Click for the Big Picture

Over the past decade the proverbial ‘job for life’ has virtually disappeared. Even in ‘secure’ professions, such as medicine, tenured positions are vanishing as short term contracts become the norm.

The big challenge facing each of us has evolved from career choice to career resilience. How can I remain attractive to potential clients and employers? In short, ‘how can I future-proof my career?’

Here are some insights to help you strengthen your position in the workplace, i.e. turn your career from a verb into a noun. I hope you find them useful.

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Click for the Big Picture

In recent years management consulting has rapidly grown into a major business. With the advent of the Certified Management Consultant (CMC) qualification it is now evolving into a profession.

Here are a series of insights about some of the issues affecting the profession. I hope you find them interesting and useful.

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Late Night?

Isn’t time you got out a bit more? No, I’m not referring to your appetite for nightlife – mine has been relatively quite since I left the mayhem of the oil industry a few years ago!

What I’m talking about here is going to evening events organised by professional institutions. All it takes is a couple of hours, a few cheerful handshakes with like minded people, the swapping of business cards, a lecture on an interesting topic and a few canapés and drinks afterwards. A pleasant way to spend an evening, catch up on some CPD, meet old friends and of course network.

Alas, not all of us can attend events that easily. We may live in a quiet part of the world, we may have pressing family commitments or our partner may simply just not trust us!

I normally get to two or three of these events a month, often organised at London Business School (currently the world’s No1 Business School, according to the FT). These feature world-class speakers on a wide variety of interesting topics. Lectures tend to be themed by academic discipline or organised by the various thriving LBS Alumni Clubs.

My purpose here is to let you have a commentary on some of the more interesting talks I attend. I hope you find them useful.

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Bovver Book...

Why are some of the greatest books also the toughest reads? My theory is that they are written by boffins, professors and eccentrics. People passionate about their subject who either don’t understand the poor reader or just lack a good editor.

Life is too short to plough through this stuff unless your job depends on it (mine does). Wouldn’t it be nice if someone did it for you? But who is selfless or possibly crazy enough to take on such a task?

Well, here is a collection of great books I have recently read focusing purely on their payload. You get the gist without the grind!

Enjoy!

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Yet there is a dark side to technology. If we are not careful it becomes an obsession, a black hole into which we pour time, money and even our sanity. Technology teases us with its promise but drives us crazy with its complexity, poor design and unreliability.

So how can we quickly get down the learning curve? How do we sort the good from the bad? Where should we start? Here are a series of insights to help you make the most of technology.

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Click for the Big Picture

Stress is both a hero and villain in our lives. Good stress keeps us sharp, excited, vibrant. It adds colour and texture to life and makes the world an exciting place:

The great new idea. Pitching it to a potential client. The success of winning an engagement. The ‘crikey I’ve now got to deliver it’. The ‘thanks for a job well done’. The next engagement call from a happy client.

Each of these adrenaline rushes is fun, exciting and keeps us on our toes. Good stress is what makes life exciting, an adventure, a journey into the unknown.

Bad stress burns you out and eventually kills you. It’s the unreasonable boss, the over demanding partner/family, the overload of tasks, the 18 hour days, the all nighters, the ‘you get fired if you mess up’ demands of some organisations.

Here are a series of insights to help you understand the role of stress in your life. I aim to show you how to use good stress to your advantage and how to avoid, or at least handle, the bad stuff.

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Well, if you are at all serious about making yourself indispensable and earning the rewards associated with this (i.e. job security, dosh or even a promotion), you are going to have to work smarter. What is the key to all this? Become an expert.

It has been said that: ‘Your income and influence are directly proportional to the number of people who consider you an expert’.

Many of us, when we think of the term ‘expert’, assume that it’s well beyond our grasp. We believe it requires an innate talent perhaps bordering on genius. However, becoming an expert is in fact something well within the grasp of most of us. All it takes is a bit of enthusiasm and commitment.

Most of us go through a ‘learning spurt’ at the start of our careers, and perhaps to a lesser degree each time we change jobs. We dutifully attend the relevant training courses in an effort to keep up-to-date with new methods or technology through our employer. Other than that, any new learning tends to happen by osmosis rather than through any deliberate effort to stretch ourselves. We often only aspire to gain the minimum amount of knowledge to do the job at hand.

An alternative approach is to choose a subject of value in the workplace which one happens to be interested in. We then aim to become a true expert in this field. We devour every piece of information we can find on the subject by:

• Attending suitable courses (you’d expect me to say this!)
• Reading books on the subject
• Creative web ‘surfing’

More than this, we need to thoroughly understand how our expertise can be used to create value in the real world. We need to develop informed opinions about how our expertise relates to and creates value for:

• The core business of our employer or clients
• Other industries
• The economy and society large (including public sector and not-for-profit organisations)

In short we need to immerse ourselves in our chosen field to the point we are bursting with useful information and wisdom about how to apply this.

Being a ‘closet expert’ of course does not get us anywhere in life. We need to find ways to visibly demonstrate our expertise. We therefore need to explore:

• Publishing reviews, articles, papers and books
• Give lectures and seminars
• Network with the media

We need to be visible, active and never stop adding to our knowledge bank. By going well beyond the call of duty in terms of professional development, we become recognised experts. This is ultimately an interesting thing to do, professionally satisfying and strengthens our position in the workplace.

Discover what really gets you excited and turn yourself into an expert!

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This is the nearest I can do online to buying you a drink, enjoying a chat and of course swapping some jokes.

Wine Bar at the Institute of Directors

For a real life drink on me, why not book onto one of our courses?

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The civil engineer interrupted, and said, “But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world.”

The consultant leaned back in his chair, smiled, and then said confidently, “Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?”

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Speakers: Paul Farley (British Airways), Mark Spears (KPMG) and Chris Bones (Dean of Henly Business School)

This action packed event covered way too much in an hour to do it full justice here. However, each of the speakers described major change in their ‘home’ organisation and drew some learning from it. Change programmes were described at KPMG (the big accounting firm), at British Airways (currently facing major commercial challenges) and at Henly Business School (following a recent merger).

Although change is a highly complex subject the key takeaway from this event for me was the concept of breaking change down into its three main elements: planning change, winning support for change and implementing change. Some useful points under each of these headings were:

1. Planning Change (aim to spend ~10% of time here)

Organisations have a limited capacity for change and leaders need to have a clear view about which change initiatives to support and in what order. None of the presentations mentioned the fact that high quality option appraisals / business cases are required during the change planning process which I felt was a significant omission.

2. Winning Support for Change (aim to spend ~45% of time here)

Nothing major happens in large organisations without winning the support of key stakeholders. Senior management must spend a lot of time on this. The first main takeaway on this subject was to map stakeholders carefully and develop a communications plan based on this. The second takeaway was to use data to convince stakeholders and involve them deeply in the analysis of this data so that they reach the inevitable conclusion that a change programme is really needed to tackle this. This involves key stakeholders and gains their commitment to the change programme.

3. Implementing Change (aim to spend ~45% of time here)

Although this event wasn’t really about implementation, the war stories gave valuable insights into the change process in the three organisations. It was difficult to draw any common learning from this apart from the old saying:

“Never let a good crisis go to waste” – it is easier to sell change from a ‘burning platform’.

The importance of ‘Authentic Leadership’ was stressed but not really covered during this event. Apart from this, implementing change seemed to be about JFDI and having excellent feedback systems to ensure that change happens more or less as envisaged.

Conclusion

Overall a great event which was both interesting and thought provoking. There are bound to be gaps in a subject this large, however, the event was definitely worth attending. I can also report that the canapés were legendary but the red wine was a bit iffy. Will stick to the lager next time!

Acknowledgements & Useful Links

My thanks to the LBS Human Capital Network for organising such an interesting event.

Details of the many excellent Executive Education programmes run by London Business School can be found by clicking here.

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