Over the years, I’ve received a lot of great advice. One piece of advice I keep coming back to is about managing expectations. It came from an old friend, just a few days after I’d started my consulting practice.
He was a seasoned consultant himself and I had asked him what I should know, just starting out. He told me his First Rule of Consulting:
No matter how much you try,
you can’t stop people
from sticking beans up their nose.
That was it. Beans up the nose. Really.
At the time, I thought he was nuts. Now, I’ve come to realize those are words to live by.
The idea is blindingly simple. Every so often, you’ll run into someone with beans who, for no good reason, has decided to put them up their own nose. Way up there. In a place where beans should never go.
Now, there is no logical explanation for this. There is no way to say, “Yes, I can see exactly why you’d want to do that.” They came to this decision all on their own. Their path to this decision defies logic.
Yet, here they are. Waiting for the moment when the bean goes up the nose.
And here’s the thing: As an observer of this decision’s outcome, all we can do is cringe.
