Funny how some of the best habits start out as laziness. I started writing quick-and-dirty notes to myself after consulting calls so I wouldn't have to maintain situation awareness between calls....
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... Then I started putting them into follow-up emails to clients rather than offline docs in lieu of deliverables, and whaddya know, clients appreciated the quick-and-dirty notes as much as the live calls, and more than delayed polished and formal "output"...
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Now that's pretty much ALL I do. Live calls, email notes. That's it. And that's all most clients actually want. Everything else is premium mediocre extras that don't actually add value, if they're read at all.
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I briefly did a misguided thing out of anxiety that everything was too ephemeral: make review materials like decks/spreadsheets/docs.
Way too much overkill.
Then I went the other extreme and did no follow through. Quickly lost the plot and it showed.
Emails = sweet spot.
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I can pretty much reconstruct the entire history of a consulting relationship, some going back 8 years, simply by reviewing all the post-call notes emails. Not exactly eidetic memory, but as close as I need it to be. I need to do more systematic game tape reviews though.
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Which is not to say it's easy of course. Simple but not easy. Takes a lot of practice to get good at summarizing the gist of a live conversation in written form that's both useful for recall, and distills the highlights/insights etc.
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Also don't take this too literally as some sort of minimalist zen logistics model... I do produce other forms of working collateral when they actually make sense. I've made my share of decks and spreadsheet models too.
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