Mark Law, Lead Tutor
Expert consulting practitioner & career mentor with extensive industry knowledge & experience.
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Professional Certifications
Mark Law
Whenever we choose a doctor, dentist or solicitor we insist on a fully qualified professional. Indeed, the thought of engaging a non-qualified person doesn’t even enter our heads. Why then do clients rarely question the qualifications of their consultants or their ethics?
To find out more read my article published in the Spring 2009 edition of London Business School’s ‘Business Strategy Review’. Download your copy now.
How to use the ‘dead time’ in your life productively
Keeping up-to-date in the fast moving world of business, technology and science is a real challenge for busy professionals. Why not download podcasts onto your Gizmo (SmartPhone, iPod or portable media player) and listen to them during your dead time (i.e. travelling or at the gym)? Here’s how to do it: Continue reading
A recent MBA hired by a blue chip company was asked by his boss to engage one of the elite consultancies on a major strategy study. Here is a transcript of their conversation:
Rookie manager: ”Can you explain how ??? & Company calculates its fees for this type of engagement?”
Grizzled engagement manager: ”It’s very simple. For this type of study we charge £250,000 to answer three questions.”
Rookie manager: ”Crikey, isn’t that rather expensive?”
Grizzled engagement manager: ”Yes it is. Now what was your third question?”
Professional qualifications and memberships are a proven way to increase earnings. A survey by London Economics, a well respected consultancy, found that on average professional qualifications and memberships added £152,000 to lifetime earnings. Continue reading
Two simple tips here:
- Install Google Chrome browser (or similar) – much faster than Internet Explorer (BEWARE you may still need IE to get full functionality from some web sites)
- Install AdMuncher – it eats adverts before they hit your browser and gives you much faster and more pleasant browsing experience
Believe it or not, the most effective performance enhancing drug is free, 100% legal and available to everyone. Moreover, with the right choices and a little practice and care, most of us can use it to excel at our chosen activities. Continue reading
Mark Penn is a certified guru on the subject of political polling. His famous clients include Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. He was also engaged by Hilary Clinton in the recent US presidential election where he was famously ‘fired’ over a conflict of interest.
This well written and researched book, probably largely penned by his co-author, provides a neat package of small-scale (<1% of the population) social trends that politicians and marketers should take note of.
Why? Continue reading
PIs => Perverse Incentives (an old management accounting joke)
KPIs => Key Perverse Incentives (newer management accounting joke)
CHAOS => Chief Has Arrived on Scene (Royal Navy)
WIIFM => What’s In It For Me? (useful for winning stakeholder support)
BOHICA => Bend Over Here It Comes Again (those who resist change)
SUMO => Shape Up or Move On! (for those who resist change)
FIFO => Fit In or xxxx Off! (for those who continue to resist change)
JFDI => Just ‘Fxxxing’ Do It (for those uncertain about what to do next)
WAG => Wild Arsed Guess (Royal Air Force)
SWAG => Scientific Wild Arsed Guess (Royal Air Force)
NIMBYs => Not in My Back Yard
BANANAs => Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (Local Government)
WOMBAT => Waste of Money, Brains and Time
SOBO => Statement of the Bleeding Obvious
RTFM => Read the ‘Flipping’ Manual (useful for co-workers)
RTFQ => Read the ‘Flipping’ Question (useful for those taking exams)
THE 7 Ps => Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance
GIGO => Garbage In Garbage Out
FUD => Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
“A vision without a strategy is just a hallucination…”
“Free advice costs nothing until you act on it…”
“Never let a good crisis go to waste”
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity, the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty…” (Winston Churchill)
“Why invent mediocrity when you can copy genius…” (on benchmarking)
“Never work for your clients, aim to work with them”
“Have you ever noticed that the word ‘Career’ is both a noun and a verb and that both meanings are contradictory?”
“There is no such thing as an organisation, there is only disorganisation…”
“Consultants, like advisers, should be on tap but not on top…” (Civil Service Proverb)
“A true expert aims to know more and more about less and less until they know absolutely everything about nothing…”
“A stockbroker is someone who invests your money until it’s all gone…” (Woody Allen)
“Rescuing a project or company without changing the team is like trying to polish a turd…”
“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
“Men are from Mars, women are from Venus and teenage children are from Uranus.”
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever… (Mahatma Gandhi)”
“I may be paranoid but that doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me…”
…or the importance of personal appearance.
Some years ago a good friend of mine successfully applied for a job with the Essex Chapter of the Hells Angels. He did this despite not meeting any of their normal entry requirements: Continue reading
Consultants are normally advised to match their client’s attire so that an external observer cannot tell the difference between consultant and client. This has two benefits for the consultant.
Firstly it reassures the client, i.e. “Hey, this guy is one of us”.
Secondly it allows consultants to melt invisibly into the client’s organisation which makes them much more difficult to spot during a cost cutting exercise.
All of this does, however, make the following fashion advice for consultants rather puzzling:
Q: What is black, yellow, furry and looks good on a consultant?
A: A rottweiler…
Institute of Directors
We run public courses at the Institute of Directors, London, UK and in-house or online.