The Secrets of Consulting
by
Gerald M. Weinberg
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Gerald M. Weinberg on Smashwords
The Secrets of Consulting
Copyright © 2010 by Gerald M. Weinberg
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Contents
Chapter 1. Why Consulting Is So Tough
Chapter 2. Cultivating A Paradoxical Frame Of Mind
Chapter 3. Being Effective When You Don't Know What You're Doing
Chapter 5. Seeing What's Not There
Chapter 7. Amplifying Your Impact
Chapter 8. Gaining Control of Change
Chapter 9. How to Make Changes Safely
Chapters 10. What to Do When They Resist
Chapter 11. Marketing Your Services
Chapter 12. Putting a Price on Your Head
Chapter 14. Getting People to Follow Your Advice
Readings and Other Experiences: Where to Go If You Want More
If you are a consultant, or if you ever use a consultant, this book is for you. That's a wide scope, because nowadays, nearly everyone is some kind of a consultant. There are hardware consultants and software consultants, social workers and psychiatrists, management consultants and worker consultants, energy consultants and information consultants, safety consultants and accident consultants, beauty consultants and septic tank consultants, consulting physicians and consulting attorneys, wedding consultants, decorators, genetic consultants, family therapists, economic consultants, bankruptcy consultants, retirement consultants, funeral consultants, and psychic consultants.
And those are only the professionals. You're using a consultant when you ask your neighbor what he uses to remove crabgrass from his lawn. You're being a consultant when your daughter asks you what college she ought to attend. In the United States, at least, you don't have to have a license to advise someone on what car to buy, or to help another find the quickest route to Arkadelphia.
With such diversity, what do all these consultants have in common? What would make them all want to read this book? My definition of consulting is the art of influencing people at their request. People want some sort of change—or fear some sort of change—so they seek consulting, in one form or another.
Many people influence other people without a request. A judge can sentence you to thirty years of hard labor. Your teacher can assign you thirty pages of hard reading. Your boss can give you thirty days of hard traveling. Your priest can apportion you thirty Hail Marys. Judges and teachers and bosses and priests can act as consultants. But they're not consultants in these cases, because these forms of influence are enforced by some authority system, not necessarily by the willing participation of the person influenced.
Other influencers have no authority, but are not consultants because they lack the request. Car dealers and other salespeople come to mind in this category. Again, they may act as consultants, but they're not consultants when they're trying to sell you something you didn't ask for.
Being called a consultant doesn't make you a consultant, either. Many people are called consultants as a way of glorifying their dull jobs. Some "software consultants," for instance, are retained strictly as supplementary programming labor. The last thing their "clients" want is in be influenced. All they want is grunt work turning out computer code, but by calling their temporary workers "consultants," they can get then for a few dollars less than if they called them something more mundane.
Conversely, you may be a consultant even if you don't have the label. Anyone with a staff job is acting as a consultant to the line management. When they hired you, they were requesting your influence (why else would someone hire a staff person?). After you've bets on the payroll for a while, however, they may forget that you were hired to help. Sometimes, even you forget, so your task is a bit different from that of the outsider called in to work on a specific problem.
This is not a book about how to become a consultant. That part easy. Most likely, you already are a consultant, because you become a consultant whenever you accept someone's request for influence. It's after you accept the request that you start needing help. When I became a full-time consultant, I soon discovered that few people request influence when their world is behaving rationally. As a result, consultants tend to see more than their fair share of irrationality. You may have noticed, for instance, how frequently someone who asks you for advice will then attack you angrily because of the requested advice. Such irrationality drives consultants crazy, but if they can cope with it, it can also drive them rich.
There were times, though, when I couldn't cope with it, so I turned to writing books to restore my sanity. Anyone who is irrational enough to buy one of my books may be requesting influence, but at least I don't have to give the advice face-to-face. That's why my books are cheaper than my consulting fees.
Most of the time, though, I enjoyed the direct interaction with my clients, if I could stand the irrationality. If I wanted to stay in the business, it seemed to me I had two choices:
1. Remain rational, and go crazy.
2. Become irrational, and be called crazy.
For many years, I oscillated between these poles of misery, until I hit upon a third approach:
3. Become rational about irrationality.
This book relates some of my discoveries about the rationality of seemingly irrational behavior that surrounds requests for influence, These are the secrets of consulting. The title suggests this is a book for consultants, but the book is actually for anyone who is confused by our irrational world and would like to do something about it. That's an almost limitless audience.
Even if you're so confused that nobody calls upon you for consulting, perhaps you need a consultant yourself. You might just save the cost of a consultant by reading this book. Or get more mileage out of the fees you pay your consultants.
But if you're not contused, you definitely don't need this book. You need a psychiatrist. Anyone who not confused in today's world has to be out of touch with reality.
What will reading the book do for you? Many people have read the manuscript, and some of them claim to have been influenced in positive ways. One constant says she applied one of the laws, called The Orange Juice Test, and obtained a fat contract she would probably have otherwise lost. Another said he negotiated a larger fee by applying The Principle of Least Regret. A third lost a fat contract by applying the same Principle, but he didn't mind very much, which is why it's called The Principle of Least Regret. One manager told me that as soon as he finished reading the manuscript, he fired a consultant who had been costing him three thousand dollars a month. He didn't say whether the consultant had any regrets
Not all of the influence has been directly financial. Several readers say that they enjoy their consulting more, now that they understand a bit more about what's going on. One staff product director told me he applied his new knowledge of buffalo and dogs to get a higher percentage of his recommendations implemented by his marketing manager. Another staffer could give no specific examples except to say that her boss complimented her for "thinking better."
One old-time consultant told me a long-winded story about how he used to spend a lot of time worrying about the fact that he didn't have a Ph.D. (I think he was getting his revenge for some of my long-winded stories in the book-) He had taken several years out of his life to go back to school for his doctorate. only to discover that his clients weren't interested in degrees. "Reading the book was like going for my Ph.D. I didn't really need to read it, but if I hadn't read it, I would have thought I needed to read it" As you'll learn in the very first chapter, that's the best result any consultant can hope to achieve.
Reading The Secrets of Consulting is a very special experience. The book appeals to my sense of humor, my awareness of human foibles, and my knowledge of how human systems work. Most especially, this book enlarges my view of how change takes place, of how a consultant in any context can become more effective.
It is profound in its meaning and humorous and colorful in its presentation. Jerry Weinberg's style is such that he shares his experiences and knowledge with me; I feel inspired, rather than defensive. As I read, I can identify with the people and the problems he describes, and I take pleasure in laughing at myself and in learning from the situations that apply to me.
The Secrets of Consulting is far more than a consultant's handbook. It is actually a book about how people can take charge of their own growth. As a family therapist, I've found it helpful to understand people's behavior and the relationship between consultant and client by relating it to our birth into this world, an appearance into an unequal triad: father, mother, child. The father and mother are supposedly grown, and the child is totally dependent on the adults. What we learn from birth to adulthood is related essentially to this; although much of what we learn is unconscious, it gives us both our feelings about ourselves and about our importance to the world. It also gives us skills for coping, which can be augmented by consultants.
Unconscious or not, our basic childhood learnings still operate, whether we're in the role of client or consultant. Jerry Weinberg often gently teases the reader, as well as himself, about some of these powerful unconscious lessons that get in the way of our hoped-for results.
For example, every one of us needs approval and open recognition of success: "Look, Ma, no hands," says the proud son while riding his bicycle, hoping Mama will smile. When Mama doesn't, the child's need is unfulfilled and, as an adult, he may still look for that smile, but in the wrong context.
Further, many of us still dance between the wish and need to know and the fear of rejection that might come from revealing our needs. "After all," we think to ourselves, "if I am smart, I should know everything already and be able to handle every situation well. If I don't, it is a sign of my weakness, stupidity, perverseness, or incompetence.
Acknowledging such flaws would be intolerable." When this interpretation is made, most of us play games, either hiding our true feelings or projecting them onto someone else: thinking, for example, "I don't need you. And if it looks as if I do, it is probably because you are at fault."
Giving help, offering new ways to cope, is the consultant's job; but in order for the consultant to succeed, the job needs to be framed and approached with just that dance in mind. By asking for the consultant's help, the client is saying, sometimes nonverbally, "I need you. I can't say so directly, so find a way to help me without destroying my sense of worth." The wise consultant answers in a way that recognizes the client's self-worth, but also doesn't compromise his own. Otherwise, no real or lasting change can take place.
As the wise consultant, Jerry Weinberg illustrates this key point in many different contexts. He points to effective and interesting ways to approach the dance, and always praises the client who knows when and whom to ask for help as a mark of greater intelligence than as an admission of incompetence. In this context, both client and consultant grow in learning and strength, and everyone feels good.
After all, aren't the secrets of consulting basically what growth, competence, and good human relations are about? Namely, that we feel good about ourselves and about others, and that we experience our hopes and goals being fulfilled.
October 1985
Palo Alto, California
Virginia Satir
Chapter 1. Why Consulting Is So Tough
Have you ever dreamed of owning a restaurant? of concocting delicious meals for appreciative customers and ending each evening by counting the thousands of dollars piled up in the cash register? Recently, I found a book on starting your own restaurant. I was dying to read all about the glamour, the independence, and the riches, but the author wasted the entire first chapter trying to talk me out of my dream. "Put down this book," he urged, "and find yourself a sensible trade."
But I was not so easily dissuaded, not after a lifetime of dreams. I went on to the other chapters, only to find them full of questions to warn me about the ugly realities of the restaurant world: How will you fight off creditors, extortionists, and all your friends who want free meals? How do you deal with an invasion of cockroaches the day before the health inspector arrives? with disgustingly spoiled food when the refrigerator breaks down? with waiters who quit in the middle of your busiest night? What do you do when customers simply don't come through the door? What do you do when they do come? get loudly drunk? vomit all over the floor?
Eventually, he convinced me. Sadder but wiser, I put aside my restaurant fantasies and returned to the mundane task of being a consultant.
Have you ever dreamed of becoming a consultant? traveling on an expense account to glamorous places? giving brilliant advice to eager clients who follow it immediately and without question? raking in enormous fees with a minimum of work?
For those of us who would escape our miserable lot in life, consultant fantasies run a close second to restaurant fantasies. So before we get too far into the other secrets of consulting, we'd better face The Number One Secret:
Consulting ain't as easy as it looks.
In this chapter, we'll see some of the reasons why.
SHERBIE'S LAWS OF CONSULTING
It's difficult for an executive to criticize a budget when most line items are for mysterious high technology activities. It's easier to tackle the more understandable portions, like postage, janitorial services, and consulting.
Executives may not understand microprogramming or microeconomics, but they understand consulting. I've never met an executive who didn't have a favorite—unflattering—joke about consultants. But, then, I've never met a consultant who didn't have a worse joke about executives.
In any high technology area of business, consultants' fees will be a substantial budget item, but the antagonism between managers and consultants often wastes most of this money. The manager who understands this antagonism will get more value out of the consulting budget. That's why I often speak to management and consultant groups about their relationship.
Even so, I rarely speak to both managers and consultants in the same audience; the first time I did, I almost created a riot. The audience had just finished a rather large steak preceded by a rather long cocktail hour, so before starting the serious part of my speech, I told a joke to get their attention:
On the first day of spring, Zeke and Luke decided to go bear hunting. It was too late to hunt when they reached their cabin, so they spent the first evening reducing their beer inventory. Just before dawn, Luke awoke and went out into the woods to answer the call of nature. Unfortunately, on his way back, he crossed the path of a huge grizzly bear out looking for breakfast. The bear started for Luke, and Luke started for the cabin. Just as the bear was about to grab Luke by the neck, Luke tripped and fell flat on his face. The bear, which was going too fast to stop, ran right past Luke and through the open cabin door. Thinking quickly, Luke jumped up, slammed and latched the door, and called into his sleeping partner, "You skin that one, Zeke, while I go fetch another."
The joke was well received, but some well-oiled manager called out, "That's just like a consultant. They always bring up grizzly problems and then leave us managers to solve them."
At that, an angry consultant jumped to his feet and said, "You've got it backwards. Luke was the manager. Managers handle all the easy problems themselves, but when they get something they can't handle, they lock it in the cabin with the consultant."
From there, I lost control of the audience, and nobody even noticed when I left the podium and fetched a second dessert. As I spooned in the melted rainbow sherbet, I tried to think of some way to stop the argument and help managers and consultants to understand each other.
Perhaps it was the sherbet, but what popped into my mind were three laws my friend Roger House had told me, under the title of Sherbie's Laws of Consulting. I never met Sherbie (I have now, with this second edition), but I like laws. I especially like irrational-sounding laws that can be used to capture the attention of an unruly audience. I coughed into the microphone, tried to look as much like Moses as possible, and pronounced, "We consultants have three ironclad laws. Ordinarily, we don't speak of these laws to our clients, but I think that it will help if I reveal them to the managers here."
The promise of some trade secrets brought the audience back under control, so I continued. "Here are the three laws, which all consultants must remember when taking on a new assignment." I enunciated them slowly, writing each one on the chalkboard:
The First Law of Consulting:
In spite of what your client may tell you, there's always a problem.
The Second Law of Consulting:
No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem.
The Third Law of Consulting:
Never forget they're paying you by the hour, not by the solution.
As I had hoped, the audience was completely puzzled, stopped in its tracks. I had everyone's full attention and could now continue my speech on the client-consultant relationship.
There's Always a Problem
Nothing is more puzzling to a young consultant than to arrive at the client's office and be told, first thing, "We really don't have any problems here. Nothing that we can't handle, anyway."
Indeed, more than one green consultant has been so ignorant as to reply, "If there is no problem, then why did you hire me?" This may seem logical, but logic and culture have nothing to do with one another. In the culture of management, the worst thing you can do is admit to anyone that you have a problem you can't handle by yourself. If you really do need help, you have to sneak it in somehow without admitting in public that there is any problem at all.
The Ten Percent Promise
There's no curing sick people who believe they are well, but The First Law of Consulting says that they'll never admit that they are sick. So consultants have a big problem. One way around the problem is to agree that the client is competent, and then ask if there are any areas that need improvement. Few people are willing to admit that they're sick, but most of us are willing to admit that we could use improvement. Unless we're really sick.
But be careful not to overdo this ploy out of eagerness to get the job. If you promise too much improvement, they'll never hire you, because that would force them to admit they had a problem. A corollary of The First Law of Consulting is The Ten Percent Promise Law:
Never promise more than ten percent improvement.
Most people can successfully absorb ten percent into their psychological category of "no problem." Anything more, however, would be embarrassing if the consultant succeeded.
The Ten Percent Solution
Another corollary is The Ten Percent Solution Law:
If you happen to achieve more than ten percent improvement,
make sure it isn't noticed.
The best way to make sure it isn't noticed, of course, is to help the client take all the credit. Consultants who don't bury their huge successes are like guests who clean their shoes on the table napkins. They aren't invited back.
It's Always a People Problem
One way for managers to avoid mentioning that they have a problem is to label the problem a "technical problem." Technical problems aren't really supposed to be a manager's responsibility. Besides, in a high technology business, it wouldn't be possible to keep all the expertise you need on the payroll.
When reviewing budgets, executives should allow their managers to save face by hiding management consulting under a cloak of technical consulting. Everyone needs outside help from time to time, so why embarrass anyone?
Even when it's "really" a technical problem, it can always be traced back to management action or inaction. Even so, the experienced consultant will resist pointing out that it was management who hired all the technical people and is responsible for their development. At the same time, the consultant will look for the people who should have prevented this problem, or dealt with it when it arose.
Marvin's Law
A corollary of The Second Law of Consulting is one of Marvin's Laws:
Whatever the client is doing, advise something else.
At the very least, the people problem is either lack of imagination or lack of perspective. People who are close to a problem tend to keep repeating what didn't work the first time. If it did work, they wouldn't have called in a consultant. Since every hard-working person loses perspective at times, executives should be wary of managers who never call in outside consultants. They are so close to their problems that they don't know how much trouble they're in.
Never Forget They're Paying You by the Hour
The Third Law of Consulting could be interpreted to mean that the consultant should milk the client for as much hourly money as possible,but that's not what it's about. Many good consultants have tried to get paid by the solution, but none to my knowledge has ever succeeded. To succeed, you would first have to get the client to admit that there was a problem, then that the problem was big enough to justify paying you well for solving it.
The Third Law of Consulting actually reminds the consultant that if the clients had wanted a solution, they would have paid for a solution. Deep down, people want to be able to say to their management, "Look, we realize that there is a problem, and we are working on it. We have retained a consultant."
Later, when the consultant leaves, the statement is changed to, "How could we be expected to solve this problem? We had a high-priced consultant here for three months, and she couldn't solve it. It obviously just can't be solved."
The Credit Rule
In short, managers may not be buying solutions, but alibis to give their management. A corollary of The Third Law of Consulting is The Credit Rule:
You'll never accomplish anything if you care who gets the credit.
In order for a consultant to get credit, the client would have to admit there had been a solution. To admit there was a solution, the client would have to admit there was a problem, which is unthinkable. As a result, the only consultants who get invited back are those who never seem to accomplish anything.
Whether these consultants actually do accomplish anything is an unanswerable question. Whichever way it was answered, it would leave the consultant out of a job, so effective consultants make sure it is never asked. Unfortunately, so do ineffective consultants. The difference, however, is that when an effective consultant is present, the client solves problems.
The Lone Ranger Fantasy
It's hard to work without taking credit, especially because our unfulfilled desires can interfere with our performance as consultants. One particular consultant reacted to Sherbie's Laws and their corollaries by saying, "They're not as applicable to computer consulting, where most clients really are paying for a solution, and where admitting confusion about computers is almost a badge of honor among executives." Out of a need to feel that she's accomplishing something, this consultant may overlook a possible consulting opportunity: Working with these executives, she might create a situation in which they'll take personal responsibility as the managers who created the technical organization that's not effective at solving its own problems.
Contrast this consultant with another one who wrote, "I always try to give teachers alternative strategies to use on a child's problem, and I always give public credit to the teachers for successful remediation of the child's need. I always try to teach them techniques so they won't have to call me back for the same problem the next time. But I have my own needs to take care of, so I concocted The Lone Ranger Fantasy. As I exit nset while the teachers shake their heads and say, 'Who was that masked woman, anyway?"
I use the same fantasy myself, and so do many older consultants who grew up in the golden days of radio. Younger consultants who don't know the Lone Ranger so intimately might think of The Lone Ranger Fantasy this way:
When the clients don't show their appreciation, pretend that they're stunned by your performance—but never forget that it's your fantasy, not theirs.
The Fourth Law of Consulting
In organizational consulting, Sherbie's Laws of Consulting expose the essential competition between managers and consultants. Both managers and consultants are paid for their ability to solve problems. For either to admit the need for the other would be an admission of their own inadequacy. Only the best managers and consultants are big enough to admit that they can't do it all by themselves. Even managers sometimes need The Lone Ranger Fantasy.
The same contradiction applies to anyone who calls upon a consultant. Indeed, you could define "consultant" as "someone who helps you solve problems you think you should be able to solve by yourself."
Therefore, hiring a consultant is always seen as an admission of personal failure. A consultant who fails to solve the problem would thus be interpreted as a personal success for the client—except that the client hired the consultant in the first place, and so the consultant's failure still falls on the client.
People who weren't involved in the hiring decision have no such restraints. They will always be delighted when the consultant fails to solve their problem. Which leads to my final law, which I'll add to Sherbie's:
If they didn't hire you, don't solve their problem.
The Fourth Law of Consulting says you must never allow yourself to forget that consulting is the art of influencing people at their request. Among consultants, the most prevalent occupational disease is offering unsolicited "help." It's bad for your bankbook, and it doesn't work. In fact, it usually backfires.
THE LAW OF RASPBERRY JAM
I learned to pay attention to The Fourth Law of Consulting because, as a kid, I had two clear goals. I wanted to help other people, and I wanted to get rich doing it. Throughout my life, I've struggled to achieve a balance between those two contradictory goals.
One of my first jobs was dishwashing—a good way to change a dirty world into a cleaner world. I've always enjoyed dishwashing jobs. Although the pay wasn't outstanding, there was always the sense of accomplishment when, in the end, I would triumph over some sticky raspberry jam. Not so, unfortunately, in my other attempts to change the world, as consultant, trainer, lecturer, and author. There, The Law of Raspberry Jam has been my unrelenting nemesis.
Washing dishes provides a satisfying, intimate relationship with the object of my work. Whatever my hands do is reflected immediately in a clean fork, a broken saucer, a sparkling goblet. If my son discovers peanut butter encrusted in the handle of a coffee mug, I take full blame. If my mother-in-law admires her face in the gleaming bottom of a frying pan, I take full credit. Although I suffer from the defeats, I learn to achieve more victories, and that's the essence of job satisfaction.
As a dishwashing consultant, I lose this immediate satisfaction. If my client is having problems with encrusted peanut butter, I can render advice or even demonstrate improved technique. But in spite of my best efforts, the peanut butter may remain encrusted, because it's up to my client to implement the ideas.
As compensation for losing the intimacy of dishwashing, the consultant gains the satisfaction of a much wider effect on the world's gunk, grease, and grime. In the time it would take to wash a hundred mugs, I can advise two other people on how to do the job in my absence. What I lose in quality, I gain in quantity.
As a dishwashing trainer, I intensify the quality/quantity tradeoff, because training is merely a cheaper form of consulting. Instead of giving one client my undivided attention, I design a workshop that can handle fifteen or twenty. Each participant gets a little less, but the cost goes down, so the market for my message expands. Sure, a couple will miss some essential point, and may leave their dishes actually grungier than before. But isn't it worth it to spread the word?
As a dishwashing lecturer, I can spread my consulting advice even further, reaching several hundred avid clients at one time. True, some of them may be sleeping with their eyes open, and a few might even think I said to rub peanut butter on, rather than off. But shouldn't I think of the greater good for the greater number?
But why stop there? Through the twin miracles of the printing press and internet, I can reach hundreds of thousands of clients with my sterling advice. If my book on dishwashing is a bestseller, I might even reach millions! And earn millions!
Yes, what about the money? The going rate for dishwashers around here is about $9,000 a year. In contrast to that, a consultant might make $30,000; a trainer, $50,000; a lecturer, $80,000; and an author (better than me!), $150,000. In each case, the wider the audience, the more you can make.
The implications are obvious. Nobody ever gets rich washing dishes, no matter how much they enjoy the immediate gratification. And although consultants may live well, they don't retire early, the way lecturers and authors sometimes do. So keep your hands out of the dishwater and on the keyboard! You'll not only get rich, but you'll have a vast influence on the health and cleanliness of the nation!
Or so it would seem, but for that damnable Law of Raspberry Jam! And what is this ironclad principle standing between me and happy riches? Take a small jar of raspberry jam and a few loaves of bread. With a bit of experimentation, you will soon observe that
The wider you spread it, the thinner it gets.
Alas for those of us who would change the world and get rich doing it, The Law of Raspberry Jam is a true law of nature, as solid as the first law of thermodynamics. You could just as easily build a perpetual motion machine as you can make the jam both thicker and wider at the same time. Another way of expressing the law is this:
Influence or affluence; take your choice.
Every would-be helper must bow before The Law of Raspberry Jam. Shout through a megaphone or talk into a microphone. Train a disciple or create a church. Teach a class or build a university. None of these methods will thicken the message by so much as a single cubit.
WEINBERGS' LAW OF TWINS
As one of my experiments with The Law of Raspberry Jam, I wrote a book entitled The Psychology of Computer Programming. True to the law, the book did make me rich, in a modest way, but it wasn't very influential. After a dozen years, it was still selling well, which meant that the problems it described hadn't been solved. I know I shouldn't be ungrateful, but even so, I regret the title. Since its publication, clients keep accusing me of being a psychologist. Although many psychologists are consultants, and many consultants are psychologists, it's possible to be one without being the other. So let me set the record straight. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a psychologist. If you're depressed, don't write to me asking for a cure. If you can't resist picking items off K-Mart's shelves and dropping them into your bloomers, call someone else.
I have no certification as a psychologist. I have no degree in psychology. I was never initiated into the Secrets of Human Behavior, not even one tiny Secret of Human Behavior. In fact, when I went to college, I studiously avoided taking psychology courses, or even being seen with a psychology professor.
Until recently, I suspected that the entire field of psychology was fifty percent error and fifty percent fake. I further suspected that even the psychologists didn't know which half was which. As I matured, however, I began to respect the work of a select few psychologists, mostly those who could write plain English.
Being mistaken for a psychologist has helped me appreciate the psychologist's plight. If you're a nuclear physicist, gimleted bores don't pin you to the wall and offer their latest theory of strange quarks. But every bore and bartender is an expert in human behavior, without benefit of license, degree, course, training, or book.
Unfortunately for the certified psychologist, most of human behavior is ridiculously simple to predict. From the meteorologists, we learn that two-thirds of the time you can predict tomorrow's weather by saying it will be the same as today's. This makes everyone an expert on the weather—with only sixty-six percent accuracy. No wonder there are so many experts in psychology, where we can predict ninety-nine percent of human behavior with one simple law: Weinbergs' Law of Twins.
Even if you took a psychology course, your professors never would have taught you Weinbergs' Law of Twins. You must not blame them, nor sue for a tuition refund. Nobody wants to give away professional secrets. Would you take psychology courses if you knew that they covered only one percent of the subject, and that you could learn the other ninety-nine percent in one painless minute?
Like many of the truly great laws, this one had the most humble of beginnings. My wife, Dani, and I were sitting on the M104 bus, heading up New York's Broadway in the gloom of a winter rush hour. A haggard but pretty young woman boarded with eight children in tow. "How much is the fare?" she asked the driver.
"Thirty-five cents for adults, and children five and under ride free."
"Okay," she said, shifting one of the two tiniest under her arm so she could reach her purse. Dropping two coins in the meter, she started to parade her entourage down the aisle.
"Hey, wait a minute, lady!" the driver commanded, as only a New York City bus driver can. "You don't expect me to believe that all eight of them children is under six!"
"Of course, they are," she said indignantly. "These two are four, the two girls are three, both toddlers are two, and these little ones are one."
The driver was dumbfounded, and apologetic. "Gee, lady, I'm sorry. Do you always have twins?"
"Heavens, no," she said, managing to straighten a wisp of brown hair. "Most of the time we don't have any."
Whammo! Dani looked at me. I looked at Danl. Like the other passengers, we were amused at the miscommunication, but something bigger had flashed upon both of us at once.
We had just come from a frustrating consulting job, where nothing we did seemed to change anything. We couldn't figure out why we weren't successful, but as we thought of this poor couple doing what poor couples do and most of the time not making any babies, let alone twins, we had the insight we'd been seeking:
Most of the time, for most of the world, no matter how hard people
work at it, nothing of any significance happens.
You can test this idea. Look around you, then close your eyes for one minute. When you open your eyes, most of the time you'll see almost exactly the same thing. In other words, for most systems in the world, the best prediction about their behavior in the next instant is just what they were doing in the previous instant.
We were elated! And why not. Here we had a law that applied equally well to planets and polymers, porcelains and peonies, parliaments and pajamas. And, best of all, to people!
Of course, for various reasons we didn't do anything about our great discovery. To do anything significant would have violated Weinbergs' Law itself. Oh, we had lots of good reasons for doing nothing, but reasons are merely words. The law says nothing about words, only about events. Words are easy to change, but don't accomplish much.
Why didn't Weinbergs' Law of Twins make us famous? It seems that most people claim that they already knew this law, although nobody ever gave us a reference to a publication in a respectable journal. But, then, everybody claims to be an expert in psychology.
Perhaps the problem is that people expect too much of a law, particularly if it's a psychological law. They want the law to tell them how to change, or even more important, how to change other people. But, to their disappointment, Weinbergs' Law tells them that most of their efforts will come to naught, even if they only want to change themselves.
(Dani and I did eventually publish an entire book on the subject of why Weinbergs' Law prevails. It's called General Principles of Systems Design, and if you want to buy a copy, we're sure Dorset House would be more than happy to oblige you. And we'll be more than happy to collect the royalties. It's a little heavier than this book, both in weight and treatment. You may even enjoy it, but if you think it will teach you how to change the world, you're doomed to disappointment. Long live The Law of Raspberry Jam!)
I'm not a complete pessimist. I'll admit that once in a while someone actually solves a problem. Sometimes, I even solve a problem myself. Like last night, when I noticed that the faucet was dripping and I wasn't able to sleep. I got up, tried to turn off the water, and found that the washer was worn through. I stumbled down to the basement, located my tools, retrieved a replacement washer, staggered back up the stairs, replaced the washer, and stopped the drip. I was quite pleased with myself.
People who become consultants probably had early experiences of actually solving a few problems. This tasty bait encourages them to try again, and a few lucky successes in a row sets the hook for life. My first job was delivering newspapers. I then advanced to soda jerk in a four-stool drug store. Thousands of scoops later, I worked my way up to six stools, then twelve. Each of these jobs presented me with a series of minor problems I could easily conquer.
My big break came at the age of thirteen when I got a job as a relief stock boy in Hillman's Supermarket. As relief stock boy, I got to work every department in the store when the regular stock boy had a day off. With this kind of job, I had lots of opportunity to learn the entire grocery business. Within a few weeks, I was familiar with the operation of most parts of the store. I started looking around for problems to solve.
I began to notice patterns. I noticed the counter behind the cigarette display where repentant shoppers hid jars of olives and bags of jelly beans. I also noticed that even though I put the oldest items in front, dated items in the dairy case were always taken in reverse order.
But mostly I noticed the rutabagas. I not only noticed the rutabagas, I made their acquaintance. I appreciated that each rutabaga had a distinct personality, and week after week I recognized the same rutabagas smiling at me from the same produce section. Evidently, nobody ever bought rutabagas. Rutabagas were just a permanent decoration, smiling their happy smiles at all the shoppers.
One morning, I was standing in the produce section with Rudy, the produce manager, trying to figure out how to place the fresh vegetables in the limited counter space. Rudy had wrestled with this problem for a long time but didn't seem to be getting anywhere. He asked if I had any bright ideas—and suddenly I was a consultant!
"I've noticed," I suggested, "that the rutabagas don't seem very popular. In fact, they seem to be the least popular vegetable we have in the store. Would it be any great loss if we didn't use any counter space for the rutabagas and used it maybe for something else?"
Rudy looked at me sideways. I knew I was in serious trouble for implying that a mere, temporary stock clerk could help him solve his problems. But he had asked for help. To my surprise, he suddenly smiled and grabbed an empty banana box. Sweeping the rutabagas into the box, he said, "That's a great idea, kid."
I beamed with a consultant's pride. For the first time in my life, an adult had actually listened to me and taken my advice. Rudy looked at the void left by the departed rutabagas, then looked at me, then at the many vegetables that still had to be stocked, then at me again. After a long pause, he said, "Well, kid, that was a great idea. Now what's the least popular vegetable?"
After Rutabagas, Then What?
I've had thousands of consulting clients since then, but I can still hear Rudy's scratchy voice asking that killer question. My great idea had a fatal flaw. I can remove one problem that's my worst, but it always leaves another that used to be my second worst.
Often when teaching a class, I've had some pain-in-the-neck student who was clearly my worst problem. If I induced this student to drop the class, for a moment I would think, "Now, I'm in great shape."
Yet almost before the thought was formed, another student would start causing trouble. This new pain-in-the-neck used to be my second worst problem but now that the first one was gone, he had ascended to the top of the list. Once in a great while, though, I do remember Rudy's Rutabaga Rule in time. Like last night, after I'd fixed the faucet.
I crawled back into bed thinking, "Now that the worst noise is stilled, I'll be able to sleep." For a few minutes, it was quiet. Then I heard a loose end of antenna wire flapping in the wind and tapping against a window. Stirred by my success with the washer, I could easily have gone out in the wintry cold with a two-story ladder, and tried to fix that wire.
But Rudy's voice warned me it would just lead to the discovery of some other problem. That cursed wire flapped all night, and I didn't get any sleep at all. But I didn't fall off any ladder, either.
There's just no escaping Rudy's Rutabaga Rule:
Once you eliminate your number one problem, number two gets a promotion.
As a consultant, I often get so involved in my clients' problems, that I begin to believe I could actually rid them of problems once and for all. But. according to Rudy. there's always another problem.
At the beginning of this chapter, I promised that I would try to discourage you from entering the consulting business. First, I hit you with Sherbie's Laws, which warned you that nobody really wants your help, and that even when people seem to be asking for it, they're really only fooling you.
Then, I revealed The Law of Raspberry Jam, which showed you the futility of trying to be an effective human being and make a decent living at the same time. But perhaps that only bothered you until you learned Weinbergs' Law of Twins, which made it quite clear that you weren't likely to be effective in any case.
But just on the chance that you happen to be effective, Rudy's Rutabaga Rule demonstrates that you'll merely bring up another problem to replace the one you've somehow managed to solve. And if by some remote fluke you solve the second one, there will be another. And another. And then another, ad infinitum.
When you opened this book, you were, in effect, asking me to be your consultant. You've read all these secrets, my finest consulting efforts. By this time you ought to have put down the book and renounced your foolish fantasies. But, according to The Law of Raspberry Jam, you probably haven't learned a thing.
Actually, if you want to be a consultant, and if you haven't put down this volume by now, it's probably a good sign: You don't give up easily. So now I'm going to reward you by letting you in on the real secrets of consulting: The Hard Law, The Harder Law, and The Hardest Law.
The Hard Law
We've seen how difficult change is. This difficulty suggests that most of your consulting interventions simply won't work. If that prospect sends you into deep depression, stay out of the consulting trade. But if you're already in the racket, you'd better learn to live with failure.
That's what I call The Hard Law:
If you can't accept failure, you'll never succeed as a consultant.
This is truly a hard law, yet expressed in inverse form, it offers an atom of hope:
Some people do succeed as consultants, so it must be possible to deal with failure.
So what keeps successful consultants going, even when they fail?
The Harder Law
Why is there always another problem? It seems to me that people need to solve problems—and we consultants are the neediest of the lot. For us, solving problems is synonymous with living. I need problems so badly that if problems didn't exist, I'd have to invent them. And I do.
Rudy would have put it better, as The Harder Law:
Once you eliminate your number one problem, YOU promote number two.
The ability to find the problem in any situation is the consultant's best asset. It's also the consultant's occupational disease. To be a consultant, you must detest problems, but if you can't live with problems, consulting will kill you.
Does this mean you must give up trying to solve problems? Not at all. It means that you must give up the illusion that you'll ever finish solving problems. Once you give up that illusion, you'll be able to relax now and then and let the problems take care of themselves.
People who can solve problems do lead better lives. But people who can ignore problems, when they choose to, live the best lives. If you can't do both, stay out of consulting.
The Hardest Law
Obviously, I'm sufficiently thick-skinned to accept failure and ignore problems. Otherwise, I'd be out of the consulting business by now, and I certainly wouldn't be writing a book about how to help others.
So, now I'll let you in on a big secret, the biggest one so far. I'm not writing this book for you, I'm writing it for me. In fact, that's also why I do all my consulting work, because trying to help others always winds up initially helping me more than it helps my clients.
A little poem I keep over my desk expresses this philosophy:
To make a bundle, be a star;
Spread it wide and spread it far.
But if you want to change the sun,
Best begin with Number One.
This may sound selfish and paradoxical, but in the end, it's neither. I can never be of maximum help to clients if my problems are tangled uncontrollably with theirs. So I try to get my own mess straightened out before tackling theirs.
Unfortunately, as my own behavior demonstrates:
Helping myself is even harder than helping others.
That's The Hardest Law, and that's essentially what this book is about.
Chapter 2. Cultivating A Paradoxical Frame Of Mind
By now, you may have noticed that many of the laws of consulting take the form of paradoxes, dilemmas, and contradictions, and that they are often humorous. Perhaps this format has surprised you. Perhaps you thought that the consultant, of all people, must be logical, single-minded, and, above all, serious. Nothing could be further from the truth.
First of all, consultants deal in change. Most people—that is, most groups of people—function quite logically most of the time. And most of the time they don't need consultants. The time they do need a consultant is when logic isn't working. Usually they have arrived at some paradox, dilemma, or contradiction. They are, in a word, stuck.
WHY PARADOX?
"Stuck" reminds me of one of my "technical" consulting assignments when a computer was literally stuck. For no logical reason, the company's payroll program would start to process the record for the first employee and then would sit there, doing nothing—and doing it 10,000,000 times per second. The programmers confronted me with a long, logical list of reasons why this couldn't possibly be happening—but, of course, it was happening. And if the payroll wasn't computed in a few hours, there would be hell to pay.
Applying Sherbie's Second Law of Consulting, I reasoned that there was a people problem. The most obvious people problem was that the programmers were in a panic that was petrifying their ability to think. All the logical things they had tried weren't working, so I decided to try something illogical. I fabricated a fictitious employee, Aaron Aardvark, who had done no work and who would be paid nothing. I put Aaron's time card up in front of the other time cards and reran the program. His time card was rejected—and rightly so—but the rest of the payroll ran perfectly.
If logic always worked, nobody would need consultants. So consultants always confront contradictions. That's why I advise consultants:
Don't be rational; be reasonable.
Some consultants can't accept this advice. They want to know, for example, what the logic was behind Aaron Aardvark. I couldn't explain the "logic" in advance of experimenting with the fictitious record, but I could explain why it was a reasonable thing to do. It was reasonable because the programmers were so paralyzed by logic that they couldn't think effectively. Thus, anything I did was quite likely to be an improvement. Aaron Aardvark was the first, simplest idea that popped into my head. If that hadn't worked, I would have tried something else.
Computer consultants may now find it unsettling that I don't intend to give any additional explanation of Aaron Aardvark, but I want them to experience their own reactions to paradox. Like all my readers, they will be exposed to many paradoxes in the following essays, not all of which can or should be explained.
Because I can't explain everything to them logically, some readers will resist the paradoxical and insist even more vehemently on being logical. Perhaps they would rather be right than effective.
Rational consultants are always tripped up when their clients start being illogical, because
People who think they know everything are easiest to fool.
When they do trip, these consultants try to cover themselves with high-sounding rationalizations. They seem to believe that their lack of humor will be interpreted as rationality. Typically, they fool only themselves.
In a paradoxical world, sooner or later everybody stumbles. It helps to understand why you stumble, but most important things can be explained only in jokes, riddles, and paradoxes. Survival requires that we learn to laugh things off and start over, which leads us to the next paradox:
The business of life is too important to be taken seriously.
OPTIMITIS AND THE TRADEOFF TREATMENT
The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"
"Come, we shall have some fun now!" thought Alice. "I'm glad they've begun asking riddles—I believe I can guess that," she added aloud.
Alice probably suffered from the disease that affects so many consultants: the inability to resist solving problems. Not knowing Rudy's Rutabaga Rule, Alice takes the Hatter's bait, and a mad conversation ensues. Eventually, Alice tries to stop:
"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
"No, I give it up," Alice replied. "What's the answer?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter.
"Nor I," said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better with the time," she said, "than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers."
"If you knew Time as well as I do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him."
"I don't know what you mean," said Alice.
And then she was hooked again.
Alice wasn't the only one hooked by the riddle, which, according to Martin Gardner, became the object of much parlor speculation in Lewis Carroll's time. Eventually, Carroll wrote that the riddle, as originally invented, had no answer at all. But this didn't stop the speculation, which shouldn't surprise anyone who understands Rudy's Rutabaga Rule.
Every occupation has its characteristic diseases. Hatters in the 19th century were subject to mercury poisoning, which affected their brains; hence, the expression "mad as a hatter." The inability to resist solving problems is only one of the occupational diseases from which consultants suffer. Like hatters, they are subject to fits of madness, not from mercury, but sometimes from an excess of hot air. Many consultants pickle their livers at business lunches, blind their eyes on voluminous reports, or bend their spines in endless meetings. But the most serious occupational disease is known as optimitis.
Optimitis can be found in anyone who is asked to produce solutions to problems. It is an inflammation of the optimization nerve, that part of the nervous system which responds to such requests as
"Give us the minimum cost solution."
"Get it done in the shortest possible time."
"We must do it in the best possible way."
In a healthy individual, the optimization nerve receives such requests and sends an impulse to the mouth to respond,
"What are you willing to sacrifice?"
In the diseased individual, however, this neural pathway is interrupted, and the mouth utters some distorted phrases like,
"Yes, boss. Right away, boss."
Tradeoff Charts
The social cost of optimitis runs large. Anyone who has ever been stuck implementing a project conceived by a diseased consultant will want to know the cure: a kind of physical therapy using what I call tradeoff charts.
Figure 2.1 is an example of a tradeoff chart that might be used to cure a consultant who has been given the problem: "Design the world's fastest runner." The chart is a graph of speed versus distance for world records in running events. All tradeoff charts are graphs of this type: one performance measure versus another. What they show is how one performance measure has to be traded off, in the real world, against some other.
Distance (log scale)
Figure 2.1. World's Running Records
In this case, speed has been traded against distance. Assuming that the world's record is about the best you can do at any given time, the curve of speed versus distance gives you something to shoot for in designing your solution. It also gives you an idea of the relationship between these two measures of performance, a relationship that may hold even for some newly designed runner.
The tradeoff chart indicates that if you want to run faster, you'll have to restrict yourself to a shorter distance, assuming that all other factors are kept the same. Alternatively, it says that you can run further if you're willing to go more slowly. But most important, it says,
You don't get nothin' for nothin'.
We call this message The Tradeoff Treatment.
If someone asks you to run faster, you can offer to do so, provided that you need not keep it up for such a long distance. Or, if a longer-distance runner is needed, you may be able to run farther, provided you're willing to go more slowly. But you're unlikely to get a faster runner who can run farther as well, nor will you find a longer-distance runner who runs faster.
Optimitis can be a confusing disease because people fail to recognize the limiting nature of the tradeoff chart. Figure 2.2 shows a plot of speed versus distance for a particular runner who is not a world record holder at any distance.
Because the tradeoff chart is composed of world records, we know that runner X's plot will never surpass it. Runner X's curve represents a particular design relative to the best possible design on these two dimensions. Reading the curve, we can characterize runner X as a slow starter and not much of a sprinter, but with good endurance at long distances.
In Figure 2.3, we see another curve, this time for runner Y who might be characterized as a sprinter who cannot go the distance.
In Figure 2.4, we see my own curve, which describes a lousy runner at all distances.
The Tradeoff Treatment
Seeing Figures 2.1 through 2.4, we begin to understand how The Tradeoff Treatment cures optimitis. When someone asks a diseased consultant to "design the fastest runner," conditioning through long therapy must trigger the reaction,
"Let me check my tradeoff chart."