Note that the same person may have needs (and the $ to pay for support in) all 4 quadrants. When I started 7 years ago I was surprised by the % of clients who *also* hired people in other quadrants besides me. Now I expect it. Some spend 1000s of $s a month on a support suite
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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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