What Fuels You?

Life—and work—runs better with high octane fuel. The inevitable bumps in the road—frustrations with clients, partners and situations—are smoother when you’re burning the high octane stuff.

Need a better fuel source? Generate your own supply by connecting the deep purpose in your work with what you do every day. It goes beyond revenue and productivity goals. Dig deep to what really matters most to you as you build your business. Consider 3 success stories:

Dad with a mission: A consultant and new dad is exquisitely clear on his motivation—building a bigger, better life for his family. It gets him through some long days and reminds him to take time out to play, laugh and connect.

Career-changer: An advisor spends her career helping others transition to new work—and loses her job to the economy. She uses the fuel she generates from creating “ah ha” moments for clients to start and sustain her own firm.

Social entrepreneur: A consultant contemplates her values and starts a company to protect children. Drop-kicking industry expectations, she creates an integrated work and home life that feeds her to do more.

What fuels you?

Consulting Toolkit: Courage

It’s easy to think small right now. The economy isn’t pretty: clients say no or wait weeks and months getting to yes. Salaried consulting jobs have disappeared, perhaps forever. Personal assets? We’re in nosedive territory. Being conservative and cautious is an understandable by-product.

It doesn’t however, lead to making great leaps with your consulting practice.

The solution is courage. The courage to trust yourself (and your team) to continually develop your practice to suit your talents. The courage to care about your clients and bettering their condition. The courage to act while your competition is blinded by indecision and fear.

Clients still have work they need done right now—and the best opportunities will go to those who have the courage to:

Exquisitely focus on the results you uniquely deliver. Verbalize your niche, your “white space” and cast a tight net to those who most need what you have to offer.

Just say no. When a project—however enticing financially or to your ego—isn’t right for your talents, refer it to someone else. Your job is to spend your time where you can have the highest, best impact. Don’t waste it on work that someone less seasoned would do well.

When you say yes, mean it. Once you’ve agreed to a pivotal project, pour your head, heart and soul into it. Yes, it may mean some sleepless nights, some conflict over new directions and some worry over your bank account. But do it anyway.

If you need a visual, remember Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette’s emotional performances that brought her to the Olympic medals platform.

Real winners put it all on the line.

What I Learned From David Maister

I read my first David Maister piece in the 90’s. And I was hooked. He was savvy, practical and unafraid to confront thorny issues inside professional service firms.

Recently, David announced his retirement after 30 years serving the consulting, legal and advisory professions. His has been an important voice, a man unafraid to challenge conventional thinking and a giving mentor to many. In his honor, here are the top 3 things I learned from David Maister.

Have the courage to care. It’s the only true inspiration for the discipline you need to invest regularly in your clients, your colleagues and your career. Develop your relationships with clients because you genuinely care what happens to them. Build an expertise because it intrigues you. Mentor a junior associate (or even a senior one) because you are excited by the possibilities. Many advisors learn to check their passion at the door in search of billable hours. Don’t do it!

Be a dynamo. You’ve got a choice. You can be a cruiser, which means doing high-quality work you are good at. Most highly competent professionals cruise at some point. But if you’re not learning something new, you will eventually become obsolete. Instead, be a dynamo. Act as though you’re still in the middle of an exciting career. Have a personal plan to grow your practice in new ways that excite you. Refer the highly repetitive work you can do in your sleep so you can move on to more exciting challenges.

Live your values. Stand for something that matters. Those words you write about mission and values need to mean something—and sometimes living up to them isn’t easy. You might have to say no to a lucrative assignment or ask a rainmaker to leave, or stop doing business with an alliance partner. But you do it anyway, because your values matter deeply.

So, thank you David Maister. May you enjoy a long, fulfilling retirement secure in the knowledge that you have helped so many of us be better at what we do. Anyone else care to share their favorite Maisterisms?