I recognize it’s a bit early for the top # lists of 2022, but I don’t want to compete with all the Spotify year-in-review top song lists, and reflection should be an ongoing exercise, not just aligned with the calendar year. Plus, perhaps stereotypically, I do my best work on planes, and I recently had a long enough flight to pause and study the past year’s experiences.
So, after working with 4 global clients at Slalom this year across retail, healthcare, digital marketing, and manufacturing, the following lessons (in no particular order) have made the most significant impact on me — and I hope they’re helpful to you as well.
Communication
1. A good idea poorly communicated is a bad idea. Delivery is key for buy-in.
2. Focus is a gift, and people can tell when they don’t have yours. In the words of a former mentor, “Never apologize for being unavailable if it means you don’t have to apologize for not being present.”
3. People in the same room can hear the same thing entirely differently, so over-communication is essential, and one of the best ways to over-communicate is to recite back to someone what you just heard them say.
4. In the words of Da Vinci, “Simplicity is the ultimate elegance”. You must be able to do complex work but communicate its’ implications succinctly.
5. People process information differently under stress; take the time to understand their context before communicating ideas.
Delivery of Work
6. Defining a problem or what’s currently happening is valuable in and of itself. In the words of Einstein, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”
7. There is almost always a problem behind the problem. Look upstream to solve for root causes.
8. Innovation is a team sport and a bumpy ride. In the words of David Kelley, “Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius.”
9. Throwing technology at problems won’t work without buy-in from the people using the technology, and you get buy-in by co-creating the technology solution with its end user.
10. Explaining why you didn’t choose alternative solutions can be as important as explaining why you did choose another solution.
11. Ambiguity in outcomes fosters disappointment and frustration, but ambiguity in the path to an outcome can lead to innovation.
12. Strategic ignorance on a topic is a powerful innovation tool. Sometimes it’s the seemingly obvious questions that lead to the best answers.
13. It’s emotions and politics that make most problems complicated. Looking beyond drama, most problems can fit within a Venn diagram and/or 2x2 grid.
14. Clear authority of who’s in charge of what avoids a massive amount of drama and rework. Multiple owners = no owners.
15. Project progress is exponential, not linear; 25% of the way through a project does not equate to 25% of the final deliverable (seasons of life can also reflect this trend).
Personal Brand
16. Sign your work. It’s not prideful to take credit.
17. Ask for the opportunities you want. This means you first need to identify the opportunities you want.
18. You don’t have to be the most qualified to be the most capable. In fact, it’s often the opposite.
19. Great leaders are not the hero of their stories, but the guide who helps others become heroes.
20. In the words of Andy Stanley, unexpressed gratitude is perceived as ingratitude. I need to ask myself daily who I can thank.
Bonus: There’s no easy way to explain the consulting industry to grandparents (they still think since I work with big companies and help them make money, I must work at a bank).
Let me know if any takeaways resonate with you, and with which you disagree.
Thanks for giving this a read!
