Consulting Lessons In The Everyday (May 2024)

Welcome to Consulting Skills Mastery! This month the Honeycomb team have been finding lessons for consultants in the everyday. Read on to discover our insights from a ski-trip with a seven-year-old, an ice-dipping day, and a visit to the garden centre.

We also have a free live session coming up - Consulting Skills Accelerator: Add ￡500k per person profit to your consulting firm.

Lessons from the ski slope: The power of Double-Loop Learning

Watching his 7-year-old son learn to ski, our MD Colin Mann reflected on the power of double-loop learning. The reason kids learn to ski so quickly, he reasoned, is that they hold no fixed assumptions about what 'good skiing' is.

Experienced skiers, with several years of skiing behind them, build deep-seated assumptions about the foundations of their technique - the basics of balance, stability and positioning. They believe their foundations are robust, and what they need to develop are specific tips to improve performance in tricker situation - steeps, moguls or off-piste.?

This is single-loop learning. It will lead to some performance improvement, but there will be an inevitable, intermediate plateau. Double-loop learning would require they consider their foundations as well. It may seem like a slower path to improvement, but those prepared to do so will set themselves up on a more sustainable path to advanced skiing.???

Here's an example from the workplace: an experienced, technical cohort (engineers, data scientists, deep sector specialist) have excelled in complex project delivery, but are struggling to elevate their impact at a business level.?Well-respected by technical leads in client organisations, they struggle to connect with CFOs and CEOs on a business outcome level, and miss broader commercial opportunities.?Huge effort around the single loop produces limited results and leads to ‘why don’t they get it?’ conversations. Deeper reflection and a challenge of long-held assumptions (double-loop) can help with development past this sticking point.

The best leaders, and trainers, have the patience and influence to encourage someone to go around the double-loop and challenge themselves; to reconsider their deeper-held values, beliefs and assumptions.??

To hear more from Colin on double-loop learning, you can find his article here: Why Double Loop Learning leads to greater success

Lessons from ice-dipping: What if the opposite is true?

I've jumped on the cold-dipping trend in the last two years and am often up at 5.30am in a little tub in my garden. I always experience some internal fear and resistance before stepping into the cold water but, the more I've done it, the more confidence I have that it will be ok.

One of the techniques that helps me overcome my fear is 'Commitment 10' from The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership - Exploring The Opposite.

When you step into cold water you may be telling yourself, “I’m going to die” or, “This is going to be unbearable”. That story is a collection of feelings and judgements that aren’t rooted in data about what will actually happen. What if the opposite were true? Perhaps instead you tell yourself, “I can handle this” or, “This will make me live longer”.

In work, fear may rear its head when it comes to presenting, making a sales call, or running a team meeting. The story is often, “I can’t do this” or, “People will judge me badly”. It’s useful to identify (accurately) what is Data vs. Judgements vs. Feelings. Is there any data to suggest that you ‘can’t do this’ or, in fact, is there data to evidence that you have done similar things before and lived to tell the tale? If you realise that your story is based in judgements and feelings, you can reframe it and choose a new story. What if the opposite were true?

The other thing I have noticed from regularly cold-dipping is that I’ve built up a tolerance for it. My brain doesn’t shout so loudly that I need to be scared, and so it’s become easier. This approach applies to the things that scare me at work as well. The more I do them, the less scary they become. The emotions flatten and become less dominating.

So, if there's something you're sitting on - not doing because of some resistance - I encourage you to just do it once. Make that Sales call. Take the lead in that meeting. Ask the stupid question. And after that, chances are you'll feel more confident the next time.

Read more about my ice-dipping exploits and watch a short video of me talking about building habits to overcome fears in this article: Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway

Lessons from the garden centre: Too much choice leads to decision paralysis

When our Marketing Director, Jo, took her kids to the garden centre cafe recently, her 6-year-old was so overwhelmed by the choice of delicious cakes that he put his head in his hands and started crying.

For a decade or so, Jo worked in the Buying function at John Lewis. One of the things John Lewis prides itself on, she explains, is curation. The Buyers are laser-focused on ensuring there are enough options available to satisfy their customers’ needs…and nothing more. More adds confusion, overwhelm, and decision-making anxiety. All of which means they have not done their job well.

A recognised approach to curation and pricing is Good-Better-Best (G-B-B). Humans like G-B-B because it simultaneously enables you to feel you have a choice and not be too overwhelmed about making it.

We are familiar with a G-B-B proposition in software, apps, and service businesses. If you have purchased training from Honeycomb in the past, you will likely have been given a G-B-B choice.

Good - our ‘off-the-shelf’ training modules which do everything some clients need,

Better - courses adapted to your business with bespoke case studies which appeals to most people,

Best - may include ongoing coaching and impact analytics, which 5-10% of clients choose.

The G-B-B model should be applied both when you’re selling your consulting services, and when it comes to landing those all-important consulting recommendations.

One of the goals of a consulting recommendation is to enable your clients to make a decision to do something. Beyond that, they need to actually do the thing they decided to do. The decision science shows that implementation - seeing through the decision they’ve made - is more likely to happen when they feel that they’ve considered a full range of alternatives.

The Good - Better - Best model (structured around their particular needs, balancing off cost, effort, time etc.) gives a framework to enable them to make decisions that stick, without the paralysis of overwhelming choice.

In this article, Jo explains more about G-B-B and explores the power of developing a fishing line for your business to help clients make the crucial decision to talk to you in the first place: Decisions, Decisions: Simplifying Choice with Good-Better-Best

We have one webinar planned for June which will explore our new Consulting Skills Accelerator Service. We are looking for 2 or 3 more clients to be part of our exciting beta-trial of this recently-launched service, and we welcome you to this webinar to find out more.

?? Thank you for reading. I’m Deri Hughes. I run a training business that helps consulting team leaders develop exceptional teams.

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