Consulting
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The diagnosis - framing the challenge
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The guiding policy - the approach to dealing with the issues in the diagnosis
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Coherent Actions - the actions, resource commitments, and policies needed to carry out the guiding policy
“Listening is the engine of ingenuity. It’s difficult to understand desires and detect problems, much less develop elegant solutions, without listening.”
-Kate Murphy (no relation 😁)
#Quotes
“It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.”
-Paul Graham
#Quotes
“The most effective communicators pause before they speak and ask themselves: Why am I opening my mouth?”
-Charles Duhigg
#Quotes
A good strategy (according to Rumelt) has 3 parts:
Strategy is a cohesive response to an important challenge (Richard Rumelt).
This is a phenomenal distillation of the concept.
“Be careful not to overcomplicate your systems to the point where you can only maintain them when you are at your peak of mental clarity.”
-the David Allen Company
#Quotes
Remember:
Empathize with your clients.
Understand their needs as thoroughly as possible before proposing any solutions.
Always back your recommendations with evidence.
“Computers fail, checklists fail, everything can fail. But people can’t. We have to make decisions, and that includes deciding what deserves our attention. The key is forcing yourself to think. As long as you’re thinking, you’re halfway home.”
-Richard Champion de Crespigny
#Quotes
There are no silver bullets
“Every tool you use impacts your abilities while using that tool. It increases some capabilities while decreasing others.
For example, a chimp fishing for ants with a stick can’t use her hand for another purpose while holding that stick.”
-David Kadavy
Tools perform specific functions, ideally useful ones.
Good tools perform their functions efficiently and are often cheaper, faster, simpler, and/or better than alternatives.
Great tools are transformative. Notable examples include sharpened stones, metal lathes, maps, and alphabets.
The proverbial hammer is great for driving steel nails into wood. But even the best hammer can’t help if the blueprints are wrong.
You say you want your product managers to write better user stories? Changing your word processor won’t help much.
Tools don’t magically fix broken processes, dysfunctional leadership, misaligned incentives, or training gaps.
See also:
The first step with anything new is always voracious learning - which may cause some discomfort.
Remember to push through this.
Jot down a list of open questions. Keep it updated as you discover answers in order to document the progression of your understanding.
Concisely sharing what you know about a given topic, including the relevant context, and why it’s valuable information is an exceptionally important skill.
You should constantly practice this.