A system that encourages bad behaviour

I flew home to London from Paris yesterday.

British Airways being British Airways we'd been put on a bus to get from the terminal to the actual aircraft.  Me being me I'd let other people off the bus first, so I was the last passenger to board the (full) plane.

I was sitting in row 11, not at the front and not at the back and as I'd only been away overnight I just had the one carry-on bag.  Of course there was no room remaining in the overhead compartments near row 11.  Without a hint of an apology the cabin attendant told me that I had to find space further down the plane, somewhere near row 18.  Now I'm faced with a choice: either I acquiesce (which means I'll be going against the flow to get my bag and pretty much be the last person off the flight) or I make a fuss.

So without actually raising my voice I make my displeasure known.  This isn't right.  Why should I potentially be the last person off the flight if I'm sitting in row 11?  I turn my problem into the BA guy's problem.  He reads the situation pretty well.  He offers to stow the bag himself and bring it back to row 11 after we land.  I can virtually hear the thoughts of my fellow passengers: -

"Pushy bloody Australian."

At Heathrow the cabin attendant is as good as his word, he brings me back my bag and I'm happy.  Another passenger, who was obviously told the same thing as me when boarding, then asks that his bag be retrieved as well.  It's too late: the seatbeat light is off, the aisles are suddenly full of passengers and he has to wait.

I don't like being that person.  I hate having to make a fuss.  I hate the whole idea that it's the 'squeaky wheel that gets the grease'.  That if I don't behave badly and turn my problem into someone else's then I lose.

Systems that reward bad behaviour should be avoided.  Unfortunately air travel is full of them.

Rent-seeking

I am sitting in an airport having just left a 'wrap-up' meeting at the conclusion of a very successful project.  The client was effusive and immediately looking for new areas where we can work together.  The problem is that the two projects where they next need external help don't match my skill set.  I have three choices: -

1. Take on a project and convince myself that I'll learn quickly enough to deliver what they need
2. Take on a project and find a 3rd-Party supplier who will deliver the work to the client but on my behalf
3. Explain that their needs fall outside of my competencies and decline the work
   

As tempting as the alternatives are I chose option 3.  My personal brand is too valuable for me to try and improvise my way through a major project (option 1.)

It is option 2. that I want to explore here.  If I really have my client's best interests at heart then I will either say nothing at all or I'll put him in touch with the right people and then get out of the way (which is what I did).

Still the temptation to manipulate proceedings so that everything goes through me is strong; if I bring buyers and sellers together then why shouldn't I get a piece of the action?  This is what agents do for a living right?  Essentially it's a version of what David Ricardo described as rent-seeking: -

The extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity

I am not saying that this is a bad thing per se, it just doesn't fit my business model.  I am no good at turning up to meetings where I don't have a specific role, which is what agents essentially do.  Also, I want my value proposition to be based on what I know rather than who.  Finally, it would place my reputation for quality entirely in the hands of others.

Some would say that I'm possibly 'leaving money on the table' but at least I know my personal brand is protected and that is worth a lot more to me in the longer term.

The financial firestorm

Each off us is going to have clients citing 'financial meltdown' as the reason to pull back from projects.  Despite working with the pharmaceutical industry, a sector mostly governed by different market forces, I have already had 1-2 clients make noises to this effect.

As ever, Seth Grodin says it better than me.

Train-the-Trainer 1

Train-the-Trainer sounds like such a simple, logical idea: -

Because of language issues or the overall scale of the project or whatever, doesn't it make sense for you to just transfer the skills to deliver the programme to our people and we'll take it from there?

It's very hard to argue against this logic yet it has some wide-ranging implications for my business that I sometimes struggle to fully appreciate.  Perhaps its because of my background as a performer that I am most comfortable delivering my stuff directly to the end user.  My job is to facilitate behavioural change and it's easier to do when I can look in the eyes of the person whose behaviour is meant to change.

The usual analogy for Train-the-Trainer projects is that of the children's party game 'Chinese Whispers' (aka 'Telephone') and it's hard to dispute.  Information mutates as it passes along a chain and the longer the chain the greater the mutation.  As the supplier of the original content I find myself trying to second guess a raft of possible issues faced by a deliverer who isn't me.  This 'second guessing' must account for an astonishingly wide set of variables: -

• Does that person share the underlying values assumed by the programme?
• How competent is the trainer as a presenter?  As a facilitator of discussion?
• My programmes always feature drama-based elements.  Will the trainer enthusiastically embrace, half-heartedly attempt or drop them altogether? 
• Can I assume that the programme will be given the right amount of time?  Will my room layout and other staging requirements be adhered to?  Will the handouts be properly prepared?
• How hard will the trainer fight to ensure that these project parameters are in place?

The integrity of my programme can be compromised in many ways and I have to do what I can protect my creation.  My first instinct is to proliferate documentation; try to anticipate every possible problem and script a remedy.  The obvious problem here is that I'm assuming that the trainer in question even cares enough to read my carefully constructed notes.  Another unhealthy byproduct is that my value proposition is now attached to what I write rather than what I say aloud or even what I think.

A better solution is to engender an attitude.   Instead of offering a set of mechanical solutions, if I can instill a passionate belief in the programme then the trainer is much more likely to allocate enough preparation time to deliver it well and also to fight to ensure that parameters such as programme length are kept.

I do this by investing heavily in my own branding throughout the Train-the-Trainer.  I need to endow my work with as much value as I can so that the participants leave knowing that I'm trusting them with something precious to me.  At the close I openly admit that I'm like a nervous parent sending a child out into the world for the first time and that I need each of them to do the right thing by my brand.

Always endowing our ideas with value is a big step towards ensuring that they are treated with respect.

Interpreters

In my last post I owned up to being 'depressingly monolingual'.  I envy anyone who speaks multiple languages and deeply regret not studying harder in Latin and French classes at high school.

It is remarkably easy to thrive in a global consulting environment speaking only English.  I make all the typical tourists' effort of learning 'please', 'thank you', 'hello', 'yes' and 'no'.  As most of my clients have a stated policy that all multinational meetings are conducted in 'business English' this is rightly recognised as a pretty minimalist courtesy.

However, when I'm working with sales representatives I sometimes come up against a genuine language barrier.  Salespeople conduct their calls in local language and often only the ambitious bother learning English.  This is more likely to be the case in the major northern Asian countries, China, Japan and South Korea.  In such circumstances I have to work with an interpreter.  A piece of advice: -

Be cognizant of the interpreter's fatigue level and manage it

This is blindingly obvious when you think about it because interpreting is such an exhausting job.  Everyone else in the room is speaking freely (and quickly) in their native language and the interpreter has to continuously rearticulate every thought as eloquently as he can.  And because interpreters are meant to be unobstrusive they are often instinctively 'low status' personalities (see previous posts), but this also means he'll never interrupt the flow of conversation to say he needs a break.  

A bilingual trainee in Beijing put it like this: "As the day went on he got worse and worse at translating your jokes."

All of the usual rules about managing fatigue (ie introduce new concepts as early in the day as possible) apply, only more so.  Keep a close eye on your interpreter from lunchtime onwards and if he looks tired assume he is and call a break.  Don't bother asking him directly because he'll most likely wave you away and soldier on to the overall detriment of your session.

Translation services

Over the coming weeks I am delivering facilitated workshops to non-English speaking teams in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Korea.  As such I have recently spent a lot of time working with translation services getting my documents rewritten in the local language.  I find this work quite boring and very time-consuming.  It also presents some quite specific challenges.

Timelines

Translation forces me to focus on supporting documentation ahead of actual delivery requirements (ie my facilitated workshop).  This disrupts my 'project rhythm'; that internalised sequence of tasks that experience has taught me must each be completed a certain number of days ahead of the delivery date.

Furthermore, as a small-shop consultant I pride myself on flexibility, being able to nimbly adjust to last minute changes from the client more easily than my larger competitors.  Translation timelines threaten this flexibility and therefore my competitive edge feels reduced.

Who To Use

There is massive variability in the quality of translation services both between countries and within a given market.  Cost is only a rough indicator of quality at best.  Being depressingly monolingual means I can't assess the quality of the work ahead of the workshop itself and so this is one area where I don't necessarily advocate the use of other small-shop suppliers.  We've all laughed at those books of signs that have been badly translated into English and I don't want to be the butt of a joke going in the other direction when I flash up a particularly vital PowerPoint slide.

One answer to this would be find a proofreader to check for clangers but that adds to both cost and timeline and now I'm sourcing two new suppliers instead of one.  Instead I prefer to go with a single, larger organisation that is more likely to stand behind its reputation.

When I'm working in a brand new country there is the additional challenge of finding anyone at all so there is always the temptation to use some one recommended by the client.  The upside of this approach is that the risk of poor quality work is somehow spread ("Hey, it was your suggestion...").

One downside is that the recommendation may be personal not institutional.  Unwittingly I may have been put in touch with someone's underemployed brother-in-law, resulting in poor quality work and even less leverage over my supplier than usual.  An even bigger threat is that the translator is loyal to the client not me thus creating a nasty triangular relationship with the risk that my IP is shared without my knowledge or permission.  Of course every translator signs a confidentiality agreement but I still feel exposed, especially when working in Asia.

There are two solutions: -

1. I can deliver documentation in English and hand over all further responsibility to the client.  This absolves me of any responsibility whatsoever for quality, however, I have lost additional control over my product and there may be a sense that the client somehow 'owns' more of my IP than the license indicates.  That said, I am okay with this approach in Europe
   
2. I find a 3rd-party supplier via my own network (other suppliers and even old clients) and establish an entirely separate relationship with the translation service.  I also insist in physical delivery of documents with no PDF files released to the actual client.  From bitter experience I have learned to go this way in Asia and in developing markets

I have worked hard to create a global presence in my business niche and I genuinely enjoy working with new teams in new parts of the world.  Resolving translation issues ahead of time means that I can spend my time in-country concentrating on similarities not differences.

Status 3 (facilitation)

This is my third post on the idea of 'status' as explored by Keith Johnstone in his book Impro.

As well as high and low status 'players', Keith also identifies 'status experts' who raise and lower their status at will.  Why do this?  Because low status is better for gaining information efficiently whereas high status is better for giving commands.

I remember an account by one of Margaret Thatcher's aides that sums this up perfectly.  When she wanted to know something of you, you felt like the most important person in the room.  The information was simply sucked from you.  Then in a heartbeat she would reassert her authority and issue you with orders to be followed without further debate.  This ability to alter status at will is a trait of all good leaders.  Some do it instinctively but many more have learnt it over time.

I think that facilitation requires something similar.  My definition for facilitation is as follows: - 

"Facilitation is the art of helping experienced people articulate intelligent conclusions"

I am not paid to simply tell people what to think and do in a high status manner but rather to usher them towards the 'correct' conclusion.  This requires me to: -

• Provide the group with new stimulus (requiring me to be high status)
• Get them to articulate an assessment of that stimulus in the light of what they know already (I have to be low status)
• Then insist that certain activities and exercises are undertaken so as to enact behavioral change (high status again)
• Finally I need them to voluntarily commit to applying what they've learned in my session in 'the real world' (low)
  

As an external consultant I don't have the luxury of demanding a commitment to change.  Instead I have to earn that commitment.  Yet even when people recognise that I'm deliberately altering my status to achieve this goal they're usually happy to go along with it.

Status isn't a 'trick' to be pulled so much as an insight into human interactions to be understood.

Recruiting

When working with new organisations I make a habit of asking about the recruitment profile for team members.  Inevitably the client finds this an intelligent yet intriguing question, addressing an issue that they've paid very little attention to themselves.

Understanding how the individuals see themselves before attempting any behavioral change is vital and as corporate job adverts are a sort of self-selection process why not start there?

If the headhunter is recruited 'experienced salespeople' then I should start by respecting their experience.  If the advert said 'creative and enthusiastic' then any meetings, training and events that I run must further that expectation not stymie it.

Status 2 (salesmanship)

This is my second post on Keith Johnstone's idea of 'status'.

Let's think further about the difference between 'rank' (where you fit in a formal power structure) and 'status' (your relative importance in a social setting).  This post is about what happens in face-to-face selling situations.

Usually rank and status are in synch: the more powerful person is also more important.  Sometimes this is formally imposed and history is filled with examples of social structures wherein the King is consistently treated as the smartest, strongest, bravest, funniest and best looking person in the room irrespective of the truth.  As illustrated by the story The Emperor's New Clothes the problem of 'speaking truth to power' is an out and out status issue.

Let's move on to selling and consider the problem that the following statement creates for a consultant: -

The seller will always outrank the buyer but the person with 'knowledge' has higher status

If I am selling to you then you outrank me; you don't have to buy what I'm offering* so I should always appear thankful should ever you hire me.  However, the only motivation that you'd ever have for so doing is that in some way I'm 'more knowledgeable' than you; I bring a skill, an insight or a process that you don't have in-house.

Every consultant is familiar with this balancing act: how do I establish myself as a worthwhile expert without making the client feel stupid?  If I underplay my 'knowledge' to make the client feel comfortable I run the risk of looking like I bring nothing new to the table.  Conversely, if I overplay my hand and come across as a know-it-all I'm turning off the client in a different yet equally fatal manner.

Isn't salesmanship fun?  Let's apply this idea to three selling scenarios: -

Repeat Business

The client knows what I do and wants more of the same.  Because I don't have to sell my 'knowledge' I don't have to adopt a high status position at all.  I can remain lower in status and simply thank the client for any additional work.

3rd-Party Referral Business (Word-of-Mouth)

The reason that 3rd-party referral is an easy sell is that someone that the client trusts has established my 'knowledge' credentials for me.  I can go into the pitch meeting and treat the client as someone who outranks me; I talk modestly about previous successes (not being too high status) but concentrate on giving the impression that I'd be honored to get the work.

Cold Calling

Cold calling is far harder because I'm forced to start with a high status position so that its clear that I'm not wasting anyone's time.  Then I have to drop that status to indicate that I'd be grateful for any project that might come of the meeting.  In a successful cold call you can feel the point at which the conversation pivots away from what you're offering and towards what will or won't be happening next.

This is why cold calling is never easy and I am convinced that it's the reason why repeat and word-of-mouth is the mainstay of most consulting businesses.

* There are some obvious exceptions to this statement that actually prove the point I'm making.  I'll deal with them later.

Status 1 (introduction)

As promised, this is the first of several posts on Keith Johnstone's idea of 'status' and how it might relate to the world of a freelance consultant.

As Keith is mainly interested in on-stage drama we'll start there.  He uses the term 'status' to mean one character's relative importance in a social setting.  In a two-person situation its necessarily binary: 'high status' and 'low status'.

Three observations: -

1. Status is not the same as 'rank'; the master will always outrank the servant but he can certainly be lower in status
   
2. Status is fluid; a character's (relative) importance will fluctuate depending on circumstance; sometimes being the 'wealthiest' grants a character top status but at other times it might go to the 'smartest', 'bravest', 'strongest' or whatever
   
3. On stage (as in life) characters have a preferred status; just as some people are instinctively 'high status' others are instinctively 'low status'
   

Much fun can be had using these three ideas to analyse the character relationships in pretty much any play, film or TV show you care to name: -

• Hugh Laurie's eponymous character in House is not the top-ranking doctor in his hospital but is the high status player in pretty much every situation

• The ensemble of characters in Friends are forever fluctuating in status depending on what's important at the time.  For example, Ross being 'smart' doesn't automatically grant him high status over Joey who is 'sexy'

• In The Sopranos Tony is an instinctive high status character and reacts violently whenever this is challenged

A more complex example might be the relationship between the characters played by Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator.

(Do I really need a 'spoiler alert' for a film released in 2000?)

The plot is driven by the fact that Maximus (Crowe) is outranked by the emperor Commodus (Phoenix) but is the higher status character, something that causes Commodus to react evermore viciously.  By the film's end Commodus' status is eroded until he is left dead in the dust whilst Maximus' corpse is carried aloft from the Collosseum.

In the next post I want to take these same ideas and apply them to my world.

Impro by Keith Johnstone

The book that changed my life was Impro by Keith Johnstone.

Keith is the grand old man of performance improvisation.  If you've ever laughed at Whose Line is it Anyway? then you have Keith to thank.  He worked at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the 1960's, founded the Theatre Machine improv group and created the global phenomenon that is  Theatresports.  Keith has influenced thousands of writers and performers around the world and I've been lucky enough to work with him on three separate occasions over the last twenty years.

In 1989 a new girlfriend took (dragged) me along to Belvoir St Theatre in Surry Hills, Sydney to see Theatresports.  It was a genuinely stellar cast that night that included Daniel Cordeaux, Ewan Campbell, Marko Mustac and Andrew Denton with Lynn Pierse as her strange uber-nun character Sister Mary Leonard.  I left the theatre thinking, "I must do that."

Within a week I'd enrolled in a course and on Lynn's recommendation I bought Impro.  Six weeks later I performed on the Belvoir Street stage for the first time.  A few months after that I started my own theatre company (Instant Theatre) with two partners.

As I was still working for Unilever we decided to concentrate on the conference and seminar market with a specific focus on what Keith describes as 'status issues'.  Instant Theatre successfully packaged up the lessons of Impro for the Australian corporate scene and my current business (Dramatic Change) is a direct evolution of that work.

Dramatic Change only exists because I was taken to the theatre then given a book to read.

I recommend Impro to anyone interested in creativity, narrative or especially Keith's very specific idea of 'status'.  Over the next few posts I'm going to unpack that idea and apply it to the world of the freelance consultant.

In Brussels

Tomorrow is a 'rehearsal day' for an EU rollout with a new marketing client.  Actually tomorrow is the rehearsal for the Launch meeting.  The rehearsal for the rollout proper is a week away.  I have no role at the Launch (I'm not even attending) so I don't know why I'm even in Brussels.

That's not true.  I know exactly why I'm here.

Every now and then I work with a team that is smart, driven, good to be around, strategically astute yet something is missing.  It's as if the very essence of the project eludes us.  This has  been bugging me for weeks and I've worked out why: -

The project culture is flawed, albeit not fatally

Every extended, team-based project takes on its own culture and ours was flawed from the start.  At the first meeting we embarked on an informal competition to be the most farsighted person in the room.  Genuinely important conversations were derailed by grave, oracular statements about the most trivial possibility.  We never shook the habit and decisions were made in February that could have waited until August, whilst critical issues raised months ago remain unresolved.

We'll get there.  That's why we have tomorrow and next Friday.  There's nothing like a deadline to sharpen up the discipline of a group.  Even a group of marketers.

Pneumonia

Looking over my journal I see that two years ago I was diagnosed with an atypical pneumonia with secondary reactive arthritis.  I'd been having dreadful coughing fits and becoming increasingly lethargic for a while so my doctor sent me for chest a X-Ray.  This led to one of the all-time great interactions with Britain's National Health Service: -

Nurse: "You've obviously got some sort of pneumonia.  Before we go any further, have you traveled anywhere unusual of late?"

Me: "Well, I was wandering around respiratory care hospitals in Beijing a few weeks ago."

Nurse: "Excuse me whilst I put on this mask."

This was 2006 and for a while there I was 'Patient Zero' in the upcoming European Bird Flu pandemic.  In the end it was diagnosed as 'atypical', meaning that no one had any idea except that I'd probably been on too many planes.

The arthritis hit a month later.  I was running a two-day workshop in Newmarket in Suffolk when just before lunch on the second day I felt a twinge in my left ankle that I couldn't explain.  By mid-afternoon I was limping badly and by the time I got off the train at Liverpool Street station at 7pm I couldn't walk at all.  I was on crutches for about seven weeks including a few excruciatingly painful days on the cobblestoned streets of Lisbon.

Again, the NHS had no definitive diagnosis; the arthritis was probably my body's reaction to the earlier pneumonia and both conditions would totally resolve with no long-term after-effects.  Two years on this prognosis seems happily correct.

My journal from the time is unsurprisingly depressing, the consistent theme being if I don't work I don't get paid.  And much of my work involves plane flights.

This is the reality of self-employment.  You have to look after your health because you will go broke if you don't.  This is not to say that your clients aren't nice people who wish you well.  I consider quite a few of my clients as friends but as much as they'd like to help me out, I have to do the work first.

Over the next few months I have a lot of flying to do and there is no excuse for getting ill.