Damn, just had a magnitude 5 insight that explains nearly 100% of my success/failure pattern in consulting. I think I can finally put together my full theory of (indie) consulting.
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It is easy for a well-intentioned but inexperienced consultant to *unintentionally* achieve those negative effects by being insufficiently systematic. Being *too* systematic is a sign of a fundamentally bad and/or exploitative consultant who should be doing other things.
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It’s a self-correcting problem in the top half of the 2x2, because prospective clients are pretty good at detecting both failure modes. That’s why this is a buyer’s market, not a seller’s market. Bottom half is a lemon market because it’s vulnerable people ripe for exploitation.
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The key to injecting systematic doubt is providing alternative ways of looking at things, breaking functional fixedness. It’s not so much that I’m good at this (I’m ok at it). It’s more that I *enjoy* it a lot, and it’s infectious/addictive if a good sparring session gets going.
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The key to injecting systematic confidence is reducing the number of ways of looking at things, by increasing belief in the *sufficiency* of a particular way of looking at things, increasing functional fixedness. “Don’t worry about other crap, just do this one weird trick right”
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It’s not so much that I’m bad at this (I’m ok at it). I just don’t enjoy it very much, and my obviously meh energy level is equally infectious. If a confidence-seeking client senses this, if they’re smart, they turn elsewhere for the need. Usually I sense it first and beg off.
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Wardley mapping is a good example of injecting systematic confidence in outer world. I briefly met a guy once (Andrew Taggart) who seems to do the philosopher thing well Therapy and life coaching, being the big market, are pretty commoditized+regulated, with certifications etc
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The connection to fox vs hedgehog should be obvious. The 2 basic consulting demand sources are “make me more foxy”, and “make me more hedgehoggy.” The inner/outer possibly maps a bit to extroversion/introversion. Extroverts need help with inner life, introverts with outer life.
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The distinctions on the 2x2 are why I might seem unnecessarily pedantic about the labels I use, and why I resist the word “coach”. The word (and preferred use of it) is associated with the confidence-building side.
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The outer/inner distinction is much easier to detect enforce. It’s generally obvious when somebody needs inner work, and shoo them away to therapists or philosophers or spiritual advisors or life coaches. Though it can feel cruel to do so.
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When I inventory my consultant friends, most are in the outer+confidence-building world. I don’t know many people offering inner world services mainly because they mostly rub me the wrong way (lemon market operators) and piss me off. The few I know are actually good at it.
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If you want to break into this indie consulting game, figure out what you’re best at providing. If you’re buying, clarify what you’re looking for and don’t look for incompatible support types from a single person. There are no good “platform” consultants who can do it all.
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I'll add a couple more points. The zeitgeist drives the market far more than you'd think. The last couple of years have not been good for selling "systematic doubt." Systematic confidence otoh, has been selling like crazy.
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So "systematic doubt" is declining from a small base, while "systematic confidence" is growing from an already big base. The market is both cyclic and asymmetric. The market for systematic doubt grows/strengthens during high confidence zeitgeist periods, but is never big.
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It's been down about 10% YOY over the last 3 years in the US since Trump's rise began basically. I was lucky I got my start in a very confident era (2011-15, zeitgeist coming out mostly strong and confident from the recession)
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Adding canonical book references for the 4 quadrants in response to a question. If you can't afford to hire people, read these books.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1118225740703526912 …
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Lol, one reason my market is so small is that people who rely on hitchhiker's guide type material for help with life/career/management/leadership problems are unlikely to make it to high levels in orgs or be entrepreneurs. Fortunately enough make it through to provide me a living
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Hmm... I think the US has generally lost confidence in itself, so long-term I may need to think about moving to a country that has more confidence in itself if this recession in the systematic doubt market continues much longer
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Another addendum: note that this is all agnostic to functional domain (marketing, org behavior, product dev, leadership, risk mgmt etc etc) and industry. Having competence a reasonable coverage zone along those 2 dimensions is table stakes.
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Obv. some (function, industry) pairs produce more problems in some quadrants than in others, so you should pick industry+functional areas to build knowledge and experience in that match your fundamental offering strength.
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Okay, this comment from
@nrose made me realize there's a very good test of whether you're naturally better at boosting systematic confidence or boosting systematic doubt. The diagnostic question is: are you a connector or separator?https://twitter.com/nrose/status/1118230451875909634 …Show this thread -
Connectors see similarities/rhymes among mental models and use the basic reasoning pattern "A is pretty much the same as B therefore just choose the frame convenient for you". You build confidence by hedgehoggy unification. If you can unify 2 things but use only 1, 2x confidence
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Separators try to separate similar things by poking at what makes them different. This increases doubt, through disunification. What you are confident of understanding/doing gets put in a smaller box, and the net unknown in your world goes up.
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I have a strong separator bias, to the point of pedantry when I get really interested, and often go nuts making up elaborate 2x2 separation schemes to distinguish things. Long-time clients kinda indulge me a bit even when it isn't useful to them because they know I enjoy it.
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End of conversation
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