Consulting 101 for Student Teams: One Manager, Real Data, and the Recap Email | Consulting Guest Lecture 2016

This is Richard Lowe’s first annual guest appearance, via video call, as consulting expert for Professor Makadok’s university business class, recorded November 1, 2016. The class’s student teams, in groups of four, were beginning consulting engagements with real aspiring entrepreneurs developing business plans, having studied Richard’s book on managing consulting projects. The recording captured only the classroom side of the call, so Richard’s answers below are reconstructed from his contemporaneous positions on these exact questions, anchored by the professor’s on-air summaries of his responses; the professor’s questions are verbatim. Historical book counts appear as spoken; current figures are bracketed.

The introduction

Professor Makadok: Richard has been a senior leader in the computer industry for over 33 years: first as Vice President of Consulting at Software Techniques, then as Vice President of Consulting at Beck Computer Systems, and finally as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s. In 2013, Richard took early retirement to focus on his writing career, and since that time has written and published 113+ books and ghostwritten 54+ books [54 and 12 at the time of this 2016 lecture]. He is the CEO and Senior Writer of The Writing King, and also owns The Coloring King and The eBay King. Please join me in welcoming Richard Lowe. So tell us a littlele about what got you into consulting in the first place.

Richard Lowe: By accident, like most consultants of my generation. I was in college, and one of my teachers started a computer company and hired me as a coder. Within a year I was vice president of consulting, managing a team of about eight highly technical people, deep-level work on Digital Equipment computers. Later I ran consulting teams at Beck Computer Systems, and then I spent 20 years at Trader Joe’s on the other side of the table, hiring consultants, sometimes dozens at a time. So I’ve lived both roles: the consultant trying to serve the client, and the client trying to get value out of consultants. Both sides teach you things the other side never sees.

Training first-time consultants

Professor Makadok: Did you have people on your teams through the years for whom it was their first experience in consulting? How did you get them trained and prepared, and what advice did you give them?

Richard Lowe: Constantly, and the training was never really about the technology; we hired for that. The training was: you now work for the client, and the client is a person, not a system. Be on time. Be prepared. Communicate in the client’s language, not in ours. And the advice I gave every first-timer: the client is looking to you for leadership, even when the client outranks you, out-earns you, and owns the company. If you don’t provide that leadership, they’ll take it from you, and then the project belongs to nobody. Also: never let a problem age. Bad news delivered early is a plan; bad news delivered late is a betrayal.

On the student assignment, and its risks

Professor Makadok: These students will be on teams of four consulting with aspiring entrepreneurs to help develop their business plans. Are there particular risks or problems you’d anticipate for that kind of assignment?

Richard Lowe: Two big ones. First, aspiring entrepreneurs run on enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is not data. You’re going to hear “I think” and “I believe” and “everyone will want this,” and your job is to keep asking: what does the market data actually say? Market size, competition, growth, willingness to pay. An entrepreneur who won’t gather real information is the number one predictor of a failing venture, and your value as consultants is holding the line on that. Second, vagueness. A client whose project definition keeps drifting will consume all the hours you have and produce nothing. Pin the scope down in writing at the start, and when it moves, and it will move, make the change visible and explicit rather than silently absorbing it.

The one-manager rule

Professor Makadok: One student asks, referring to your statement that it is hard for a project to succeed when there’s more than one person acting as manager: how do you suggest we work as a team to avoid going south?

Richard Lowe: Pick one project manager, on day one, before you touch the work. Not the smartest person, not the best writer: the person who will own the schedule, run the meetings, and be the single voice to the client. Everyone else contributes as specialists. When two people manage, the client gets two answers, the team gets two priorities, and the project gets chaos; I watched it at every company I worked for, and I enforced the rule at Trader Joe’s: my own employees would temporarily report to the consulting firm’s project manager for the duration, one boss per project, even when the boss wasn’t me. It isn’t about ego; it’s about a single point of coordination. Rotate the role between projects if you want everyone to learn it, but never within one.

Professor Makadok: And on the division of labor between the consulting team and the client: how do you determine it, and what do you do when one party fails to live up to what they promised?

Richard Lowe: You determine it in writing, in the statement of work: the client will provide these things, by these dates, and the team will deliver these things, by these dates. Both directions, because clients fail on their commitments at least as often as consultants do; they’re busy, and your project isn’t their whole life. When a commitment slips, you name it immediately, without drama: we can’t complete X until we receive Y, so the schedule moves accordingly. Attach consequences to the calendar rather than to blame. The moment you quietly work around a client’s failure, you’ve taught them that their commitments are optional.

Running meetings, and starting the project right

Professor Makadok: The project manager runs the meetings. Any advice for somebody in that role?

Richard Lowe: Have an agenda, sent in advance. Start at the stated time whether or not everyone’s arrived, and end at the stated limit; after one or two meetings that actually start and end on time, people adjust. Keep them small and short: invite the people whose roles require them and mark everyone else optional. When somebody raises something off-agenda, say: that’s not on this agenda; let’s add it to the next one if it needs time. And take notes.

Professor Makadok: At the beginning of a project you have to extract knowledge from the client: how their systems work, their goals, what they’ve done so far. Tips for doing that effectively?

Richard Lowe: Interview them, formally, at the very start, before any work: what are you trying to accomplish, who is it for, what does success look like, what have you already tried, what constraints exist that you haven’t mentioned. Ask narrowing questions when the answers are vague: men or women, businesses or consumers, this year or someday. And when their answers contradict each other, and they will, don’t accuse; make it about you: I’m confused, in our last conversation I understood X and now I’m hearing Y, can you help me? They’ll help. People love to help; they hate being cross-examined. That single technique will carry you through most client difficulties you’ll ever hit.

The relationship, and the recap email

Professor Makadok: You mentioned forging a good relationship with your client. What are the nuts and bolts of making that happen?

Richard Lowe: Reliability, mostly. Show up when you said, deliver what you said, and communicate before being asked. Care about their goal, visibly; a client can tell when a project only matters to you when a payment is due. Learn to speak their language: an entrepreneur wants to hear about customers and revenue, not your methodology. And keep a small human layer: remember what they told you last time, ask how the thing went. Trust is built in increments and spent in lumps.

Professor Makadok: So would you recommend a recap email after every client contact, saying this is our understanding of what we discussed and decided?

Richard Lowe: After every single one, no exceptions. Two paragraphs, same day: here’s what we discussed, here’s what we decided, here’s who’s doing what by when; tell me if I’ve got anything wrong. It costs five minutes and it prevents the two most expensive things in consulting: the misunderstanding that surfaces a month later, and the who-said-what argument that has no referee. If it isn’t written down, it didn’t happen. That email is also quietly your protection: when a client remembers the conversation differently, you’re not relying on memory against memory.

The charter, the scope, and the battles worth picking

Professor Makadok: The students are producing a project charter: scope of work plus logistics, how the team communicates with the client and with each other. Advice on preparing it?

Richard Lowe: Treat it as the constitution of the project. Scope: what will be delivered, described specifically, and just as important, what will not be delivered, because unstated expectations are where projects die. Logistics: how often you meet, how fast each side responds, who the single voice to the client is. And include a change procedure, because scope will try to expand: any addition gets written down, evaluated for its effect on the schedule, and agreed by everyone before it enters the work. Scope creep isn’t the client being evil; it’s the client having ideas. The procedure lets you welcome the ideas without letting them silently sink the project.

Professor Makadok: As a client yourself who’s hired hundreds of consultants: how do you evaluate the performance and professionalism of a consultant?

Richard Lowe: Small signals, early. Were they on time, for the meeting and for every deliverable? Did they run the interview well, or did I have to lead it? Do they communicate proactively, or do I hear from them only when an invoice is due? Do they push back when I’m wrong, or do they tell me what I want to hear? I don’t hire yes-people; a consultant who always agrees with me is charging me to listen to myself. And competence, in the full sense: they know the area, they do the work without lollygagging, and they could teach it to someone else. A consultant strong on all of that gets my next project too; that’s how the business actually works.

Professor Makadok: How do you pick your battles with a client, and when you do disagree, how do you disagree?

Richard Lowe: Pick battles by consequence: if the client’s choice merely differs from mine, I let it go, because it’s their company; if it will materially damage the project or their business, I owe them the disagreement, and staying quiet would be malpractice. Then disagree without making them wrong: I understand why you see it that way, and it’s a reasonable viewpoint; here are some additional facts you may not have had; based on those, here’s the conclusion I reach. Let the evidence do the arguing. If they still choose their way after hearing everything, document the recommendation, respect the decision, and do the work; you’re the advisor, not the owner. And keep it private: never disagree with a client in front of their people.

Professor Makadok: I like that approach: it’s empathetic. You start off saying, I understand why you have this opinion, then offer additional evidence that may change their mind. We’re running out of time, so I want to thank you for sharing the benefit of your experience with us.

Richard Lowe: My pleasure. Good luck to the teams.

Find Richard Lowe at thewritingking.com/.

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