reportedly knew about the heightened wildfire risk for years but provided no resources or plan for preventing or responding to one.

The tragedy unfolded slowly, then all at once, to borrow a phrase from Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. 

The same was true for the Afghanistan disaster. U.S. and Afghan officials had well over a year to plan for the withdrawal of American forces, but both parties seemed to bury their hands in the sand that the United States would reconsider. 

The intelligence community reportedly warned that tens of thousands of Afghans would seek evacuation, but there was little planning or preparation for such a massive endeavour. The military planned to withdraw, aiming for the lowest possible risk to its forces. The State Department seemed to dither and then abruptly evacuate the U.S. Embassy one night. Panic and tragedy ensued.

Both heartbreaking episodes show that preventive action is always cheaper than corrective and remedial actions, and leaders ignore them at peril.

Most business and other failures occur slowly and then all at once.

Inadequate leadership, decision-making biases, deficient cultures, and unrealistic strategies accumulate rocks in your company’s rucksack. The weight hinders progress and innovation, drains your resources, and increases fatigue and stress. The burden seems manageable until you plunge into a crisis, and it’s too late.

The best companies invest in preventive actions, particularly in their leadership and culture. Joyful employees create cheerful workplaces and happy customers who bring in more business. The virtuous cycle keeps unnecessary weight from your rucksack and buoys you in difficult times. 

Are you ready to invest in your leaders and culture? Let’s discuss two of my programs: Becoming a WHY? Leader® and Building an Inspiring Culture®.

An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.   

Are you a veteran looking to build a career as a consultant or advisor? The next 9-week program of Expert Consulting Mastery begins on October 11, 2023. Register for my August 29, 2023 webinar to learn more.

Becoming a Better Consultant – What You Need to Know

Becoming a Better Consultant  – What You Need to Know

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If you are a military veteran who wants to build a meaningful, joyful, and profitable consulting business, then I have something you might be interested in to take your career to the next level.

You’ve already had a military career full of extraordinary experiences, superb exemplars, and exceptional education and training.

You’ve coached, taught, and mentored your subordinates, and got good at telling your bosses things they needed to hear. You tell the truth with simplicity and compassion to get things done.

You have everything it takes to start, build and grow a thriving coaching or consulting business.

You probably value autonomy and want to govern your personal and professional priorities.

A solo or boutique coaching or consulting business is the perfect way to do this if you’re willing to bet on yourself.

Of course, as we both know, there’s a difference between taking a calculated risk versus gambling on the unknown.

Simply hanging out your shingle and hoping for business is a gamble. You might be a good consultant, but you need a game plan that makes you good at being a good consultant.

You turn a gamble into a manageable risk by doing these three things:

  1. Having a step-by-step process you can follow that leads to success,
  2. A guide to help you implement the process in ways that work for you,
  3. A peer group that cheers you on, shares ideas, and helps you stay accountable.

Join me in Expert Consulting Mastery and eliminate the gamble on your future success. You get a simple, repeatable process, implementation support and an accountability group. Let me tell you more.

Expert Consulting Mastery program is a 9-week program starting on October 11th, 2023 that will give you the process, guidance, and support to accelerate your business and create durable success.

100 percent of the people who have previously participated in this program and who’ve implemented each step of the program have been successful. Most find the program pays for itself in the first few weeks.

Each week you will watch videos (totalling about 30 minutes) and complete an assignment. You will meet with your group and me via Zoom to discuss your progress, answer any questions, and give you action steps that get results.

By the end of the program, you will have everything you need to move your consulting business from striving to thriving.

If some part of the process is not working for you, here’s my guarantee and promise: I’ll work with you until it does – at no additional charge.

I’m very selective about who joins the program which is why admission is by-application-only.

If this program resonates with you and you’d like to know more, schedule a call with me, and let’s talk.

We’ll discuss your business and see if Expert Consulting Mastery is right for you. I’ll give you action steps to move your business forward, whether or not you decide to take the next step.

3 questions the best leaders use to make tough decisions

3 questions the best leaders use to make tough decisions

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Leaders reach out to experts and specialists when they face challenging situations. You need generalists, too, so you ask the right questions and avoid the ten words that lead to bad choices: 

Follow the Data! Obey the SCIENCE! Listen to the Experts! 

Data is not wisdom, and data-driven decision-making can leave companies worse off. Here’s how.

The best leaders listen to people who know what they are talking about and make decisions that best serve the company.

That seems simple enough, but implementation can be challenging. 

Experts provide valuable insight on specific topics, but narrow perspectives create myopic advice.   

Take COVID, for example. Medical experts provided data that projected death tolls and made recommendations like lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus.

Partisans egged on leaders with the ten words. Over time their associated advice led to higher death tolls, substantial economic dislocation, greater social polarization, damaged mental health, and massive learning loss.

The problem was not the data or advice, necessarily, but the question. Asking experts “How to stop the spread” created answers different than the more holistic “How to best support my constituents during this pandemic?” The latter question required leaders to determine the best balance between reducing the virus’s threat and promoting the general welfare.

The experts, of course, could not answer the latter question because they lacked the perspective. Leaders who unquestioningly obeyed the experts had demonstrably worse outcomes that those who took the broader perspective. 

I was asked recently to provide a testimony to Congress on the Afghanistan debacle. One House Member was trying to make a point that President Biden ignored the advice of the generals and asked me what I thought of that.

Thank goodness Abraham Lincoln didn’t listen to General McClellan, I replied, and noted that FDR disregarded General Marshall’s advice on how to take the fight to the Nazis in 1942, and Truman disagreed with General MacArthur’s advice to use atomic bombs on Chinese cities. 

My view on Afghanistan was that leaving was the right thing to do, but the timing and execution were badly botched.

Leaders should avoid the other extreme of trying to do the experts’ jobs for them. Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to select bombing targets in Vietnam is a classic example of getting trapped in the weeds and ignoring the bigger picture.

Leaders should listen to trusted experts, but make decisions based on advancing the common good.

Instead of asking narrow questions about how to optimize a particular silo or function, the best leaders keep their focus wider.

“What must be true for this option to work?” is a great way to uncover assumptions. You can then determine the indicators of validity and orient your data analysis accordingly.

“What’s the best way to advance our organization’s common good in this situation?” keeps your the focus on the blogger picture.

“What information do I need to make this decision?” helps you avoid wag-the-dog problems with siloed data.

You’ll benefit from trusted advisors who are generalists because their perspectives are broader and they’ll help you orient on the big picture. 

P.S. Do your employees have the psychological confidence to bring you bad news, identify problems, take risks, and offer new ideas? Email me if you’d like to discuss psychological confidence and ways to improve it. 

Fixing Bad Breath Leadership

Fixing Bad Breath Leadership

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Bad leadership is like bad breath – everyone except you knows you’ve got it.

I give a lot of leadership seminars. During the top takeaways discussions, someone invariably says, “This seminar was a reminder of things I learned about good leadership …” 

The problem is that the person needs to practice better leadership. They know what good leaders should do but aren’t implementing the behaviors. 

It’s the bad breath problem. You know you should have non-repulsive breath, but you don’t. That’s called unconscious incompetence.

You might have the finest ideas, but no one’s listening because they can’t get past your breath (metaphorically).

Leadership off-sites and workshops help the open-minded move toward conscious incompetence. You recognize that your behaviors impede rather than inspire people to contribute their best to your organization’s success.

It’s like putting your hand in front of your mouth for the first time.

Oh my … it’s no wonder these behaviors aren’t working.

Leadership training, if done well, helps you build conscious competence. You know better behaviors, and you consciously work to put them into practice.

The shortfall with conscious competence is that you spend so much energy concentrating on the behaviors that you can lose sight of your objectives.

It’s like the batter who concentrates so hard on every element of their swing – stand in this way, keep your hands here, put your elbow this high, etc. – that you miss the pitch or mess up your swing. You have too many details running through your head while you try to do your job.

You’ve spent some much time worrying about your breath that you stumble over the message.

You must move to unconscious competence, where the behaviors become second nature. In the military, we call it muscle memory. You’ve developed good habits that bring out the best in people, and those behaviors are now so ingrained that you don’t have to think about them.

The unconscious competence stage comes about through practice, feedback, and accountability. You practice the behaviors so they work for you and your employees and get the outcomes you desire. The fastest way to achieve success is with the right coaching.

Here’s a process you can follow to build successful leadership habits.

  1. Knowledge transfer through leadership books, seminars, talks, and candid assessments, helps you become conscious of incompetencies. 
  2. Immersion in successful habits at off-sites and programs builds conscious competence.
  3. Implementation and accountability with the right coaching help you develop unconscious competence.

You unconsciously practice becoming an ever-better leader so your employees can focus on your goals.

Are you ready to take your organization to new heights? I can help you develop unconscious leadership competence throughout your organization. Schedule a call or send me an email to get started.

What CEOs are getting wrong about office workMinerva Studio

What CEOs are getting wrong about office work

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CEOs are struggling with their return-to-office policies. Employees “who are least engaged,” WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani told The Wall Street Journal, “are very comfortable working from home.”

Cathy Merrill, the chief executive of Washingtonian Media, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post warning employees about the risks of not returning to the office. “The hardest people to let go are the ones you know.” Her employees staged a work stoppage.

A friend who works in the high-tech industry stated that their company will use a 75-25 rule: employees need to spend 75 percent of their time in the office and work from anywhere for the remainder.

Leaders can do better than use proximity to make judgments about value, issue veiled threats, and devise arbitrary rules that will waste time and energy in monitoring.

Here’s a more productive way.

Plenty of jobs are done mostly in isolation, such as research-oriented work. Other jobs, like manufacturing, need to be performed in person.

Companies also have roles in which employees perform recurring tasks: assembly-line work, IT monitoring, coordinating activities, etc. You also have roles to handle non-recurring requirements, including innovation, crisis management, and product development.

When you put these variables together in a double-axis chart, you get a better way to organize your return-to-office requirements.

Recurring work employees working in isolation are prime candidates for very liberal work-from-home arrangements. Contract attorneys, paralegals, insurance adjusters, and accountants are potential examples.

Non-recurring work that employees can perform in isolation should have permissive arrangements, too, but less so than the former because the free exchange of ideas improves quality and reduces the risk of science projects taking on their own lives. Many individual contributor roles fit this situation.

By contrast, non-recurring roles requiring substantial collaboration should be performed more at the office than elsewhere. A program manager, for example, should be primarily on-site but can work remotely as needed.

Recurring roles requiring collaboration, like being on a production line, often require the highest in-office frequency.

You can explain the why behind a commonsense method like this, and you’ll boost productivity, retain your top talent, and make intelligent choices about office space.

Is it time to build a new strategy? My 5-D Strategy Process® is simple, thorough, helps you gain buy-in, and costs a fraction of what you pay fancy firms. 

Say no to massive, expensive documents that nobody reads and are impossible to implement. Schedule a call with Chris Kolenda to get started.