My current role is the second consulting one I’ve had. It’s going well, much better than my first foray and failure in early 2020. A minor reason for that failure was the global pandemic. The major reason was my inexperience navigating the politics of consulting. My assumption was anybody who hired a consultant was seeking expertise in a deficient area. I was in for a rude awakening.
The Awakening
I won’t bore you with the details about the project or the firm I worked for, and I will attempt to minimize the corporate jargon. The only significant figure is the client lead, and I won’t bore you with too many details about him. What’s important to know is he believed he was always the smartest and most charming individual in the room. Perhaps that explained his propensity to quickly fire consultants who disagreed with him.
I joined my firm as part of the second team assembled to save this client relationship. The first team didn’t, and as far as I know, neither did we. We wasted our time coddling the lead’s ego, wasting our energy solving trivial problems while the other firms who’d worked with this lead previously expended their energy solving real problems. Needless to say, I was ecstatic when they removed me from this project.
To my earlier point about ineffectively navigating politics, I should’ve understood the duopoly existing within most people, summarized by the following questions:
Do you want to be right? Or, do you want to grow?
The client lead fell into the former, though he’s definitely not the only one. In this second consulting foray, I’m encountering many others in this category. The only difference is the outreach phase filters most of them, and I never see them again. Extrapolating this realization into my everyday life, most people also fall into this category. Most people want to hear they’re right. Most people don’t want to change.
Why is change difficult? Why do most people anchor themselves to beliefs and habits when they know there are better ones? It’s a complicated answer, like the neurological supercomputer inside our skulls. The origins of these aforementioned beliefs and habits are difficult to dissect. If it were easy, coaching, psychology, psychiatry, and their “neuro” derivatives wouldn’t exist. What is more complicated, however, is learning to separate ourselves from them and their underlying ideas. It can take herculean effort to achieve this separation, or it can be forced by great catastrophe. Neither route is easy.
Separating Ourselves from Our Ideas
Being able to distinguish ourselves from our ideas is a cornerstone of growth. Not only does it aid us on our personal journey, it also enables us to aid others on theirs. I’ve improved at the latter during this second chapter of consulting. As to the former, I’m still a novice, as accepting the iterative nature of change has proven easier at the professional level.
Viewing change as a series of iterations affords you or the people you’re working with the opportunity to determine their own conclusions. You catalyze change, not force it. In a professional setting, your firm and industry dictate how you achieve this goal. In a personal setting, how ambitious the change is dictates it. Regardless, the greater number of iterations you envision, the more opportunities you have.
Returning to our original questions, whether you want to be right or whether you want to grow, the answer starts and ends with thought. Ideological change cannot be initiated until the seed of it is planted. Sometimes that seed is a random instance, sometimes it is a strategic decision to hire a consultant.
“The purpose of thinking is to let the ideas die instead of us dying.” – Alfred North Whitehead
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Be More.
Become Polymathic.
Quote of the Week: “Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.” ― Alfred North Whitehead