If you are going to call a consultant in to help with one area of the business, you should involve those whose work is going to be impacted by the consultant’s work, at least for:
It still puzzles me how many companies only require for management and leadership team to be involved, every step of the way. And how they expect to get long term outcomes from the investment.
The things you always notice, the things that rile you up, the things you just can’t stand anymore, the things you’d rather do without, the things your really cannot understand.
Those things are a thing for you.
And others, well others have their own things.
Just move on.
A change in focus requires a change in indicators.
If you decide to focus on employees well-being and retention, why are you still talking about growth rate?
If you decide to break down the silos, why are you still setting goals and reporting results by department?
If you want to spend more time with your family, why is your salary still the measure of your success?
A change is a change.
Hubspot and Intercom are very successful companies. And on the exact same type of communication to their customer, they choose two completely different approaches.
One is before, the other is after.
One raises awareness, the other raises alarm.
One gives you agency, the other takes it away.
One is about hope (“Your contacts database is growing”), the other is about failure (“You’ve exceeded the usage”).
Also (you can’t say that from the message alone, but I’ll ask you to trust me), one is true, the other is not.
There is no right or wrong way to do stuff.
But the choices you make say a lot about who you are and what you stand for.
If you have something you care about – an idea, some work you have done, a job, a project, a new product -, it’s fair for you to assume that nobody else will get it. And it’s your responsibility to explain it, sell it, evangelize it, adjust it, combine it, market it.
That means two things.
First, that we can’t assume that we will hit the mass on day 1. Overnight success is a hoax, but you know that already.
Second, and most importantly for this post, that your role very soon gets much more complex. Because if you want to buy people into whatever you are doing (that you care about), you need to spend a large amount of your time talking about it.
And I guess that the bad news is that nothing is self-evidently great.
And the good one is that everything can be.
You've got this 