“Hey Rouls, got a second? Let’s go chat……..So they want to roll you off the project for being too confrontational.”
If only I had those immortal words from Professor Dumbledore some 24 years ago I may have approached my client situation a little differently – “The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution”
I’m maybe 4 years into my career and we are working on a project to build a rather large custom system. It’s a lot of work designing databases, process flows, good old “GUI” designs, coding, workflows, training, role changes and so on. It’s been a fun project but with the large scale and the dizzying array of interdependency, the stress level has been going up. We have several challenging timelines we’re racing to and we know it will require everyone doing their part and doing it by the dates we’ve assigned.
In this project we are sharing a lot of the design and development load with our client IT counterpart – even more than usual. A couple of our client counterparts aren’t quite used to the pace and intense focus on dates. “Must hit dates.” These weren’t “do your best and let’s see” dates. If one team doesn’t hit their dates on this project it’s a domino effect for everyone else. And so on the consultant side we are doing our best to step it up to fill in the gaps where we can. One particular client IT person has routinely been walking around the cubicles to visit with everyone to just chat them up. It was becoming frustrating for those of us that were staying late many nights a week. There were a few situations where this individual left for the day without submitting their completed code, leaving the rest of us to wonder about the status.
I am the lead for one of these design and development teams. We have aggressive dates and we’re feeling really proud of ourselves that we think we’ll be able to hit the date but we can’t absorb too many more surprises. We are quite focused. The client IT individual, who was the Chatty Cathy Doll (Planes, Trains & Automobiles movie reference!), was one of my team members. We are in our final week where everyone needs to have their code and documentation submitted by Friday. We were crystal clear with everyone in our weekly meeting what that meant for each person.
By Thursday, everyone’s adrenaline is running high but we’re looking like we’re going to hit this date. Incredible! Friday comes and I’m checking in with everyone to make sure there are no surprises. Around 3pm, one of the consultants that works for me, who was coordinating several key areas of the solution, informed me that the client IT person had left for the day unannounced and unfortunately had not submitted their code. We would not be able to communicate with leadership that we had finished all of our commitments for this key date. Unbelievable! After everyone worked so hard and into the evenings for weeks, we can’t believe this person didn’t deliver. Actually, we can believe it. “It figures,” was our frankly immature attitude. And a dangerous attitude to have towards your client, regardless of their level!
Both our consulting leadership and the client leadership were looking for confirmation at the end of day Friday that we had completed 100% of design and code. I owed them an email explaining our status for this key date. I craft my adrenaline and frustration fueled email to the various leadership. I explained the long hours most people worked. I explained how well the team worked together and so on. And how proud I was of the team. However, I must report that [John – let’s call him] has been a problem. He’s routinely been unfocused, distracting other teammates and now when we needed him the most, he did not come through. That we had not officially completed everything that we had promised the other team. We had not completed what the other team needed. They needed all of the code by Monday at 8am, not “some” of it. I was so frustrated I requested that John be reassigned off of our project. In fact, to make sure it had the proper visibility, I cc’d the client leader’s boss as well.
Ok so I did not have a 156 year old wizarding professor as my mentor back then, infusing my brain with infinite wisdom through a whispering creaky old voice. [Yes that’s hold old Professor Dumbledore was when he died. Ha]. I hadn’t learned that the truth can be a terrible thing. That it should be treated with great caution…….
The following Monday rolls around and my adrenaline and frustration had all disappeared over the weekend. I had spent that weekend painting the nursery we were setting up for our first child. What a wonderful way to forget about work! Soon after the start of the morning, I walk off to go find John. John’s not in his cubicle. I ask his cube mate where John was, “He’s in with [Let’s call his boss, Bob]. I’m not sure what’s going on but he wasn’t happy when he came by this morning.” I thought, well I’m glad they’re finally doing something about this….
A little after lunch, Bob comes by my cubicle. He sits me down and says, “did any of your team check the system for John’s code? He posted it before he left. He had it all done before he left for the day. He didn’t have it in the proper naming convention.” He says, “Man, you really created a shit storm when you included my boss with that incorrect information, and all the venting you did in that email.” I thought, oh man…….
Later that morning my boss comes by and says to me, “Hey Rouls, got a second? Let’s go chat……..So they want to roll you off the project for being too confrontational”
Here I had worked my butt off for the client. My consulting leadership asked me to stay close to the performance issues of some of the people and to ensure it did not get in the way of hitting our dates. Every day they made it clear how important these dates were. I felt pretty proud of the impact that my team had and the impact I had as a very new leader. But I made more than a few mistakes and I learned a ton of lessons:
1. One data point doesn’t mean you’ve gotten to the bottom of a situation. I did not have the truth. What I thought was the truth was actually a terrible thing! I know that now, professor! It was not the truth. I’ve learned since then that if I hear a data point that elicits a strong reaction in me or a data point where I feel I must take some sort of action, I better go digging for more information and more data points! I likely don’t yet have all of the truth!
2. Even when you have what you believe to be “all of the truth,” slow down and be thoughtful on how best you want to address an issue. The adrenaline and frustration clouded my judgement. From then on, when I wrote any emails involving some sort of conflict, I sent them to myself on a mandatory 24-hour reflection period. Every time I either didn’t send the email or I changed it dramatically. And then I finally realized that anything of importance like that shot not even be attempted to be resolved over email. I would spend years coaching my team to stop sending emails and either discuss the matter in person or to call the person live.
So what happened during that “Hey Rouls, got a second” discussion? My boss went on to tell me that he explained to the client leadership that I was doing exactly what they had asked of me; being intensely focused on hitting the dates and escalating any issues early. After what was likely a fair bit of advocacy from my boss to my client, both sides agreed that I should stay on the project…under one condition – that I quickly evolve myself as a leader. I needed to evolve my communication approaches and skills. I needed to evolve my ability to push for strong performance while approaching conflict in a way that kept the team’s dynamics intact.
So I learned one other incredibly valuable lesson: That as a leader, you look out for your people and you defend them even when they make an honest mistake – once. Slipping just once more like I did meant I should not expect him to “save” me again. I never forgot that my boss looked out for me in that way. I got a second chance to show up differently while still having the big impact I wanted to make on the project.
So the next time you get one data point where you think it’s the “whole” truth and you’re thinking of reacting in some manner, embrace your inner Harry Potter or Hermione and heed the warnings of Professor Dumbledore –
“The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.”
I’m rollerblading down the A1A (don’t judge me) in Juno Beach, Florida one weeknight evening many years ago. I’m about 14 months into leading a project for a client down in Florida. The first ever project with this client. Our project is to completely transform how the company manages more than 2,000 field workers and everything related to these highly skilled people, the data to and from these folks, the design work, mobile solution, etc. I have been rollerblading along this route 1 or 2 nights a week, every week for over a year and I’m realizing I’m on autopilot on this evening, deep in thought.
I’m thinking about the fact that my project has been going really well but now we are in the tough phases of a 2-year project. Everything is converging at the same time and we are starting to see that some of our previous work needed to be more thorough and with more explicit client understanding. The client is all over the place on scope. They are struggling to get our answers in a timely manner in order for us to keep moving forward at the rapid pace in which we need to achieve the date. Several of the clients don’t entirely understand why we need so many answers so quickly. This is not what they’re used to in their day to day work. Not even close.
I’ve been telling the client we need to make decisions faster, I’ve been telling them we can’t keep having scope moving all over. They heard me. But it didn’t change anything. The situation wasn’t improving. My team was working harder and harder to make up for the collective performance issues. So what am I going to do to make this better? These clients are all much older than me, they know their business far better than me, maybe I just keep doing the best I can and hope for the best.
Fast forward to Slalom, we exist because our clients need help with changing and evolving their business to seize new opportunities or stave off competitors. The entire full service consulting industry exists at a scale rapidly approaching 1/3 of a trillion dollars globally for this very reason. Slalom’s brand of consulting helps our clients with complicated business, technology and people initiatives. Note I didn’t say we help our clients with sometimes simple and sometimes complicated initiatives. Every initiative involving changing an organization in some manner is challenging. Our Slalom brand of consulting is that we are change agents and leaders to help our clients make the entire program successful, not to just drive success for our piece of the bigger project.
So back to Florida, the first step for me was accepting that what I tried to do before wasn’t good enough. I moved myself out of feeling like a victim (poor me that I can’t get the client to do what we need them to do). I needed to do better in how I communicated. I needed to do much more prep and then huddle several of the client leaders. I was in my early 30s and the clients were all 10 to 20 years older than me. How am I going to influence these seasoned business people to make a pretty dramatic change in their collective impact for the project. I prepped. I got input from my team. The prep I did was to assemble more perspectives that I could share with the client. I assembled a series of questions. I asked them how important it was that we achieved the date. I asked them how important it was that we stayed on budget. I asked them how important the business results were. I asked them what the implications would be if we weren’t successful. I made it clear we weren’t trending well. That was hard to say because I felt like it was a reflection on me and that I was failing the client. But boy I was trying hard to change things. So I had their attention for sure. This time it felt different.
I walked them through everything we had to accomplish over the next many months. We talked about dates. We realized we needed more client help. We made a wish list. I also got feedback from the 4 or so clients that going deep on not only what we needed from them but why was super helpful. And what we would do with the decisions and information and how that would feed the next step and the next. Back when I was rollerblading and thinking about this challenge, I viewed things as “they just don’t get it.” When I put the challenge back on myself, that I needed to do different and better, it empowered me to think differently. But I also realized it wasn’t that “they just didn’t get it.” I DID need to communicate differently. I needed to collaborate differently. I needed to listen differently. I needed to also be more direct but only after I asked them more questions. I also realized I needed to help paint the bigger picture versus telling them, “we really need these 2 items in the next 48 hours.” I needed to tell them with more notice. Not just what we needed next week. If I surprised the client, odds are we weren’t going to get what we need by when we need it.
That major discussion, along with my shift in how I was thinking about my communication, had a very favorable impact on the project. We made major progress. Many months later we had some new challenges and I used those learnings to help me address the challenges far earlier than the previous round of challenges.
Almost every project has it’s “Houston, we have a problem!” moment. As soon as you start sensing those moments, challenge yourself to evolve to be a better communicator, a better collaborator and a better consultant. Don’t take the “easy” way out by thinking, “if I was only working with a better client this project would be going better.” Put the change on yourself first. And then the more of these challenging moments you experience, the better you will become at avoiding them altogether. One other ask – If you’re not the Engagement Manager and you’re seeing these challenges on the project, don’t wait for that person to fix them. Pull her or him aside and share what you’re seeing.
Here’s to all of you growing and evolving from your “Houston, we have a problem!” moments.
It’s a rainy day in London, October 1997. I had been asked to fly to London to meet with a large utility company as they were having problems with the volume of calls coming into their call center. They wanted to discuss technology options to deal with a higher volume of calls rather than simply adding a large number of call center reps. We were curious what had happened to trigger this higher call volume so we requested to sit with the reps and listen in. We also started asking the reps a lot of questions. We started to learn some trends. We were learning that a large number of changes had been going on much earlier upstream in operations. Contractors were being used in extremely high numbers which was not usual. Customers weren’t getting updates from the utility company so they would call the call center multiple times. The call center reps didn’t have the details from the contractors so in many situations they couldn’t answer the customer’s questions. For example, a customer would have a contractor in their yard. The customer would call the call center to find out what was going on but the reps didn’t have knowledge of the contractor’s whereabouts.
We took a day to assemble our thoughts in a way that would be clear and concise to a variety of executives and then requested an audience with the right people. As we assembled with our client executives, we stayed humble and curious. We didn’t just jump in immediately and start spouting off……….. You want answers!? I want the truth! You can’t handle the truth! Not sure Jack Nicholson would make a very good consultant! Instead we asked them questions about changes they may have made and why. We asked them about their priorities over the next 3 years. We asked them where customer satisfaction ranked in their business strategy. We kept learning more. It would have been much easier to waltz in and say, we discovered your TRUE problem, look how smart we are. Not the right approach and especially not the vibe we like to create at Slalom. We are forever learning. We are humble. We are curious. We are respectful. And when appropriate and armed with the right knowledge, we are challengers to help our clients achieve their ultimate business objectives. The more you learn, the more you can help your clients get to where they are trying to get. Where they envision.
So back in London with the utility company, we learned that government regulation in the UK was applying tremendous pressure on costs. They believed that outsourcing a large portion of their field labor to a 3rd party could shed millions and millions in cost a year. Using our time with the call center reps and using our additional invaluable learnings, we went on to share our observations that the call center technology was fine. We shared that their calls per customer was way out of line with industry averages. We believed that the root cause was upstream in operations. We also shared that even if they could handle more and more calls, their customer satisfaction would likely continue to drop. Customers were calling because they lacked information.
The executives shared that in their haste to shed costs, they didn’t have a plan to operate differently and they didn’t have a plan regarding technology to stay tightly interconnected with this new extension of their field force; the contractors.
The client agreed that they needed to put their capital towards the root cause rather than spending a very large sum of British Pounds on an expensive band-aid. We felt great that we simply didn’t just do what the client asked/told us to do (solve their call volume issue by adding more technology to handle all of these calls). We went beyond just helping with one specific acute issue. We felt great that we demonstrated an eagerness to study and learn about their business at a deeper level. Even after our “aha” moment we continued to go deeper and learn from the executives about their drivers, vision, etc. By the time we shared our observations with the executives, we had earned the right to challenge our client’s plan. Focusing on what was right for the client and doing so in a manner in which trust grew very quickly, kicked off what would be a 10+ year relationship with this company. This included a large org redesign effort, new thoughts on where people would be physically located, process changes, governance changes and a new technology solution to create tighter integration and visibility across the contractor field workers, the contractor resource management, the utility call center reps, the utility engineers and so on. Calls to the call center dropped to lower than historical levels. And London would become my home for the next two years. There would be many more respectful debates with my client counterparts over those two years. Many times I was incorrect in those debates. So please don’t take this one story as a license to find flaws with every client and every project. Listen. Learn. Ask. Humbly debate with much more warmth and humility than Jack Nicholson! Then repeat. Our clients deserve a few good men and women!
As a people developer, client leader, sales executive, practice leader, recruiter, connector, financial operator and partner, this is my vision for Slalom Detroit. It’s not a plan.There’s no timelines. Just a vision of what our collective efforts can become and the impact we can make on thousands of Detroit lives.
David Rouls
Our collectively defined purpose specific to Slalom Detroit:
Be the #1 consulting firm in Detroit by living our Values, developing Our People, and delivering Impactful Business Results for our clients.
Imagine the day when Slalom Detroit has created a special home to 500 Change Agents. Collectively we are changing the face of Detroit, one employee, one company, one client and one neighbor in need at a time.
We grow over time to this size not for the sake of growing. We grow to this size over time because our people feel fulfilled, challenged, supported and grow every single day. More people love their work and life, which stays with them when they return home each evening to their families. We grow to an amazing team of 500 learners, experts and leaders; Change Agents for our clients. Our people are celebrated for their accomplishments, regularly receive thoughtful constructive feedback. Our people seek out feedback and career coaching on a routine basis. We have a culture where everyone, regardless of role, provides feedback to those with which they work. “What could I have done better” is spoken after every client, partner and internal session from every role. Imagine the growth of every Change Agent with this powerful combination, all helping one another evolve every single day. Our Change Agent’s expertise grows every day, achieving 200 new certifications a year as just one example of many.
Our Change Agents mirror the community and clients in which we. We embrace and celebrate our incredibly diverse lives. Every Change Agent has the same opportunity to grow as experts and leaders. Our people take the time to understand one another’s perspective. All of our Change Agents view Slalom Detroit as their second family. This diversity of perspective and mutual respect fuels amazingly creative ideas for our clients and our community.
We are 500 recruiters. We are all excited to help bring on hungry, humble and people-smart Change Agents into our special second family. Even when there isn’t an ideal fit, the individuals have a true Slalom experience, advocating for Slalom across the globe.
Every single leader creates a safe environment for our people to bring their authentic self each day. Our Change Agents feel safe to share their struggles at work and even in their personal lives when they need help. Our leaders have our people’s backs to grow in new ways and take on sensible risks. Our leaders work to understand their people’s aspirations. They create opportunities for our Change Agents to explore their passions and grow in new ways. This trust helps instill courage in every single Change Agent with hands-on leader support throughout their entire journey.
This relentless focus on our team is second only to following and living our values. Our leaders and all of our Change Agents use our values to guide them in difficult decisions.
Our Change Agents are working with more than 50 Detroit clients each week and 80 clients over the course of a year. Mobility, Healthcare and Financial Services are our largest industries that we serve with robust thought leadership & expertise. In these industries we go well beyond merely serving clients. We have established creative partnerships to become an integral part of these industries in Detroit. We establish public-private partnerships to advance the agendas of these industries in Detroit and across the globe. In addition to those 3 anchor industries, our expertise spans to Utilities, Retail, Professional Services, Food & Beverage and more. More than 20% of our people are working with mid-market companies ($0.5B-$3B) on C-suite level transformation initiatives.
As we have scaled to 500 Change Agents, the diversity of our talents, the depth of our skills and our rigor of complex programs has enabled Slalom Detroit to evolve our clients’ businesses in dramatic ways. We are helping our clients to accelerate revenue growth and capture new market share. We are helping them customize their services and products to a “market of one.” We are helping them rethink operational efficiencies to change their cost structure on an ongoing basis. We are helping our clients move with speed to seize market opportunities and minimize competitive threats. We are an integral part of our clients’ journeys all the way through to realizing their full business results. We routinely help our clients quantify their results as a feedback loop to help them (and us) grow and evolve. We do this by fully leveraging every aspect of our management consulting, technology consulting and engineering prowess like an amazing orchestra of unique talents all in sync with a common focus.
Our Change Agents have an excellent understanding of all of our major skillsets across Slalom Detroit and our national teams in order to benefit our clients. They look well beyond their own skillsets to search out collaboration opportunities in order to create amazing solutions and programs of major change for their clients. No other company brings this level of cross skill collaboration for their clients. We bring these solutions and programs of change in a manner in which our practices are invisible to our clients. Our practices grow, evolve and morph every year to grow the skills of our Change Agents. This ongoing evolution of our practices reflect continual advances in technologies and consulting approaches in order to maximize the impact we bring to our clients. We combine the technologies of analytics and data science, mobility and cloud, sensors and advanced networks with the next wave of exciting tech such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, quantum computing, virtual reality and distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain. Our programs of change will bring this rapidly evolving technology together with the latest management consulting expertise we develop. These areas include customer journeys, specializing products and services for a “market of one,” readying organizations for the new breakneck speed of market change, evolving leaders to engage a very new workforce, new economic models (e.g., data monetization), enterprise wide agile adoption, customer intimacy and so much more. Imagine the customer stories of innovative success we will write when we harness the power of all of these skills. Imagine the opportunities for all of us to grow and be challenged in ways we’ve not yet identified.
Our Change Agents are masters in delivering these solutions and change programs in a repeatable and highly predictable manner. Our Change Agents are constantly creating and evolving our tools, templates, assets and methodologies to drive this repeatable and predictable client impact. Our practices are stewards of these tools as well as where our skills and services should evolve. Our Change Agents are skilled in listening and learning about our clients’ business, the change they seek as well as the why. They are intensely curious.
Our Change Agents bring more to our clients than other firms. They cultivate multi-year relationships based on trust, delivering on commitments, correcting mistakes and acknowledging challenges. We go deep in building an understanding of our clients one individual at a time. We know their aspirations, concerns, drivers and even their personal passions and hobbies. We are exceptional communicators. We understand where the senior leaders of our clients are taking the company and we use these deep learnings to help guide our clients. We routinely bring new and innovative ideas to our clients. We conduct some 70 proactive and thought-provoking multi-hour workshops with our clients each year. We know how and when to challenge our clients in a respectful manner. We are exceptional at this skill and our clients love and respect us for it. Our Change Agents routinely smile and are fun to work with. Our clients have total confidence in our Change Agent’s ability to help them realize their vision. Together, this customer obsession helps our Detroit clients thrive on a Michigan, US and global level.
Slalom Build & Cross Market are an integral part of Slalom Detroit’s success. They are complete members of the team. We work together in account planning, pipeline management, client workshops, partner planning and vetting critical candidates for hire. Slalom Detroit routinely derives more than 20% of its revenue from Slalom Build and Cross Market.
Our Change Agents deeply understand the products of our partners and how they can help our clients realize their vision. We routinely collaborate to bring together ideas, services and products in unique ways to accelerate our client’s vision.
Our collective 500 Detroit Change Agents are amazing connectors that embrace an insurgent mindset. We connect our clients to one another in meaningful ways, not to sell but to genuinely help them advance their learnings and to network. We annually create forums for over 200 clients in Metro Detroit to connect Developers, Managers, CEOs and everyone in between. Our forums take place all year long with 2 or 3 marque client events each year. Our forums become so well known that our clients look forward to the opportunity to learn and connect each year (or even each quarter for some). They become traditions. Our events span from intimate CEO discussions to large scale ½ day business transformation events to celebrating women in the workplace on International Women’s Day with 150 female clients and Slalom Change Agents. They span from targeted technology learning events to a variety of intimate roundtables on an amazing array of topics. Our insurgent mindset and thought leadership brings both provocative and practical ideas. Our Change Agents are a complete fabric of the business community, using these ideas to shape thought and inspire thousands of change agents inside of our clients’ companies. Our 500 Slalom Detroit Change Agents, having created thousands of client change agents, help create 10,000 new Detroit jobs across our vast set of diverse clients.
Our Change Agent’s impact on our Detroit community will be incredibly visible. Our 5,000 hours a year of time donated, combined with our leadership, consultative and technical skills will not only help in those moments, we’ll also use our unique talents to dramatically change Detroit non-profit’s ability to serve our community. In other words, our Change Agents have an exponential impact for our neighbors in need. Our initiatives and programs attract other organizations to get involved and contribute their unique talents. Slalom Detroit will lead and encourage thousands of others to roll up their sleeves and help. Thousands of Detroit lives are positively impacted because our 500 Slalom Detroit Change Agents roll up their sleeves and use their skills to help think differently in how to serve their neighbors in need.
Imagine the day when Slalom Detroit has created a special home to 500 Change Agents. Collectively we are changing the face of Detroit, one employee, one company, one client and one neighbor in need at a time. Just imagine what fun we’ll have and the Detroit legacy we will all create together!
How will the future 500 Slalom Detroit Change Agents help transform “Z Wear?” Z Wear is my fictional Detroit-based “mid-market” company that sells “clothing as a service” targeted mainly to the Z generation (move over Millennials). Here’s how it might go down……
The Z Wear Fable 4
Coming out of the Golden Ticket event, which was held a few months back where we hosted over 300 incredibly diverse Slalom Change Agents and their guests, we hired a very entrepreneurial machine learning expert. Recently this ML expert was attending one of our weekly micro-training sessions on Slalom Detroit’s latest tool to help organizations quickly assess the degree of change impact from AI/ML/Quantum Computing. As the change impact expert and the entrepreneurial ML expert got to talking, they realized their combined skillset would make for a fascinating roundtable for a variety of leader types such as a Chief Technology Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Leadership Officer and so on. Fast forward a few months, these two Change Agents, collaborating with the Detroit Marketing & Events team, host 25 client leaders for a very engaging discussion and debate.
One of our sales execs hits it off with the CMO from a company called Z Wear. The CMO had already heard of Slalom from their CHRO who is a routine member of ‘Engage Detroit’ (created by Slalom, it’s a local network of client change agent leaders who get together many times a year to discuss trends in their field). The reputation of Engage Detroit being a valuable forum was the reason the CMO agreed to attend this most recent event. Knowing that the CMO would be in attendance, the sales exec had read the most recent quarterly earnings transcript for Z Wear. She read the analyst’s challenging questions regarding the earnings miss for the third quarter in a row. Having done her homework on LinkedIn, our sales exec learned that the CMO had joined Z Wear only 8 months earlier as a change agent. During the session our team was able to connect the CMO with 2 other CMOs from Detroit clients as a way to help her build her Detroit CMO network. With the robust conversation and the knowledge of Z Wear and the CMO’s challenges, the sales exec proposes to the CMO that we bring in a small team of our Change Agents for a ½ day workshop with the leadership from Z Wear to go deeper on these concepts.
Ahead of the workshop, our sales exec and our client lead huddle with the CMO to ask her a series of questions to go deeper in their learning and understanding of the CMO’s and Z Wear’s priorities. They play back what they heard. Our client team clearly sees that Z Wear needs to transform the experience of their customers and so they call on a Change Agent with deep skills in rethinking customer journeys to help lead the workshop.
In the half-day workshop, the Slalom team including the sales exec, client leader, customer journey expert, ML expert and the change impact expert facilitate a robust session of situation exploring, empathy mapping, ideating and high level visioning. The change impact expert, having collected some data ahead of time from Z Wear, used their new tool during the half day session to illustrate the power of their skills and tools in gauging the initial sense on the potential impact and opportunity to the organization. The client is blown away at how quickly Slalom’s new tool and skills are able to represent the potential organizational impacts. Credibility and confidence deepen in Slalom. Once the workshop is over, the team of Slalom Detroit Change Agents, knowing the importance of immediate feedback, had blocked 30 minutes to go around to each person asking, “what could we and I have done better?” They identify that they needed greater clarity of roles before the workshop started and that they should have had the client do a little more homework before the workshop. Great learnings for future workshops which was shared at the next weekly micro-training session.
Coming out of the session, a new and exciting 5-month project is kicked off a few weeks later. The team is made up of a customer journey expert, change impact expert and an overall lead to frame the entire program’s transformation to the business, including a new financial picture on the potential for Z Wear. Included in the project plan is time from Slalom Strategy XM to help highlight the latest models in customized retail experiences from across the globe. Time from experts in Machine Learning and Software Engineers from Slalom Build and the Detroit Change Agents SW Engineers is also included to educate the client (and the project team) on the art of the possible and an idea on the cost to achieve the vision.
A few days before the project kicks off, the Slalom team has a working session to drive complete clarity of roles and expectations between each of the Change Agents. They review the commitments of deliverables and dates and the split of responsibilities between Slalom and Z Wear. The sales exec and client lead share the business of Z Wear along with the drivers and objectives behind this new project. The engagement lead sits down with the Z Wear CMO a few days before the project is to kick off. The engagement lead asks a series of questions of the CMO to understand their expectations of Slalom, going much deeper than simply deliverables, due dates and so on. The engagement leader plays back what they heard to the CMO. The engagement leader also asks the CMO “What would it look like to exceed your expectations?” It takes a little exploration, but the engagement lead learns a deeper understanding from her. “If you can get our CFO to fully embrace all of this new technology and get him on board with the pace of change, you’d really exceed my expectations.” The engagement lead now has an idea of how to bring more value to Z Wear. He puts a request into Chatter to see if there are CFO clients in other markets who have become big converts in advocating technology in their organizations. The engagement lead works with 2 other markets to connect the Z Wear CFO with his CFO peers, laying the groundwork for Slalom to exceed their client’s expectations. The engagement lead sends an email to his primary client with what he heard with regards to the expectations. The client responds elated that she’s been clearly heard. Slalom continues to just feel different than other services companies she’s worked with. The engagement lead uses these bulleted expectations on a monthly basis with the CMO to facilitate a structured manner of soliciting feedback throughout the project.
With this early phase project, the Slalom Change Agents help Z Wear completely rethink how they engage their customers into an exciting new vision: Z Wear will shift and become all about individualized experiences. They will view each of their customers as a “market of one.” Customers may purchase their clothing outright or choose to have “clothing as a service.” Each piece of clothing will have one of the latest RFID tags that’s .05mm x .05mm in size which will uniquely identify the article of clothing and use the micro antenna to send this data into the new app. Through machine learning, the new service, all cloud based, will leverage customer-approved access to their social media data to learn more about their personality. This information will provide insights into the specific clothing sent to the customer. Using their location data, planned vacations, business trips and calendars for events such as weddings, the new service will look at weather forecasts and a series of other inputs to send the proper clothing to their home. The service will learn their clothing preferences based on what they actually wear through the RFID data. Knowing what clothing their customer already has in their possession, the new service will recommend not only which articles of clothing to wear, but also how to mix and match for those fashionably challenged. Customers will set the amount of personal information they wish to share depending on the degree of customization they prefer.
Z Wear realizes they will need to dramatically change the types of jobs involved with choosing the fashions and feeding their expertise into the ML algorithms. Slalom Detroit’s Change Agents, with expertise in job design, is heavily leveraged on the project. They also realize that the ever rapidly changing fashion industry will require a new agile approach to evolving their products and “clothing as a service” if they have any chance of staying current. The Slalom Detroit Change Agents begin the journey of changing the tools, techniques, governance and mindset of Z Wear leaders into an agile organization. There is a handshake between the Slalom Detroit customer experience strategist with the user experience expert as the specific vision of the new app is created. The ML expert, Slalom Build and the Slalom Detroit Change Agent Software Engineers, iterate sprint after sprint to build this new experience. The day-to-day engagement leader, with experience in this sort of digital transformation in a variety of key areas, is the glue that keeps everyone aligned and focused on the Z Wear vision and ultimate business results. This leader understands the role and importance of the organizational change experts, software engineers, customer experience strategists, financial modelers and system and business integration. The leader is a skilled communicator with their client, pointing out areas requiring attention on a daily basis. They are not merely focused on success for the Slalom deliverables but rather the success of the entire effort. In other words, the engagement leader goes beyond any one skillset in delivering a strong solution. They are skilled at knowing how to help Z Wear realize their new business vision and achievement of the associated business benefits (Z Wear’s customer satisfaction, financial uplift, brand evolution and loyalty, evolved culture, etc.). They are acting as Slalom’s “Chief Change Agent” for this critical transformation of Z Wear.
A few weeks into the project, the Job design expert realizes they need to learn more about the Machine Learning technology. Around the same time, the ML expert realizes they don’t entirely understand how one redesigns jobs for a client. The entire team agrees to do Friday weekly lunch and learns in order to help each other learn and broaden their understanding of one another’s skills. They see this as a key expansion of their knowledge in order to address all aspect of how Z Wear will need to change their business.
As the project continues in its early phases, the ML expert blocked 45 minutes on their calendar to look back over their quarterly individual career growth plan which they developed the previous month with their people manager. He recalls that he had set an objective to get up in front of clients much more often. He sees that perhaps an idea is to lead one or two of the large client workshops with Z Wear. The ML expert approaches the engagement lead to explore the possibilities of leading or helping to lead the workshop coming up next week. The engagement lead thinks it’s a great idea. The ML expert sets up a 45 minute prep session with the engagement lead and captures a page of notes on lessons learned when leading a session like this. The workshop goes well and immediately after the session the ML expert asks the engagement lead for their feedback. The engagement lead points out all of the tremendous prep of material. The ML expert clearly understood what Z Wear was wanting to build. In the “What could I have done better” feedback part of the discussion, the ML expert learned that it would be an even stronger session if he talked much less. That he should work to better engage the participants by planning ahead with a list of questions of the client early in the workshop. The ML expert learned a tremendous amount through the prep, execution and feedback surrounding the client workshop and is now confident heading into the next one.
In the middle of the project the CMO approaches the engagement lead with issues related to spend. The T&M project is slightly over spending and Z Wear’s financial performance has added to the spend constraints. The CMO informs the Slalom engagement lead that she wants to cut out a number of the integration points, data feeds and therefore features of the solution. She also wants to cut down on the amount of job design changes. The engagement lead plays back what he heard to the CMO given how important clear communication is on such a critical change to the project. The CMO really appreciates knowing she was heard. Slalom’s phenomenal communication skills keep contributing to strong Customer Love. The engagement lead commiserates with the CMO on how much these changes will reduce the benefits to Z Wear and empathizes on the need to manage spend. The engagement lead asks for 48 hours to confer with the rest of the team on alternative ideas rather than just strictly “following orders” from the client. The engagement lead knows from past experiences that if the job designs are cut there will be confusion inside the business for months following the deployment. And the core features of the MVP that the CMO suggested cutting were so critical in every workshop. Cutting these two things might mean a possible failure of the entire new market approach for Z Wear. The Slalom team huddles to develop ideas on how to address the financial constraints while still delivering the majority of the business impact. They realize this means more than just “protecting the features in the new app.” The engagement lead sits back down with the CMO to discuss an alternative approach to the financial constraints which involve cutting out lesser important features that had a large cost. The CMO didn’t realize how expensive some of these other less mission critical features were that had been added in by someone from another department early in the project. The project team is able to save the more critical application features as well as complete the full set of job designs and still complete everything within the new financial constraints. The CMO is elated to see that she chose a true partner in Slalom and not simply a technology or consulting firm that just takes orders.
Throughout this project there were literally hundreds of feedback moments between Slalom Change Agents in both verbal and written format which reinforced strengths and helped articulate opportunities for growth. The Change Agents gained greater expertise in their own fields and even more valuable, gained a much deeper understanding of the other facets of the program which were so critical to the successful project. They leveraged their own growth plans, looking for opportunities all throughout the project to check off their list. The engagement leader created a safe space for the Change Agents to try new things, had their back along the way and gave insightful feedback for their growth. The Change Agents identified new areas of growth to be tackled on their next project which they captured in their notes for the next career discussion with their people manager.
Towards the end of the project, the engagement lead and one of the Change Agents agree that this tremendous project needed a customer story to be crafted to share with all of Slalom. The engagement lead, sensing a very pleased CEO, asks him to write a quote about Slalom and the project which can be shared with other clients. The Z Wear CEO sends an email with the following quote: “Slalom completely understood the Z Wear vision from beginning to end. They brought innovative ideas, challenged my leadership team along the way and delivered seamlessly all while bringing a tremendous cultural fit. Slalom has helped us change the future trajectory of Z Wear to dominate the ‘clothing as a service’ industry.”
In fact, the team agrees to have a big celebration when they hear that they will be onstage with the Z Wear CEO to co-present at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. During the recent Cultural Calendar review, the engagement lead learned that Ramadan would not end for another ten days. The engagement lead went to schedule the celebratory dinner and unfortunately had an incorrect date for the ending of Ramadan. Fortunately, the recent app, created by Slalom Detroit’s CODE (Celebrating our Diverse Employees), reminded the engagement lead that the event would be during Ramadan. Knowing that the project team’s ML expert was Muslim, the engagement lead reschedules the celebration for the following week so that the individual can fully participate in the fun dinner event. The GM joins the celebration and buys an expensive bottle of wine (Only in the fable!). The engagement lead made sure that the menu accommodated a variety of diets as well as non-alcoholic options. This was just one example of many throughout the year where Slalom Detroiters demonstrated awareness and caring for the variety of cultural differences among our 500 Slalom Detroit Change Agents.
12 months has passed since the new Z Wear personalized experience was brought to market. Our change experts and the client’s new agile adoption allowed them to rapidly collect, understand and put into place an amazing amount of customer feedback in a short period of time. These rapid adjustments and adoption of the exciting new service has grown Z Wear’s market share from 5% to 13% seemingly overnight.
During the quarterly account planning for Z Wear a few months later, the collection of experts in the room, including experts from Slalom Build and Cross Market, identify a new bold idea based on the latest vision from their client’s CEO. The idea is to take advantage of our partner’s new quantum computing platform, reportedly having 300 qubits, in a new cloud platform making this technology newly available and reasonably priced. This would be combined with a new Virtual Reality service, which leverages the recently developed ML service of proposing clothing. With this new technology and business approach idea from the Slalom team, Z Wear’s customers would have the ability to “look in the mirror” in a virtual manner to try on their new clothing before it’s shipped. The team believes this new approach will not only further increase Z Wear’s market share, it will also reduce wasted shipping of unused clothing by a whopping 75%. The Slalom Change Agents are as excited about the benefits to our planet as they are about the savings for their client. Having built an excellent relationship of trust and follow through with the CEO, the client team sends an email that same day with a very intriguing note about getting together to discuss the next transformational idea for Z Wear. The CEO responds right away to schedule the meeting. Our Change Agents, along with our partner, prepare for a successful meeting with the CEO.A few weeks later during one of the micro-training sessions, one of the leaders for Slalom Detroit’s “Neighbors in Need” program learns about this exciting new project for Z Wear. Being the ever-curious person, he asks what Z Wear does with the clothing that is returned that they’re not able to resell. As the two get to talking about the need for clothing for job interviews, they realize a tremendous opportunity to make a bigger impact with their Detroit Neighbors in Need. In tight collaboration with Z Wear, several amazing Detroit Change Agents use their spare time to build a new mobile app. The new app will be leveraged by a variety of entities from the Detroit Public Schools to Mariners Inn and so on whereby clothing for key events such as interviews can be matched to our neighbors in need based on their size, type of event and so on. Just two weeks after the new app goes live, a father from Mariner’s Inn is able to use the new app to get an incredible outfit for his big upcoming interview, landing a new job.
Imagine the day when Slalom Detroit changes the face of Detroit one employee at a time (Z Wear engagement team), one client at a time (CMO of Z Wear), one company at a time (Z Wear) and one neighbor in need at a time (newly employed Mariner’s Inn father) x 500 Slalom Detroit Change Agents! What an exciting journey this is! And what a legacy we will all create together!
Excited to keep building towards this vision with all of you!
Relationships. What you invest in them directly contributes
to what you’ll get back out of them; for you as well as the other person. Whether it’s a marriage, a friendship or a
client relationship, the better the quality of that relationship, the more
rewarding it will be. The more trust
there will be. The more success you will
have together. And the more fun you will
have! I’ve learned over the years just
how important deep client relationships matter.
Throughout the leadership portion of my career I would do formal QAs
(Quality Assurance reviews) of projects all over the globe. When I had the entire team huddled I’d ask a
series of questions. One question I
always asked was “How many of you know specifically which
client you’re working with to build a relationship? Not just which clients you’re interacting
with. But those clients where you’re
working to build a deeper personal relationship.” Maybe 1/3 or less of
the people would raise their hands. Big
missed opportunity for the individual, the project and for the client. I’d roll up my sleeves and help them figure
out their relationship plan.
In my last blog I explored how to
really be purposeful about understanding what your client is expecting of you
and of the project. And I explored how
to go deeper to understand what might exceed
their expectations. You have set a
different kind of vibe with your client now.
You have their attention. You know
what you need in order to get going.
Off you go, going from workshop to
interview to deliverable creation to status meetings and so on. You’re going to exceed their expectations and
you’re going to nail the due dates!
You’re now a month or even two months into the project and there are
some conflicts. Decisions from the
client aren’t being made as quickly as you need them to be. You’re not getting timely feedback on the
material we’ve shared so far. There
seems to be a shift in the client’s focus.
Perhaps our performance in a key meeting wasn’t quite what she/he
wanted. I will tell you that your
ability to quickly and constructively address all of these challenges in a way
that strengthens the relationship will in large part be based on the investment
you’ve already put into that
relationship. Perhaps more importantly, your level of true client
relationship investment will help you to avoid these issues altogether.
I thought it might help to bullet
point the types of questions I like to have of clients as it will be easier for
you to quickly reference them for ideas.
Some are questions and some are simply recommendations of things to
learn about. Once you’ve practiced these
for a while you’ll develop your own unique style, questions and things you like
to learn about.
You can start with the easier things
to learn about as you build up to learning more about the personal side of
things
How long have they worked for the company
What was their journey in their career to be in that role at
the company
What were their roles before that
Have they moved through a big variety of functions or have
they stayed in IT or Engineering or Finance.
That fact alone can often tell you how skilled they will be in
understanding the ripple effect of decisions that the project needs to make and
who the right people are to pull in.
Have a look on LinkedIn.
What do they say about themselves.
What organizations are they involved with
As you get to know them better,
remain curious and get to know them on a more personal level
When you’re in their office or at their desk, what personal
things do they have on display? It will
tell you a lot about what’s important to them, their hobbies.
Be curious. If you
see a photo of someone fishing with their son or finishing a race, ask them
about it. Ask them how often they get to
go out fishing or what was the last race they ran.
Ask them if they grew up in the area
Where did they go to college
Do they have kids. What
sports are they in
What are their career aspirations
Sometimes you can find commonality in
things you may share about yourself. You
can learn about your client in how they react to something personal about
yourself. About 6 years ago my CIO
client and I were chatting. I happened
to mention that my wife, kids and I were about to embark on a crazy adventure
to buy a farmhouse that was built in 1836.
On purpose! Ha! His eyes got really big and he said, “You’re kidding! Wow! My wife and I love old houses! In fact, my wife is very involved with the
Heritage Foundation to save and restore old homes.” He went on to talk
about a 150 year old barn they saved by relocating it onto their property. From there we kept finding more things like
that which we had in common like dirt biking up north and skiing with the
family at Boyne. All building blocks for
understanding one another and building trust to go and solve big challenges
together.
All of this isn’t
meant to sell more to them. It’s about
learning more so that the impact you can have with and for your client can grow
month after month and even year after year.
For me in my 27+ year consulting career, the most rewarding times were
when I developed really deep client relationships and we accomplished incredible things together. You can make lifelong relationships that
transcend the client to consultant relationship. This year one of my best
client relationships will hit 20 years with a client down in Florida who still
calls me for my perspective. About 2
years into that project my family and I stayed down in Florida over
Easter. Knowing we were alone for the
holiday, my client invited my family to have Easter dinner with his family. I’ll never forget that! Think about the movie, Jerry Maguire. There’s a client (Rod Tidwell) and there’s the agent and part consultant (Jerry Maguire). Jerry has been investing in the relationship, learning what Rod is after (Kwan and football fame) and developing trust with him. When Rod isn’t quite getting the results he’s after, his agent and consultant clearly sees what he needs to differently and finally says to his client “Help me help you!” He goes on to coach his client who finally gets his Kwan. Perhaps you will become a master at client relationship building and one day your client will say, “You complete me!” Ha! If you get that good, let me know!
Think about the movie, Jerry Maguire. There’s a client (Rod Tidwell) and there’s the agent and part consultant (Jerry Maguire). Jerry has been investing in the relationship, learning what Rod is after (Kwan and football fame) and developing trust with him. When Rod isn’t quite getting the results he’s after, his agent and consultant clearly sees what he needs to differently and finally says to his client “Help me help you!” He goes on to coach his client who finally gets his Kwan. Perhaps you will become a master at client relationship building and one day your client will say, “You complete me!” Ha! If you get that good, let me know!
Thanks for joining me! Quite often when we have the “Direct with DR” lunches we get into some great discussions. I’ve often thought, I wish everyone could be a part of this discussion. I picture 6 of us at a table with 100 other people all standing around in a restaurant. “Hey, I didn’t hear the question, can you repeat it?” Waiters trying to serve the other customers giving us dirty looks. Ha. So short of that I thought (hopefully) once a month I could pick a topic from those lunches and write a little blog of sorts.
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” – Stephen Covey
One question I get asked often is, what are the attributes of a successful consultant? So for this month we’ll focus on what I think is at the top of that list. I titled this blog “There’s Something About Mary.” Please tell me you’ve seen the movie. One of my favorite goofy movies and it’s chock-full of great quotes. One quote that is fitting for this topic is “This is amazing. It just blows me away.” The best consultants amaze their clients. They blow them away by exceeding their expectations. When you achieve that level of excitement from your client, even many years later you’ll still remember how great it felt.
Our jobs exist because our clients need our help to solve often ambiguous and sometimes, up until we show up, elusive results. The entire consulting industry exists for this purpose. And so for me, the number 1 attribute of a successful consultant is someone who comes through for their client, often exceeding their expectations. Sounds simple and basic and yet it’s anything but that. While there’s a long list of skills, habits and so on to achieve this, I’m going to focus on how does one get started off on the right foot.
How many times have you started a project where there’s a kick off about the big picture, Gantt charts, deliverable due dates and so on. All important things. And immediately afterward you’re eager to jump in and start cranking on research, workshops, drafting deliverables and so on. You’re off to the races! How do you really know if what you’re racing to create is aligned with your client’s expectations? What are they really wanting to achieve? I don’t mean the general project or company’s expectations. I’m talking about the specific individual’s expectations. Their personal expectations. Their hopes for the project. Their worries. The best consultants sit her or him down and simply ask them. “What are your expectations for the project?” “What are your specific expectations of Slalom?” This isn’t just about completing deliverables from the Statement of Work (SOW). What do they want accomplished? How will we work together? How will we engage her/his peers? What does her/his boss expect of them? What do they want us keeping in mind? If this was attempted before, what do they want to ensure is different this time. Be curious. Be eager to do more than create a great deliverable. Really listen. As Stephen Covey wrote in his book, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
Don’t stop there. If they’re struggling to give you their thoughts, ask more specific questions like I’ve shared above. Make sure you’re taking notes. Capture what she/he is telling you. Don’t stop there. Next say, “Here’s what I heard is important to you” and then play back the key items you heard. And then ask “Did I hear you correctly.” Don’t stop there. Assuming your client agrees that you’ve captured everything exceptionally well, then ask them “What would it look like if we were to exceed your expectations?” The specific words here are important. Asking things like what could we do to exceed your expectations may not get the same results. Sometimes clients will joke and say, “Do all of that for free.” Or some may struggle to give a thoughtful answer. Allow the silence for a bit. Don’t feel you need to jump in and “save them.” If still nothing, ask more probing questions. What about in the areas of this or that. One client recently said, “Well if you could get everyone on the leadership team to agree to add the new headcount at the end of the final report out meeting in 3 months, that would definitely exceed my expectations. Ah ha! So when the team did the interviews and the like, we now had a new question to ask, “In the meeting we’ll be asking for support of x. What will you want to know ahead of time and what will you want to have in that meeting in order to give that support?” I will also quite often type up an email afterward with the points and send them that email with what I heard was important to them. 100% of the time that I’ve done this I get a very surprised (and pleasant) response.
This whole process is important for so many reasons: The client knows they’ve been heard. You’ve learned so much more than you knew before. Oftentimes it’s something significant that will change what or how you work with them. You’ve set a first impression that we’re (and you specifically) are a different kind of consultant. You now have a written record that you can share with everyone else on the team from Slalom. You can use that written record even every month with your client to see how you’re doing against their list of expectations. You’ve made it clear you want to do this project with them and not at them. And lastly, you’ve set a vibe and a brand that you don’t just want to meet their expectations, you want to exceed their expectations.
There are many more attributes, skills and techniques you’ll leverage to really come through for that client over the weeks, months and perhaps years. Getting started off on the right foot with the client by understanding them at a deeper level, and showing them that they were in fact heard, has now set you up for great success.
I’ll close here with Mary’s pretty specific expectations since most of the quotes from that movie aren’t things I can share here! “I want a guy who can play 36 holes of golf, and still have enough energy to take Warren and me to a baseball game, and eat sausages, and beer, not lite beer, but beer. That’s my ad, print it up.”
Direct with DR 