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This Month in Management Consulting News

"Clever people are the ones who create disproportionate amounts of value from the resources their organizations make available to them." - Rob Goffee

Rob Goffee is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the London Business School. He's also the coauthor of Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People and Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?

In this month's issue of Management Consulting News, I asked Goffee how leaders should think about working with, retaining, and getting the most from clever people. Read my interview with Rob Goffee.

We're also featuring articles on extreme leadership, avoiding a lengthy sales cycle, the world's top business hotels, and executives' big paychecks.

Read this month's newsletter.

Management Practices to Avoid

In the latest issue of Management Consulting News, Aubrey Daniels talks about his new book, OOPS! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time & Money (and what to do instead).

Daniels is also the author of Bringing out the Best in People, Performance Management, Other People's Habits, and, Measure of a Leader.  He thinks many management practices do more harm than good because "The current systems, processes, and management behaviors are the same as they were ten years ago. And they are just as ineffective as ever." 

This issue of the newsletter also features articles on how to thrive in a volatile market, one question that can transform your client sales conversations, and why visual thinking is the key to solving any problem. Plus, we've got Seth Godin's interview on managing through "The Dip," and we continue to track what's happening in the professional services industry in our latest MCNews 12 Index report.

Read this month's issue of Management Consulting News.

The One Minute Entrepreneur

Ken Blanchard changed the language of management with his groundbreaking book, The One Minute Manager®, which is one of the most successful business books of all time. Since then, he’s helped countless organizations across the globe. Blanchard is the bestselling author of more than forty books.

In the latest edition of Management Consulting News, Blanchard talked to us about his latest book, The One Minute Entrepreneur, which lays out a strategy for making any new business venture flourish.

Read the interview with Ken Blanchard.

We’re also featuring articles on how consultants know if they are solving the right problem, and advice for entrepreneurs from Michael Gerber and Guy Kawasaki.

Read this month's issue of Management Consulting News.

The Cult of Leadership

Business historian, James Hoopes, sees real dangers in what he calls the “Cult of Moral Leadership” in America. Hoopes, who is a Distinguished Professor of History at Babson College, thinks that putting business and political leaders up on a moral pedestal intensifies the tendency of power to corrupt.

In his latest book, Hail to the CEO, Hoopes points out the risks in this trend. For the July 2008 issue of Management Consulting News, we talked to Hoopes about the dangers he sees, and asked him about his new leadership model in which leaders earn moral influence, rather than exploiting it.

Read the interview with James Hoopes.

Also in July’s issue, we provide some thoughts on finding more time for marketing, how reflecting now about the legacy you will leave can make you a better leader, why you shouldn’t waste time on poor prospects, and more.

Read the July 2008 issue of Management Consulting News.

Leading a Professional Services Firm

Books on leadership are everywhere you look these days. What's been missing is an insightful, research-based book on the leadership challenges facing professional services firm leaders--and strategies for addressing those challenges.

Thomas DeLong, coauthor of When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance, and a Professor at the Harvard Business School, has written that book.

In a recent interview, I talked to DeLong about his research and about his ideas for a leadership framework that can help firm leaders balance the sometimes conflicting demands of managing modern professional service organizations.

Read the interview with Thomas DeLong in Management Consulting News.

The Language of Success

Ask any client about the writing habits of consultants, and you’ll probably hear about jargon-laden prose that needs a translator to decipher. It’s never simple to find just the right words for every business communication.               

So, this month in Management Consulting News, we asked Tom Sant, author of The Language of Success: Business Writing That Informs, Persuades, and Gets Results, for his advice on beating the nonsense out of our writing.

Sant has effective writing tips for everything from proposals and marketing messages to email and memos.      

Read the interview with Tom Sant

Also in this month's issue of Management Consulting News, we’re featuring articles on presentation skills, the state of services marketing, how to qualify any client opportunity, and more.                  

Read this month's issue

How to Influence Change

One of toughest challenges we face is influencing change in a client’s organization. Most change initiatives take longer than planned, bust the original budget, and fail to achieve the desired results. This month in Management Consulting News, our guest, Al Switzler, tells us about a better way to influence change.

Switzler, co-author of the bestselling books Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations, helped change how we communicate at work and at home. In the new book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, Switzler and his fellow authors offer a research-based model for influencing personal and organizational change.

Read our interview with Al Switzler.

In his column, “Flying Solo,” Alan Weiss emphasizes the importance of telling a client what you’ll do, rather than focusing on how you will do it.

We’re also featuring articles on the must-haves for every e-newsletter, the secrets of large firm selling, and whether or not to bet that your airplane will land on time. 

Read this month’s issue of Management Consulting News.

Companies Have Bad Habits Too

Most of us know someone who needs to break a bad habit. And most people know why they need to change. But that clear understanding by itself isn’t a predictor of success in kicking a bad habit.

David Maister, one of the world’s leading thinkers on the issues facing professional services firms, believes that organizations suffer from the same problem as individuals—they know what they need to do and how to do it, but often fall short when executing their plans.

This month in Management Consulting News, we ask Maister how consultants can close the gap between knowing and doing.

Read our interview with David Maister.

Also in the January 2008 issue, Alan Weiss reminds consultants that the first sale is always to the person in the mirror. We’re also featuring articles on how to use an e-newsletter and a narrow marketing focus to strengthen your visibility, how to sell in a bull market, and the 2007 year-end results for the MCNews 12 Index of Professional Services, which tracks investor sentiment about the professional services industry.

Read this month's issue.

Top 10 Management Consulting News Articles

The archive over at Management Consulting News now contains more than 250 interviews and articles written for and by consultants. If you're interested in what people read most often on that site, here are the ten most requested items from the archive in 2007, in descending order of popularity:

• A Conversation with Philip Kotler
• W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne: How to Make Your Competition Irrelevant
• Flawless Consulting with Peter Block
• Michael Gerber Unravels the Myth of the Entrepreneur
• An Exclusive Interview with Tony Buzan: What's the Brain Got to Do with Business?
• Rosabeth Moss Kanter on Confidence
• Cliff Atkinson Goes Beyond Bullet Points
• Patricia Fripp: So You're Going to Make a Speech
• Marcus Buckingham's One Thing You Need to Know
• Nick Morgan on the Secrets of Powerful Speaking

Job Misery

77 percent of people in the US workforce say they hate their jobs. That adds up to more than 100 million people, so it’s pretty likely that you know someone who is miserable at work. It's hard to imagine how organizations can create such toxic work environments and remain in business.

Patrick Lencioni, who has written about dysfunctional teams, turf problems in organizations, and the productivity-sapping power of meetings, has turned his attention to a $350 billion problem—job misery. His latest book is The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.

In the December 2007 issue of Management Consulting News, we interview Lencioni and ask him why so many people are miserable at work and what consultants can do to help their clients make the workplace less miserable and more productive.

Read the interview with Patrick Lencioni.

Also in this issue: Alan Weiss bemoans the impact that an artificial sense of self worth has on a consultant’s ability to grow a business; what to do if you think your client is a jerk; what clients say they want from consultants; and strategies for capturing more time for life outside of work. Plus, Jeff Thull gives us some advice on a slight change in mindset that can make selling to decision makers easier.

Read the current issue of Management Consulting News.