Alpha Mind Blog

So you don’t manage software engineering projects. Then should you read Jerry Weinberg’s Overstructured management of software engineering?

Absolutely. Positively.

If you write, read it. Weinberg is a model of lucid and engaging writing.

If you manage organizations of any kind, read it. Weinberg understands what you face. (Weinberg is writing about “overstructuring” errors which software managers are especially prone to because they were once programmers. But they are errors one sees in every kind of organization.)

If you simply like seeing a true alpha mind at work, read it and anything else by Weinberg.

I took a course in software development management at MIT Sloan, and this article was one of my favorite pieces of reading for that course. Although it’s probably been online for eons, I’m delighted to have found it, and happy to share it with you.

Thanks to Nat Kuhn for sending me to Le Grand Content, a very clever video by Clemens Kogler.

Heidi Miller (whom Lee Hopkins called “uberbabe” and I trust him) has asked for responses to four questions by Kathy Sierra. Here are mine:

Q1: When was the last time you read a trade/professional journal or book related to your work?

A1: Today. I finished Made To Stick. Oh, so fine. It was the second time I had to take a bath instead of a shower because I couldn’t put the book down, and I didn’t want it to get too wet.

Q2: Name at least two of the key people in your field.

A2: Can’t. I don’t know anybody else who does what I do. My work is to make intelligent people and organizations sound as smart as they are, and to use their thought leadership to take dominant positions in their fields and industries.

It involves training, handling, coaching, counseling, arguing, promoting, editing, relationship-brokering, ghost-writing…

…and doing part of this publicly, appearing prominently as the thought partner of my client.

Even if we simplify this to “very public ghost-writer,” I don’t know anybody else doing it. (Even I can’t do it with joyous abandon until I leave the public position I’m in with my current employer. But my last client got into the Harvard Business Review and quadrupled his consulting firm’s run rate. And he only worked half the program, and I was in my current job at the time.)

Q3: If you had to, would you spend your own money to buy tools or other materials that would improve the quality of your work?

A3: I have to and I do. I buy books and take courses. I do this almost obsessively, because in two years other people will be doing what I do, and I’ll only sustain my lead by being the best.

Q4: If you did not do this for work, would you still do it (or something related to it) as a hobby?

A4: Exactly this, no. Something related, absolutely! In fact I teach people how to package their ideas in order to shame myself into taking my own advice, because I care about communicating, and I’m passionate about the things I write and speak about.

There’s a fine post at Instigator Blog: Top 10 Reasons Why Proposals Fail, by Ben Yoskovitz. I’d like to add a few notes of my own.

Point 1. Killing pain is nice, but thriving is better.
Ben is very right to focus on the prospect’s pain, if and when he’s right that pain is the reason they’re asking for proposals in the first place. But desire for the absence of pain is a negative motivation. It’ll get you to take an aspirin and a client to take the consulting equivalent.

But every time an organization is in pain, there’s also an upside opportunity, either right in there with the pain, or lurking nearby. And it’s important to find that and focus on it.

Sometimes the client is perfectly aware of it. Very often the pain is simply a missed upside target. (”We only grew 12% topline last year, and the industry grew 11%. Barely beating the average is unacceptable; we want to double it.”) This organization is giving you some gain to talk about, and that’s a lot more fun, for you and for the client, than just talking pain. In many cases, though, the client won’t show you the upside, and you need to find it yourself.

Some organizations have the wisdom to call in help for upside reasons, but more companies need to do so more often. And you, as a consultant, should be looking for clients with that level of wisdom. If a client only calls you in because of headaches, look for a better class of client, one who’ll make you a partner in their success and not just a school nurse.

Point 2. A focus on gain allows you to offer a menu. Menus are good.
If at all possible, your proposal should offer a menu of options.

• Option A, plain vanilla, leaves the client headache-free. (For now. But you don’t say those words.)
• Option B, which costs more money, offers enough upside to make the client happy to have invested a little extra.
• Option C, the deluxe, will win the client accolades, bonuses, promotions, and dates with supermodels. Your immense final check will be written with a beaming grin.

Offering a menu provides several advantages, which I won’t list exhaustively (perhaps in another post.) But I’ll mention one: few of your competitors will offer precisely the same menu, and so your proposal will have to be considered separately from the pack. If the prospect allows you any way to break away from the pack, do so. Better yet, don’t even start inside a pack. Read on….

Point 3. A proposal that isn’t a recap is way too much like a cold call. Brrrr!
Ben seems to assume that you’re on a level playing field with a batch of other consultants. But if that’s the case for more than a third of your proposals, then you’re one of the following:

• very new in your business, or
• in a new practice area (nobody was consulting on corporate blogging two years ago), or
• practicing in a realm where there can’t be much repeat business, or
• in deep trouble.

After a couple of years in business, most of your proposals should simply be recaps of what you and the client, in private discussions, have already agreed needs to be done. Even if the client writes an RFP detailing what you and they agreed on, and your competitors respond to the RFP, you still have a leg up. Why? Because in the process of talking through the need, you’ve demonstrated your insight. The prospect will view you as able to perform what you, and only you, talked them into.

Ben’s points are good. But there’s a lot more to this proposal game, and the ultimate goal is to get business without writing proposals. With my last client, by the time we agreed on what needed to be in a proposal, we were also clear on what needed to be done and that I was the one to do it. The next paper transaction between us? He handed me a check while telling me to get started. It won’t work in every industry or practice area, but you’d be surprised how many it will work in.

(Cross-posted to Management Consulting Lore.)

I just discovered this list of 66 Successful Bloggers and What they can teach you. I’ve glanced at a few of these blogs (other than the ones I’d already known about.) It’s a good list, and I’ll be spending a week digesting it.

From Blog Republic:
The Single Biggest Obstacle To Blogging Success - Impatience.

When you invite someone into the bathtub with you, it’s a sign of either great disrespect or great love. So if Dan and Chip Heath ever see the water damage on my copy of Made to Stick, I wish to assure them it’s not the former. I can’t put this book down!

If you want to know how to develop ideas that fly and craft messages that stick, this book is essential reading. In fact, it just flew to the top of my list of recommended books on writing, and I just Amazoned a copy of it to my rockstar daughter who’s in marketing.

I hope to write a full review in a couple of days, but for now I’ve said enough. If you care about effective communication, read this book.

BTW, I found Made to Stick through Bob Sutton’s blog, a new find for me. I almost bought Sutton’s book The No Asshole Rule when I bought Made to Stick, but I knew just from Sutton’s blog that the book would be compelling enough to make a serious dent in my work plans, and I can only permit myself one such read a week. This week it’s the brothers Heath.

Kami Huyse:

Connie has appointed herself the champion of the vowel “E”,
which we have seemed to drop in our haste to appear that we “get it” –
or was it because all the best URL’s were already taken?  I still love Flickr, but Connie has a point!

Actually, the reason for all those missing “E”s is, as Kami’s link (which I copied) suggests, that we overused them in the 90s. It’s called E Fatigue, and researchers at Johns Hopkins are looking into it quite closely.

On March 1, I will shut down the old Alpha Mind blog at www.maxhansen.net/alphamind . Between now and then, most of my posts will be cross-posted to the new Alpha Mind blog here at blog.alphamind.biz .

I am doing this because, in addition to RSS subscribers to the old blog, I’m aware there are some non-subscribers who look in now and then to see what I’m up to. I want them to have some time to find the new blog and subscribe to it.