Commando Consulting, June 2011

Five Ways of Elevating Consulting Firms Innate Creativity for Higher Value

By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

Podcast: MP3 Version

Have you ever thought about how long a chicken can live without its head?

On 10th September, 1945, a young rooster in Fruita, Colorado, was about to become dinner, and in the first step of the process, his owner intended to separate his body from his head. The act was a blasting success. The head was separated from the body.

But for some magical reasons, the axe left the jugular vein intact. Also, a large enough section of the brain stem was left with the body, so the rooster kept on living.

At that point, Mike, the name of the bird, became a national celebrity, and was even featured in Time magazine.

The bird's owner, Lloyd Olsen, started taking his magic rooster to various shows and showed it to the flabbergasted audience for 25 cents a pop.

At the pinnacle of his career, Mike, that was valued at about $10,000, was raking in an incredible $4,500 per week.

Mike would feed and drink through an eyedropper.

One day tragedy struck, when Mike's owner had left the eyedropper at the location of the previous show. And because he couldn't clear the bird's airways, Mike unceremoniously kicked the bucket.

Mike lived and achieved celebrity status in his career as a showman for two years, and all that without a head.

And the reason why I've mentioned this interesting story is that so many consulting firms are like Mike.

They lose their heads and just run around from project to project, failing to stop and think how to make their work more creative, so they can justify to charge higher fees for less amount of labour.

So they are busy chasing after more work and more clients, but all that gradually becomes more mundane and under-priced.

How Busy-Ness Butchers Consultants' Creativity

In spite of the fact that we all know that as consultants, one of our biggest assets is our creativity, it stuns me when I see what so many consultants do on a daily basis to kill their existing creativity.

No, they don't mean to do it deliberately, but they do it anyway. I suppose they do it because they don't fully understand where consultants' creativity comes from, what nurtures it and what destroys it. So, let's shed some light on this creativity stuff.

The other, and the more common reason is that many consultants mistakenly believe that the value they provide to their clients comes from the manual labour they offer.

That's possible, but then we're not talking about a consultant but about a subcontractor who sells his labour piecemeal.

When I start with a new client, I almost always ask three vital questions:

1. Did you have a good sleep last night?


2. Did you have an intense exercise session this morning? (And I mean challenging weights or some serious huffing-puffing, dripping-sweating cardio work)?


3. Did you have a nutritious breakfast this morning?

Most consultants' answer a resounding "no" to each of these questions. When I ask them why, they say the same bullshit "I'm too busy". It amazes me that consultants are busy reading their emails and other minutiae, but are unwilling to invest in the only "tool" consultants really need for their trades: Themselves. And we all know the result.

The chronically underslept and stressed out caffeine junkie waddles his fat arse into the nearest McDonald's, fuels up on some suspicious food-looking substance that would have raised some eyebrows even in a concentration camp, and then, after a cigarette or two, goes off to do some client work. Now, high on caffeine and some ugly chemicals from the McCrap that they've just eaten, and smelling like vacuum cleaner's armpits from the cigarettes - our hero is really ready to provide exceptional creativity and value to his clients. At least he can fart up a storm in the boardroom from the gas in the food, and when the caffeine wears out, he is ready to fall asleep.

Now tell me if you will, what is the use of hiring physically, emotionally and mentally wrecked consultants? What value can they offer to their clients?

What is the logic in pursuing all sorts of credentials and certification programmes if you don't pay due attention to maintaining yourself as a person. In the consulting business, you are selling yourself as a person. How much attraction do you think a sleepy, stressed out caffeine and cigarette junkie can create. Not a sausage. Even if he has credentials coming out of his ears.

Let's remember the goose that lays the golden egg in Andersen's tale. Sadly so many people are sacrificing the welfare of the goose for one sumptuous feast. And what is that feast. It is chronic busy-ness responding to constantly occurring and re-occurring urgencies. Rushing from client to client just like a demented bee rushes from flower to flower from which other bees have already scooped up all the goodies.

I sometimes go to networking or business education events, and I hear consultants cancel their attendance because of sudden client demands. These are the poor sad sods who would jump out of bed in the middle of making love just to run and serve their clients at a moment's notice. Remember, we are living in a society in which it is impressive to be busy.

The irony is that so many of them are grossly underpaid for their instant availability, but this is for another issue.

How many times has it happened to you that your meeting partner received a phone call from someone and you were instantly put on the back burner?

We all know the situation. The forefinger goes up in the air, and the person says, he HAS to take that call. Yes, he has to, as if he were forced to.

It seems that for many people telephone calls from unknown entities are more important than face-to-face discussions with specific people.

I guess this is how they act out their insecurities. In the age of mobile communication, any idiot can appear to be busier than a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest, and with that incredibly important and successful. See 99% of multilevel marketing distributors.

Although in my experience, truly successful people respect others highly enough, so they don't shut them up in such an abrupt and rude manner.

And This Leads Us To The Difference Between Strong Men And Tough Guys

I've read somewhere that in sports there are four categories of athletes: Strong men, tough guys, juniors and weaklings.

These categories are well and kicking outside sports too.

Let's ignore the juniors (upcoming athletes) and weaklings (hopeless pretenders) for now, and focus on the difference between strong men and tough guys.

Both are strong, but the strong men also possess gratitude and social graces. Basically besides physical intelligence, strong men also have mental and emotional intelligence.

Have you noticed that truly successful people have treated you with utmost respect, courtesy and dignity?

I remember when I bankrupted myself and lived on the streets, I met both some strong men and tough guys.

The strong men were encouraging but the tough guys were condescending.

The strong men saw the best in me. They encouraged me to regroup my life and carry on. The tough guys basically declared me to be a moron who, as a defective sub-human, should be forbidden to reproduce.

I think they had something to do with modern education, just like H.H. Goddard, the Chair of psychology at Princeton who said in 1920...

"Government schooling is the perfect organization of the hive. Standard testing would cause the lower classes to face their biological inferiority, which would discourage their reproduction."

And there are still people out there who don't believe that our school system has been modelled after and adapted from the Nazi Germany's school system.

And what was the purpose of that school system?

To provide a steady supply of obedient kids for the Hitlerjugend paramilitary group.

And when we look at the school killings of recent years, I can say, the adaptation has been pretty successful.

Or look at this beauty, the Occasional Letter Number One" from the mission statement of Rockefeller's General Education Board...

"In our dreams... people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own goodwill upon a grateful and responsive folk. The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way."

And after this short rant on our defective school system, let's look at...

Creativity In Consulting

Creativity requires some key ingredients that are related to the three questions we discussed earlier in this article. Creativity is basically the function of the connections between brain cells. The more connections you have, the more creative you are. Let's not complicate it any further.

To increase the number of connections between brain cells, the brain needs more blood, oxygen and endorphins. Can you now see the importance of exercise? When you are underslept and stressed out, the primitive part of the brain - the reptilian brain - senses a lack of physical security.

If you don't have physical security, it affects the mammalian brain that needs emotional security.

And you need both physical and emotional security to enable the two hemispheres or the neo cortex to operate together, enabling you to practise whole-brain thinking.

Have you thought about why ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) has already invaded the most creative companies>?

It's because ROWE creates a high-performance, low-stress environment, so people can actually think and be creative.

Let's see what we can do to boost whole-brain thinking...

1. Make A Habit Of Responding To The Current Moment

The more of your attention you spend on thinking about the past or the future, the less you can focus on the present. That is not a good idea. What is the point in wasting your energy on something that is some time away and is the function of what you are doing today.

There is no point in hoping for more clients tomorrow if you don't focus some of your energy on acquiring them today.

And hope can hardly called a management strategy. Your mind can't operate in a time that hasn't arrived yet. Living and working creatively means that you are responding to what happens today. But in order to respond today's stimuli at your best, your focus must be 100% directed at today. If you are scattered between yesterday and tomorrow, then what have you got left for today?

Nothing! Not a sausage!

Probably not much. Yes, you can run around all day reacting to urgent stuff, chatting and texting on your mobile phone, but all that busy-ness won't make a dickybird of a difference.

Yes, prepare for the future as best as you can, but don't worry about it because all that worry can only hold you back from doing your best in the present. Actually by focusing 100% of your attention on your today, you make your tomorrow as good as it can be. Just as farmers secure their harvests at the moment of planting.

But don't try to control every aspect of your tomorrow today. It's like wrestling with a pig, and is pointless.

The pig gets frustrated and you get dirty. And for what? For believing that you can control your tomorrow. You can only control it to a certain degree when it becomes today.

Or as Nicole Kidman put it to Tom Cruise in the movie Days of Thunder...

"Control is an illusion, you infantile egomaniac. Nobody controls anything."

Slow down, look, see and be aware of the today. That is where the seeds of tomorrow are planted.

2. Worry Before You Act, But Once You Start Acting Stop Worrying

It's perfectly all right to worry about consequences in the planning session. It's called contingency planning.

You want to measure up pros and cons to make certain to make the right decision. But after reaching your decision, detach yourself from the outcome and focus on taking consistent action in the planned direction.

Can you imagine an Olympic runner in the finals constantly worrying about whether or not she is running in the correct direction? The direction must be decided before the starting pistol sounds. After that it is just running. The direction is given.

The problem is that so many consultants are so busy running, that they never take time to select the best direction, and they try both to run and reassess their directions at the same time. That causes stress which undermines their creativity, and both tasks get done in a half-arsed manner. They will end up barely trotting in an uncertain direction.

Yes, it is important to check your direction in advance and worry about what happens if it is not the right one, but once you commit yourself to moving forward then stop worrying about the consequences and get moving. Look at it as a military general would. You assess the pros and cons of each strategy, but after picking your battle just start shooting. Once you are in the process, any emotional attachment to the outcome can only hinder your creativity.

This is one of the reasons why commission-based salespeople can never perform at their true potential. They are emotionally attached to the outcome, that is, making the sale because otherwise their families starve.

Far too often creativity is undermined when people try to play a great game and watch the score board at the same time. Just imagine boxers. They know that their victory or defeat depends on how many punches they can initiate and actually land on their opponents. And actually there are judges who are counting these punches. But the boxers themselves don't count. They are too busy fighting at their ABSOLUTE BEST.

We have only 100% of our attention and energy, and the more we waste on looking at the score board, the less we have left to play the game. And to play a great creative and valuable game, we must focus 100% of our attention on the game itself not what we might win or lose.

Using William James' words...

"When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free."

3. Multitasking Is A Lunacy Leading To Doing Many Things In A Half-Arsed Way

I think it is more important to do fewer things in a full-arsed (I love inventing new words) way.

Have you seen job ads like "Fast-paced environment demands multitasking." This one sentence tells me to keep away from such a place because creativity is dead there.

Again, you can have only 100% of your attention. If you split it up by multitasking, then something must give. This must explain to us why a high performer like Tiger Woods doesn't eat on the green or Michael Jordan doesn't pose for the cameras while playing. They are players being busy playing 100%.

Dr. John Medina, in his book, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, mentions that a person who is interrupted takes 50% longer to accomplish a task than uninterrupted people. The interrupted person also makes 50% more errors. Here the interruption is switching between tasks.

I truly believe that multitasking is just a great way of hiding mediocre performance. Yes, you may say that using only 50% of your attention and focus you are already a better graphics designer or web designer than me. I buy that. The reason for that is that I focus 0% of my talent and attention to web design or graphics design.

But using 50% of your attention and focus, are you a better graphics designer than the real whole 100% you? Due to this multitasking rubbish some many people operate at a fraction of their potential.

And if you still maintain that you are good at multitasking, try to make love and conduct a teleseminar at the same time.

And the key is not to be a better web designer than me, but to become the best damn web designer you can possibly be.

We're in competition only with ourselves. Am I better than I was this time last year?

Sadly, not many people can say "yes".

4. Relax During Your Work

I don't know if you have noticed it, but we are inherently more creative when we are relaxed. By being relaxed I mean to be physically and emotionally relaxed and mentally alert. We have already discussed how different - the old - parts of the brain help or hinder creativity, so it is vitally important that we provide the best working conditions for the brain.

Many people complain that they don't have time to exercise in the morning because they are so busy. That is great, but busy doing what? Pumping in more unproductive hours? That 1-1.5 hours every morning in the gym makes it possible for the body to overdose the brain on oxygen, blood and endorphins, so you can be much more creative and productive during the day.

Have you ever been so busy driving that you failed to stop for getting some fuel? This is the same scenario.

Instead of working in bursts, like a manic depressive, it is important that we work throughout the day at a reasonably constant pace.

That also includes regular breaks. For instance, do you know that our attention span starts dropping drastically after about 45-50 minutes of doing the same work?

At this point you have two options:

1. You keep working without a break, pumping in more time at suboptimal productivity and creativity level


2. You take a short break that requires the attention of the opposite brain hemisphere.

For instance, if you work with numbers (left brain activity), then during your break listen to some music and sing along. That will engage your creative right brain and relaxes your analytical left brain.

After five minutes you can get back to your work and your attention level will be up to 100%, and you will. Now you are ready for the next 45 segment.

One idea I have found useful is listening to baroque music while you're working, Music from composers like Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Telemann, Corelli, Rameau, Pergolesi or Purcell. According to the experts, the basic frequency of baroque music is in synch with the brain, and promotes creativity.

5. If You Can't Decide It, Sleep It Out

There are many people ranging from Churchill through Sir Walter Scott to Thomas Edison who solved their unresolved problems by sleeping or napping on them. When you are sleeping, all the outside disturbances are cut out. There is no conscious interference that could limit your thinking.

When we attack our conscious minds with specific problems and then go to sleep, it seems that the stuff from the conscious mind goes into the subconscious.

There is one more thing happening during sleep. During the day, due to various stimuli, the chemistry of the body and the brain get all messed up. Sleep is the process that reinstates this chemical equilibrium, making certain that we have the right amount of all those fiendish chemicals and they are in the right place. For instance stress makes the body predominantly acidic, which is a brilliant breeding ground for cancel cells.

I have seen the video of an experiment in which a walnut-sized cancer cell was placed into an acidic environment and another cell into an alkaline environment. In the acidic environment, the cancel cell blew up to the size of a grapefruit. In the alkaline environment, the cancer cell shrunk to the size of a pea.

So, even if that smaller cancer cell ends up inside the body, it is easier to chop that off than chopping off a large cell.

What can you do to make sure that you get all the sleep you need? But not only the number of hours spent in bed (after all, you can do... whatever in bed), but high-quality sleep - although the other bed-related activity too is vital for good health.

For some extra help, read John Medina's book, entitled Brain Rules: 12 Principles For Surviving At Work, Home And School.

On Summary

Everything we have discussed here may seem to be irrelevant on the surface, but when we dig deeper, we can realise that every business problem we have is the escalation of a personal problem.

But when the body and the mind operate at an optimum level, we can face those problems and take the required action to eliminate them.

And what happens if we don't pay attention to these body and mind issues?

Work can easily become a treadmill from futility to oblivion with occasional stops at tedium, lunacy and counter productivity.

We either work long hours or productive hours. To work long hours, we can show up in any condition because our success indicator is the number of hours we spend in the office and pump into our work (inputs).

And partly based on my experience from many years ago and my observations of clients, the outputs we produce suffer.

Working productive hours is all about what we can produce during our times in the office. That is, how can we produce the maximum output with the minimum input?

In medicine, the minimum effective dose is what's required to achieve the desired results.

In life we can have a minimum effort that we need to exert to achieve specific outcomes. So, it's not about doing more of the same, but doing less of something different.

When your horses can't pull your cart any faster, you don't just increase the number of horses, but replace them altogether with an engine, and now you can go faster.

When you want to bring in higher revenues, you don't merely increase the number of hours and work the same way as before. Not at all! You reduce the hours and work differently.

Working differently can mean different type of pricing, better clients, better projects and better overall terms for your engagements.

And I'm fully convinced that using new approaches can more probably lead to a better overall life than using more of the old approaches. Just try it!

Come and let's discuss this newsletter issue on my blog...

"Dynamic Duo" Mentor Programme... ...has 0 openings for May and 2 for June 2012. Click here to continue to read the fiendish details.