Business Reviews (1)

Time for some theory again. Before I can write about those business reviews I was assigned on I have to explain what they are.

So far I was very lucky within my old company. I was never assigned to one of those reviews but only to projects. Let me tell you so far, they are stressful and can be hell on earth.

Client engagement (for consultants) falls into 3 phases:

Phase 1: Sales (Business Review, also called Analysis), it lasts for about 2 to 3 weeks.
Phase 2: The actual project, which averages around 6 months but can be from 3 to 12 months really, maybe longer.
Phase 3: Follow-up, a phase in which a consultant regularly visits and audits the project outcome.

If it is a new client, an account executive would "sell" a business review. This means, one analyst and a bunch of consultants, ideally including the assigned project manager and director, would analyse the business and detect any area of improvement. Every improvement would be translated into cost savings opportunities, revenue enhancement, etc.

Quite often these business reviews are free of cost for the client. One wants to get easier access to them in the selling phase. But I think this is not a good idea. Clients should pay for any service. By doing so they value it much more. And if someone can sell an analysis, this person can also sell that the client has to pay for it.

Encore!

I started with IMR in 1999 and got a trainee week in Düsseldorf on a project where the client produced soup. It was a production process project. It looked very straight forward. Interesting was, IMR had a different methodology than my old company. The result was the same, savings, but the way towards those savings was much smoother. There was no consultant with a whip and a trainer to soothe the pain, but the consultant did all by himself. The only problem was, formal training was really missing as the coaching skills of consultants who were evaluated against hard cash savings and not people's behaviour change were rather thin.

Well, I knew why they wanted me. That was clear.

Straight after that week there was a company meeting in Paris. All was very posh, something I was not used to from my American company. The French certainly knew how to live.

A few weeks later I was assigned to a couple of business reviews till I finally ended up on a project in Germany.

Berlin

After that disaster in the US I was a bit fed up with consulting and tried to orientate myself. I moved to Berlin for a few months. I had first thoughts of working as freelancer. And the field I was most comfortable with was management training and coaching.

After I assessed my skills-set I realised that I lacked essential operational experience. I felt I focused too much on training; training had become my comfort zone. I knew I had to tackle the other side, too, the more technical and operational one.

It was in those days that I got a phone call from a headhunter who found my CV somewhere on the internet. My biggest asset, so he said, was my extensive training knowledge which would have been most beneficial for this consultancy he is looking to hire consultants for.

This company was based in Paris but I could live wherever I wanted. To cut the story short, I started with that company, moved back to London, and worked as consultant with training experience. The company does not exist anymore. Its name was IMR.

The Wheat

Stories about the good ones probably sound rather dull, but the vast majority of colleagues fall under this category (good, not dull).

One consultant hated his suit so much that every Friday when we drove to Vienna airport he stopped on the motorway, got more or less publically undressed and jumped into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

Some consultants, the Dutch ones, who were the majority on German speaking projects in those days, tried to teach me Dutch by buying me a Marco Borsato CD. If you are Dutch you know what a torture I had to go through.

Well, the good ones are the ones that help you out in times of need, don't act like sharks in a fish tank, are pleasant to be with on long project nights, and have a great sense of humour. That is one of the the most important features.

One thing I learned when hiring a consultant. After an assessment centre or interview I normally ask myself whether this would be a consultant who I would like to have breakfast with every day on a project.

Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff

Let's wash the dirty laundry first.

The best thing is to read my Milwaukee notes which is probably the worst which I have experienced as a junior consultant.

One of my early project managers made us juniors pay for his lunch every day. Don't forget, he was the one who decided whether we had work or not, so we paid for his lunch.

Also on on one of my first projects I got blackmailed. I have forgotten why she did it, but that was quite a shocker for me as brandnew consultant.

One project manager did not pay me for 2 weeks because I gave him some feedback about the way the client perceived him. He thought I was plotting. It took me months of internal rubbish till I got paid.

Talking about team-building, one project manager stayed in a luxury hotel whilst he let his consultants stay in an extremely cheap one far outside the city centre. He wanted to keep his project cost down so that he got a higher bonus.

The more I think about it, the more stories keep on popping up in my mind, but I will leave it with that. It only shows how inexperienced and actually stupied one is as junior consultant.

Consultants, a Special Breed

It is quite interesting to sit here and think about a certain aspect of the job and write down some thoughts. What kind of people did I meet?

First it must be said that us consultants, we are actually a strange bunch of people. We lead our private lives at the weekends solely, fly out every week to the projects where we then spend days together with our colleagues - we have breakfast together in the hotel, go to work, spend all day on the project, and in the evenings we all go for dinner. The only time we are alone is in the hotel room after dinner and before breakfast. One gets used to it though. But it is apparent how important good team-building skills of a project manager are.

Once you are a good team and well fuctioning the project is over and new teams of consultants build up on new projects, and the whole work of building a team, etc, starts all over again.

With 2 of my colleagues I managed to stay in touch over all those years. And funny enough, these are my 2 American colleagues Julie and Chad, who have become great friends. With the Europeans I managed to get in touch with a few again. Websites like LinkedIN, XING and Plaxo triggered this development; without them it would have been impossible. With a few of my old colleagues I am in a more or less regular e-mail contact.

Maybe I should write 2 more entries on here about good and bad examples of colleagues within that first company I worked with...

Post Mortem

Even though it ended all spectacularly dramatically I actually must admit I enjoyed those nearly 3 years with IMPAC. I cannot even tell how much I learned during that time.

I was able to stand in front of people and "perform" and train them on any subject. One learns to be fully flexible and able to anything in front of people.

I learned that the behavioural part when it comes to change management is even more important than the sheer operational implementation. Implementation of management tools is important, but in the end my client's managers and staff have to use them even after the project. And the role of the consultant is to make sure changes are sustainable and stick.

I learned how to coach and train my clients effectively.

I left the company with a big management consultant "toolkit" and am able to analyse and develop any area or department in any industry.

I learned how to deal with people within a team and be a good team-player.

And most importantly I learned how to "read" people's behaviours and take appropriate action. Some would call it manipulation, well, a minor version maybe. A disaster like the last project would never happen again.

Oh yes, most, most importantly I learned how to deliver results for my clients regardless whether I am technically able or not. Just go for it and "swim"!!!

Milwaukee, the grand finale

I failed to integrate into the team. I found them all too old and dull to hang out with after work and did my own thing. I started to go to the gym and since I stayed in Milwaukee over the weekends, I got a nice bunch of friends who I obviously preferred to spend time with rather than that project team.

It was a fatal mistake. One day, Chad, the project auditor, arrived and did an audit. I told him the truth what was going on. In those early years I thought I were able to change something and turn the project to the better. In the project team nobody listened to me and my concerns. I was then already too far away from them. Plus I was the only foreigner who was also the youngest one. I manoevered myself into that corner.

That bully colleague from North Carolina called me all sorts of names and blackmailed me. My company did not give me a proper work visa for the US but urged me to enter the country with a "business trip" visa waiver form. So yes, I was an easy target for blackmail. The project managers sat in my management workshops and openly during the training called me a liar and unable to train.

So yes, things went extremely bad. I cannot even tell anyone how hurt I was and how terrible I felt. Now, in the aftermath, I know I learned from this experience. Such a situation would never ever happen to me again. And from a learning perspective I am actually glad it happened. I flew back to Europe and left that company. I moved to Berlin for a few months and re-orientated myself.

Milwaukee, the project (2)

Julie and I did a good job in defining the project training need, and we developed a pretty neat training and coaching programme. We wrote it down on that Brown Paper on the photo.

The project was in the healthcare sector and the client managed old people's homes and day care centres. We were tasked to "sort out" their headquarter's administrative operations. We worked in Accounts Receivables, Accounts Payables, HR, Finance, etc.

The project team was absolutely incompetent. The 2 project managers tried to prove who is the best of them, and the 3 consultants were something else. All were in their 50ies who seemed to have failed in real life and then became brand-new consultants. The worst was that Texan woman from Austin, who was an alcoholic, and how nobody on the project understood. Her breath smelled of alcohol in the morning. The one from Chicago was nice, but no experience whatsoever, the other one from North Carolina was a bully and told clients to "shut up" when talking to him.

Milwaukee, the project (1)

I am going to spend a bit more time to describe this project. So, I arrived and got greeted by a big man with extremely black sunglasses, New York mafiosi type with a twist of Californian sunshine state surfboy. "Hey buddy, how's it going?". I was a "buddy", that was new to me. British English is different! The only thing missing was a "high five".

All the European project managers I knew by then were stiff and pretty much up their back. But hey, I was in the US and things were different here. So, the 2 of us started up the project. The other team members were to come later. What is definitely different between the US and Europe, American consultants tend to be older than their European counterparts.

I think this has to do with the role of a consultant. In the US it is more like that the client can rely on their "wisdom" and gets "hands-on experience", whereas in Europe a client buys "university high flyers", long hours at the job, and career orientated consulting sharks.

Needless to say, I was the youngest (and most experienced in terms of consulting and company methodology) on the project. This project manager got changed quite quickly and was replaced by 2 project managers who shared responsibility. The only highlights were Julie, who was then responsible for the US in terms of training, and Chad, who was the auditor.

Between Poland and the USA

During that Polish project I had the feeling that I have done training more than enough and wanted something else. I got very sick in Warsaw and think in the aftermath that it was stress-related. I stopped working for 2 or 3 months, applied for jobs, went out, and took things rather easily. A friend of mine even dragged me to a modelling agency. I was curious but also very suspicious. Well, see the pictures which they have taken. I was in my late 20ies then.

In those days Europe did not do very well (businesswise for my company) but the US had quite some opportunities for me. One day I got a call, it was the day when I was supposed to get some casting dates, and it was from my company asking me whether I would like to go to the US for work.

I took it as a "hint from above" and happily accepted. I sold my car, found someone for my room and left London a few days later. Final destination: Milwaukee in Wisconsin.

Polish Supermarkets

I nearly forgot to mention one project I was on, and that was that Polish supermarket chain in Warsaw. That was in 1998 and only shortly after Poland finished as a socialist state and "turned western".

An interesting aspect of the job was that we needed full-time translators all the time as nobody spoke any other language but Polish and Russian. That was tough and slowed down the project progress. From its layout, the project was close to the furniture retail one. It was a skills project with optimisation of the management of supermarkets. So, management training was an essential part of it, especially coaching with those translators acting as intermediators. I sometimes wondered wether I coached them or my clients.

I must admit, I did not really like the working environment there. We had a project room without windows and it looked more like the Führerbunker. The hotel was dreadful and food and service absolutely appalling. I was not a friend of eastern Europe then.

It took me a few years to become an absolute admirer of eastern Europe. But those stories will follow in much later blog entries.

Selling Furniture

The other skills area which is interesting is sales enhancement. Basically this means up-selling and more-selling by giving training to the sales force. This sales force can be either in a shop or they can travel from client to client. This does not matter, as the skills-set is always the same.

One needs to train them the "5 steps of selling", how to ask what kind of questions, closing techniques, preparation and "post"paration systems (post-paration as "what to do after a sales call?"), etc. Even though everybody talks about relationship-based selling these days, which is different to the usual selling skills, but on that commodity goods level, the usual skills-set is more than fine and appropriate. I will go into more detail when I am talking about my first project as project manager where I managed a sales programme.

So, my next project was back to the old one, the furniture retailer with 50 shops around Germany. We developed a selling skills model for them, trained it, and followed up on the newly learned techniques with coaching, mystery shoppers, audits, etc.

The project closed prematurely. The weekly invoice was too high to bear for the client. I think they tried to do it themselves with the task forces we trained. A few months later after the project has been stopped the company went bust and into administration. It does not exist anymore.

For me it was a good project as I learned everything about selling.

Salad Processing

One of my skills projects which I took part in as a trainer was the salad processing one. This company had 2 sites, one in Magdeburg and one in Stuttgart and they produced ready-made salads which one can buy in plastic bags in the supermarket or any of the fast-food chains.

After an analysis of their business processes it was clear that they wasted salad in the cleaning and "production" process. So, in a project we defined a cucumber as mascot, and developed posters where it was taught how to cut lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, etc. In the aftermath I find it amazing what kind of projects one can have.

So, basically, we trained them how to clean different kind of salads and lettuce. We measured the outcome, but I must admit, I have no idea anymore how successful the project was. I think it went well though.

I did mainly deliver the management training and coaching, especially in the east German site. Main problem in that site was the lack of any management skills and I had to train them from the very beginning. On the west German site the main problems was that nobody understood anyone because too many foreigners were working there speaking all sorts of languages. So, I gave training and coaching in German, English, and French. That was fun!

I got a video camera for Christmas and I used it mainly to record the role-plays when I trained confrontation skills. I loved it, so did they. It was a very powerful tool.

Yield

Let's take an easy example to define "yield": A company produces bottled mineral water. On any day 100,000 of litres of water are being pumped up and filled into 1 litre bottles. Now, in the ideal world this would mean that the output should equal 100,000 bottles. If that was the case the yield rate would be 100%.

Imagine a yield rate of 98%. This would mean that those 100,000 litres ended up in 98,000 bottles. 2,000 litres are somehow lost, "lost in the system" as it is being called.

A yield programme would start to measure at various points of the process what the input/output relation per process step is and determine the leakage or waste. A project would then, once it is determined where the problems are, come up with solutions to reduce this loss and raise the yield rate.

In the water bottle example it could be that the operators don't close the valves properly, machinery is old and leads to various leaks, supervisors are not present on the shopfloor to follow-up on the operation, etc.

Skills Training

Before I describe the next project I ought to explain the other package, which I mentioned already, and which can be sold to clients, too - skills training.

As opposed to management training, which is for all management (as the name indicates), skills training is for operators and in general all concerned work force that does not manage.

Skills training has 2 main areas where it can be applied: either it is sales training, where sales staff is trained how to sell (more detail in a later entry), or it is some sort of throughput optimisation training, where operators are trained to improve the "yield" rate (explanation in the next blog entry).

Skills programmes can have the following features:
- A mascot can be created for the training programme and material. It makes it easier for employees to recognise the theme and remind them of the newly trained skills,
- Employees are not trained by consultants but by their own line management.
- In TTT seminars (Train-the-trainer) line management is being trained what and how to train the employees, coaching skills are also trained, as line management will act as coach afterwards,
- In TTE seminars (Train-the-employee) employees are being trained by line management,
- In CTC sessions (Coach-the-coach) feedback is being given to line management about their training and coaching sessions in which a consultant should be present (at least initially),
- In CTE sessions (Coach-the-employee) employees are coached by their line managers,
- Using the mascot, special training material must be developed by the consultancy company.

A Client from Hell

My next project was in Goslar, also in Germany. It was a huge furniture retailer and we did the headquarter's operations and one pilote furniture shop, which would then be extended to all the other 50 retail outlets.

Anyway, as usual, we were not overly liked in that company as everybody knew we dealt with cost savings. Especially the administration director hated us. He was very hostile in my workshops, did not say anything, just sat there with his arms folded poisoning the training.

Anyway, this director kicked everyone out who visited him, and I mean all my colleagues - the project director, the project manager, and the consultants. He told them the worst things one can imagine, screamed, and threatened the success of the project.

Well, there was me left who had to see him and do some coaching. The project success was in my hands as the project director said, as in case he kicked me out, too, the project would probably close prematurely. Not that I would not like any pressure, but that was rather much.

So, there I was, all alone and on my way to the appointment with him. I knocked on the door, opened, and there he sat at his desk, the usual hostile face, arms folded, looking disgusted. I had no idea what to say, he told me how much he hated my company, my training, my colleagues, I suppose me too, and the project. I felt he was just about to kick me out, too as he looked at me like king cobra before it bites the little rabbit.

Within a nano second my brain went into attack mode and let me calmly spit out a message which was like this: "I am sorry to say that you are the worst ever manager I have trained. All your employees dislike and disrespect you, your management skills set is appalling, you poison your department with your bad tempers, and you are threatening a project which would bring millions of savings for your company." He looked at me as if I were the reincarnation of all evil spirits. I stood up and left the room before he could throw me out.

A day later the project director was allowed to visit him, he opened up towards the project, but only under one condition, and that was that I had to leave the project. I think he was somewhat embarrassed to see me. So I went. But at least I knew it was up to me that it could go on. Of course that was never communicated into my own company, but the director and manager harvested all the "good wishes" directly from the board. Officially it was their success. Yes, that's also management consultancy, having to swim with sharks rather than goldfish.

My next project was a salad processing one in Swabia and somewhere around Madgeburg.

Hannover

After Austria I was sent to a project in Hanover. It was big, with about 5 or 6 consultants, 1 trainer (me), and a project manager. The company produces conveyor belts and they are the biggest ones worldwide to do so.

If I remember well, as this was 10 years ago, I had 8 workshop groups and 8 sessions per group. Each group consisted of about 8 people in average. This equals up to 64 workshops, 64 participants, and around 500 coaching sessions. The topics were the usual ones with very little input from the operations department.

I was on that project for several months. I must admit, I have forgotten further details. It was mainly a production project with the goal to raise efficiencies in the factory.

So what Austria?

Now what is the conclusion from my 2 Austrian projects, what did I learn and take away?

Most important for me was to learn that clients can be real "bastards" who try to make your life a misery. That was my reality check. Training is not just happy clappy show time stuff, but an area where they drop their frustration and one needs to deal with it effectively.

I also learned how to deal with the whole variety of clients. One trains 1 subject and the response can be amazingly widespread. I figured out that the ones who nod and say "yes" to everything can be the worst participants as they do not really apply anything they learned, whereas the ones I struggled with were my best trainees; once we came to an all-satisfying conclusion they finally did it and changed their behaviour.

I learned how stressful it can be to have 2 clients at the same time in 4 locations. In any 2 weeks period I had to give 11 workshops and 60 (!) coaching sessions, and that for about 4 months. And I won't mention the whole travel issue.

These projects were also intense due to the internal (as in consultancy) politics. I had to deal with a bully of a project manager who was also incompetent, the other project manager just blackmailed me back in Switzerland, so I was not the best friend of her, the consultants were not well trained and only freshers, and my support director had no days to visit me on my projects and coach me in how to do my job.

It was tough, but I do not regret it. Not in the aftermath anyway, as I learned so much. I can hardly describe how steep the learning curve is once you are on your own and the clients expect results and of course do not care about our internal hick-hack.

After I left those 2 projects I was sent to Germany to another one. But that's on tomorrow's blog.

Austrian Logistics

My other project in Austria was a multilocation one based in Vienna with subsidiaries also in Linz and Innsbruck. The project focus was logistics as it was a freight company that needed sorting out their internal efficiencies.

For this project I developed the training approach and also gave the actual training and coaching.

Meetings with the top-client in Vienna were not always easy as he used to scream and swear his lungs out. Some of his staff was scared, some did not care anymore as they knew they'd get screamed at anyway.

I don't remember too well what happened in those early projects, but I have the slight feeling that they ran out of money and it could not be finished. But that was after the training.

From the Innsbruck site I got a reference. I translated a bit of it and pasted it onto my website. In case anybody is interested.

I remember that training there was fun. At least more fun than in the other Austrian project. Did people finally change their behaviour? I am not so sure about the Viennese managers, as they did not seem to get get out of their firefighting mode, but the Innsbruck site was a very successful installation indeed.

Again, I was a junior consultant then; today I would approach these difficult situations of either Austrian project differently.

2000

It is already late on this Sunday, I was out all day. Henceforth only a short message so that I won't start to break my daily blog habit.

I estimated the amount of flights I had to take as consultant. It should be a little less than 2000. I don't want to know how black my carbon footprint is...

That's all for today. I am off to bed now and will write more about this other project in Austria tomorrow.

Concrete Heads in Austria

My first project as a freshly baked trainer was in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. The location was about an hour south of Vienna in the most rural part of the Burgenland. The client was a local producer of concrete, the people working there were most stubborn and did not talk a lot.

The project manager was a pushy Dutchman with insufficient German language knowledge (not good in rural Austria), the full-time consultant was brandnew with no experience whatsoever, and there was I, the part-time inexperienced trainer who had 2 projects at the same time.

To say it bluntly, the project was an utter disaster. The client's management team absolutely hated us. They arrived to my workshops sitting there with their arms folded telling me that this training was a complete waste of their time and that they did not intend to participate.

I did the training anyway as good as I could. I remember vaguely that they tried to plot against me by telling lies of what I said in the workshops to get me out of there. They did not only block the training but mainly the operations department's efforts. They rebelled till the owner was forced to close the project prematurely. What a nice start of my career as trainer!

I DO NOT WANT TO DISCREDIT MY CLIENT AS I DO NOT MENTION THEIR NAME, I ONLY TRY TO EXPLAIN FROM A CONSULTANT POINT OF VIEW AND A PERSONAL ONE WHAT IT MEANS TO DEAL WITH DIFFICULT CLIENTS.

Training, Training, Training

After I survived that training camp and returned to Europe I also switched from the operations to the training department and kept on doing training till I quit my job with that company 2 1/2 years later. For myself but also within the company guidelines I established a couple of rules. Below a few:

- Training can only be to accompany the implementation of changes and management tools by the operations consultants (remember, I was one when I did that purchasing department),
- Apart from team building events, I like training to be on site and not in some fancy location. Training is all about applying new management tools, and for that one needs to be surrounded by reality,
- Training should be around 2 to 3 hours every 2 weeks or so. In between every training session each participant must get a 1-2-1 coaching session of about an hour,
- Till week 10 of the project at least 3 sessions should have been held in order to ensure the desired behaviour change,
- Training has to be interactive and is not to be mixed up with teaching. Tasks will be given after every workshop and those tasks are the foundation for the personal coaching session.

In those years as trainer I led 200 to 300 workshops, coached around 200 clients in ca 1000 coaching sessions.

The Dullest ever Press Release Written (by myself)

“DIY Consulting”, a clever way to gain strength from within when cash is scarce.

In times of no money in the market companies cannot afford to spend huge amounts of cash for management consultancies, but especially now they would need their services the most. Using freelancing ex-consultants who specialised in coaching and mentoring would be an extremely interesting way of still cashing in savings, implementing change initiatives, however avoiding the high weekly invoice.

What is good about consultancies, they come in, analyse the situation, come up with savings and how to cash those benefits in with a potential project, the do the work, create momentum, and they leave again. By then, the company will have hopefully saved what was being agreed, but to an expensive price.

A little calculation for a small project: Day rates of a single consultant are around GBP 2,000, a small to average sized project team would consist of 3 people, and project length would be about 5 months (20 weeks). This equals to GBP 600,000. Applying a Return-on-Investment of 3:1 the savings potential is about GBP 1,800,000 on an annual basis.

Cashing in the savings is nice, but the question most CEOs have to answer when employing consultants is, whether the fee is justified; their invoice is often weekly but their savings are mostly delayed, with that risk on the client’s side. Besides, consultancies may oversell, and consultancy-internal inefficiencies are also built into that daily rate for which no client wants to pay.

Apart from the actual knowledge they bring into the organisation whilst helping them attaining the results, their main advantage is that certain pressure they create and the need for urgency (mainly because they are expensive and people get scared dealing with them).

In hard times like a looming recession the pressure is on anyway; consultancies should find it hard to sell this most important tactical tool.

Time for another calculation exercise: The company is hiring a flexible freelance consultant, who has exactly the same knowledge, on an hourly/daily basis. This saves them from having a full team of consultants in house. The work is done by key management and an internal task force team. The pressure is on, the freelancer is milked for his knowledge, gives training, coaches key personnel, shares his external view, hence acts as sounding board and helps enabling the company to cash in the savings themselves.

Say, GBP 1,000 daily rate, 3 days per week, 5 months project, equals GBP 60,000, probably even less as towards the end 3 days a week is rather much. Does this mean it is the end of management consultancies? Of course not.

Huge change programmes still need to be managed by them. But one thing is for sure, times have changed and the simple approach “Oh, I have a problem, let’s call a consultancy” is no longer applicable. Companies need to rethink how to renew themselves from within with as little cash expenditure as possible. Buying in knowledge from coaches and mentors might be of great help.

Negative Feedback

In that training our trainer had one-on-ones with us and we were allowed to bitch about other course participants. I bitched about Julie and that she continuously talks about an old client of hers called Alpha-Tec. I so much could not hear that word anymore.

Well, and suddenly I had an assignment; giving Julie feedback and telling her to shut up and that her stories get on my nervs. As a well-mannered young man, I certainly did have my problems giving negative feedback which should also be constructive at the same time. This was also part of our training session.

I tricked a little. Only a few days ahead was Julie's birthday. We all celebrated and were not super-sober anymore. I told her then, in the most diplomatic manner. Julie took it very easily. We had such a laugh, and she never ever mentioned Alpha-Tec again.

In fact, it was from then onwards that Julie and I became extremely good friends. We still visit each other regularly (she lives with her family in the US) and have a good laugh about Alpha-tec these days.

What I wanted to say with this. Giving negative feedback does not have to be destructive. Initially, it is difficult though, but one gets used to it. I am doing it all the time now as part of my job. The ability to tell someone something which he probably does not want to hear and can be painful but will result in something positive is one of the major management skills.

Florida Boy

The best training I have ever received and also the toughest was the one in the company headquarters in Florida. It was really tough. And in those days my English was not as good as it is today.

We learned how to determine training needs, several management simulations, how to organise and roll out training sessions, how to coach people, how to deal with tough clients during coaching and workshops, etc. It was a 3 weeks course and every day we got homework to do.

Week 3 was role-play week. Now, those were tricky. They had a special roleplay room which was fitted with hidden cameras and microphones. TV sets were placed throughout the company, and also in the CEO's office. Whenever there were any role-plays done one could tune in.

Role players were often board directors of the company. So, as a young junior consultant you suddenly had to role-play with one of the big boys. In case they did not like someone they simply fired that person. Also, in case the CEO tuned in in his office and he found the role-play horrible he ran down and fired the role players.

In the training course before ours apparently 50% of trainees were fired.

Well, I was not, nor was any other person in our course. But I have never been that nervous.

Management Training

Management Training goes along with the operational installation. The main responsibility of training is to ensure "behaviour change" and that all installed new systems and tools are being used properly and that management does not fall back into old behaviours. Training is never ever there just for the sake of delivering training!

There are a few topics which are mostly on the training schedule (more detail in a later entry):
- What are management systems,
- Openness to change and the "curve of change",
- Efficient meetings,
- Confrontation skills,
- Effective Communication, and a few more.

Other topics are very specific and need to be tailor-made for the client. They would normally be in line with the area development.

Between training sessions are always coaching sessions where trainer and client work on the client's personal progress throughout the project installation phase and his behaviour change.

After my first project, the ice-cream one, I decided to go into training and was sent off to the corporate headquarters in Florida on a 3 weeks intensive course.

Billing Body

This might sound a bit difficult but I will try my best to explain:

This phenomenon "Billing body" occurs when projects are "oversold". This means that too many manweeks were sold in order to reach the project target (1 manweek is 5 mandays). In case the client knows the amount of manweeks and is billed according to the actual number of consultants on the project per week, then the consultancy has an interest in filling the project with the maximum amount of consultants even though they have nothing to do but online shopping and drinking coffee, or probably some internal work.

This sounds quite funny at first, but the problem is, a consultant, especially a junior, can be fired very quickly, when suddenly the project is saturated and no new one in line. One never knows how the following day will be and whether one has work or not. Also, one's internal reputation can decline rapidly as one could be known as "billing body" only. Internal reputation is everything!

This happened in my first year. It was the 2nd project I was on and it was in the Zurich area. Clients should always control the amount of consultants so they know what they pay.

In those days I compiled a management training manual which helped me tremendously in my forthcoming projects.

Performance Improvement

Themes for Performance Improvement could be:
- Throughput optimisation (more output in the same given time). Throughput could be a production order, and invoice, goods-in, goods to despatch, picks in a warehouse, etc,
- Labour reduction (same output with less time),
- Quality improvement,
- Raising customer satisfaction degrees,
- Eliminating non-value added activities,
- Implementing a measurement system (KPIs) or a Balanced Scorecard,
- Yield improvement (i.e. Scrap reduction in production processes (strong link with skills programmes)), etc.

These are some tools for those Performance Improvement themes:
- Effective meeting structures and efficient meetings,
- Developing KPIs which enable a full view over core processes,
- Process Development (so-called "Brown Papers", explained later),
- Supervisory shopfloor controls,
- Active supervision on the shopfloor,
- Organisational development,
- Planning and forecasting tools,
- Warehouse control mechanisms,
- Standards and norms settings,
- Master-schedules,
...

What you see is what you get

Talking about operations management consultancies there are generally 3 main products a client can get, at least as specified with my first company I worked for - performance enhancement, management training and skills training. The first 2 are interlinked and compulsory, the latter optional.

Performance enhancement or operations improvement:
This part of the project will get the benefits cashed in. Consultants are allocated to specific areas and ought to develop them and implement what has been promised/sold to the client. I already talked about activity lists and manloading. That's one part of it.

Management training:
In order to make sure that those performance improvements "stick" with the clients' management (supervisors, managers and above) training needs to be given. The training programme needs to be tailor-made (or at least sold as such) to what the clients' specific needs are. The first few parts of the training are always the same modules though. But that's okay, those modules are vital.

Skills training:
Staff and workers get skills training. Projects like these might be "sales enhancement" programmes or "throughput optimisation" initiatives.

More detail to be found in further blog entries...

Winterwonderhell

I woke up this Monday morning and London was covered under a 20cm thick snow blanket. Gladly, I did not have to go to the airport today. It would have been pointless.

As a continuously travelling consultant I have been through lots and lots of mini-catastrophies - blizzards, severe thunderstorms, flooding, even the Australian bushfires. In travel terms this means, delayed or cancelled planes, blocked roads, no trains, rental car companies without cars, and so on. Just to name a few:

- Having boarded a 19.00 flight from Heathrow to Vienna. Thunderstorm and having to wait for hours on the plane only to find it cancelled 5 hours later, with no public transport at the airport and queues for a taxi which were outrageous.

- Being on a flight to Chicago and after many hours of flying and already deeply over Canada the pilot suddenly annouces that we are flying back to London as all the airports in North America a closed due to a blizzard.

- Storms over Europe. Most flights got cancelled. I got on one and the flight was so bumpy that most passengers had to throw up and the stewardesses walked around disposing all those bags. I saw many passengers pray.

- Being surrounded by fires on a road somewhere between Sydney and Brisbane.

What one learns is to stay calm in any situation. There is always a way out somehow. And I need to admit, I just love those irregularities (once in a while anyway). It spices up one's life a little and adds a bit of thrill to it.

Features and Benefits

As soon as I got my first trainings I was made being aware that the company is not a consultancy company but a sales company. Every single consultant has to sell, too. You see, suddenly I got another job on top of mine - salesman.

And of course this is right. Every project member should sell his work, achievements and company to the client, all the time. The problem is, one does not speak the right lingo when talking to clients. Everyone like to repeat what one has done in order to impress: "Mr Client, today I observed the production. I also looked at the financial data you gave me, I talked to the HR director of the company and organised your manager's training programme."

This list sounds pretty impressive but actually, the client might shrug with a "Whatever!"-expression on his face. If he is nice he might as well just ask: "So, what's in it for me?", and help us to come up with reasons why those activities had been performed.

Well, let's look at that sentence again: "Mr Client, we are close to show you the savings potential in production because soon the observation phase is finished. The financial data you gave me looks pretty grim from a first glance on it, but we shall sit together and work on something. The HR director thinks the trade unions are quiet and we can continue with observing workers in their workplace. Your managers will soon be able to perform the first basic management tasks because I prepared the training programme".

The first are called features, the latter benefits. No further explanation required.