Timeless things learned in my first job

I previously said I would not post today, but these stories kept bouncing around in my head, and I wanted to share them. I learned some great things early in my career, some of which have stuck with me every moment during my career.

Digging into a new problem

I worked for a very smart guy in my first job after graduate school — Paul Branstad at Booz-Allen & Hamilton.  Paul loved the consulting business, as he got to work on a constant stream of interesting problems at new businesses in new situations.  His attitude was infectious — a leader who clearly loves his business can attract great people and build a great culture. I wasn't that excited about the consulting business, but I was excited to work for Paul.

In a typical assignment, our team would work for three months for the client on a problem.  And a good part of the first month was always spent getting our bearings — building up a dataset about the business, talking to a bunch of people at the client and in the market, asking a bunch of questions.  During this first month, it was common to find ourselves buried in data and information and no closer to answering the client’s questions.  

We’d usually have a first progress meeting with the client 2-4 weeks in, and this meeting was fraught with danger, as the client was expecting great insight from us, and we rarely had it.  I still remember to this day in one of our early client meetings, when Paul opened the meeting in this fashion:

"We’ve spent a month looking at your business.   When we started the process, we understood very little about your business and were very confused by what we saw.  A month later, we are still very confused but at a deeper and more profound level."

Paul delivered this with sincerity and with a sparkle in his eye.  And then proceeded to deliver some really interesting observations about the business.  The client loved it.

As I dig into a new area, my confusion only grows during my first approach, and any early conclusions are probably wrong.  I allow myself time to muddle through, to try on and cast aside mental frameworks.  And often, I need to read 3-4 competing explanations to grok the subject.  Paul helped me to understand the value of this process and to develop the necessary patience.

The Bazooka

On one of my first consultant assignments, we were presenting some findings to our client, an automaker.  I was young and brash and full of myself.  

A junior person at the automaker asked a question.  I don’t remember the exact question, but I remember considering it a stupid question with an obvious answer.  And I explained to the group why it was so stupid and the obvious answer.  

After the meeting, Paul pulled me aside and said, “You know, you just humiliated that guy in front of his co-workers and his boss.  Those people are all important to his career.   You might want to develop a different weapon besides the Bazooka.”

I still feel bad about that!  And I’ve tried to keep the bazooka in check.

Strategy vs. Implementation

In one of our first assignments, we were working for a major US automaker, and we were invited to present our findings about their competitive strategy at the quarterly meeting of the product managers for all their brands. These were senior people responsible for the product positioning and marketing for millions of vehicles.

We were second on the agenda but were invited to sit in the entire meeting. The first agenda item sidetracked the whole meeting; they spent hours on it, and we got pushed to a smaller timeslot later. The critical agenda item that displaced us was "On which models should we include Scotchguarded carpet?" This was a heated discussion with strong differences of opinion. This was in the 1980s when automakers were losing market share monthly to Japanese entrants due to vehicle costs and quality.

I learned three things from this meeting:

• Details matter. Strategy formulation is great, but ultimately, your strategy is what you ship, and what you ship is made up of a million little detailed decisions. And each of those details feeds back into and should support your strategy.
• When your house is on fire, maybe details don't matter so much. This discussion didn't do anything to address the fundamental competitiveness of the automaker's products, and perhaps this was a poor use of time and staff.
• Nobody cares what consultants think. Consultants are often hired to tell a company something they already know but want an "expert" to tell it to them to justify some tough decisions. This planted the seed that I needed to get out of the consulting business and into a company that made something.