The Perfect Consultant, Part 3 - Certainty or Ambiguity?
Mike and Ian explore interplay of certainty and ambiguity , as they dissect what it truly means to be an effective consultant. We introduce the concept of 'swagging,' where the ability to make 'scientific wild ass guesses' becomes a vital skill in the consultant's toolkit.
Next we dig into the practical implications of managing ambiguity in client interactions. The hosts draw on psychological insights to underscore the natural human inclination toward certainty, which often leads to anxiety in the face of ambiguous situations. They advocate for a mindset that not only tolerates uncertainty but actively seeks to leverage it for creative problem-solving.
Transcript
Welcome to Consulting for Humans, a podcast all about life in consulting.
Mike:You're with Mike and Ian, and each episode we'll be shining a light on a new topic that gets to the heart of what makes consultants happy and successful.
Ian:That's right.
Ian:And as you know, we're big fans of the idea that consulting is easier the more human you are.
Ian:So on Consulting for Humans, we're trying to add a little bit more humanity in the lives of consultants and maybe bring the skills and perspectives of consulting to some human lives as well.
Ian:Now, that means if you're a consultant who's trying to be more of a human or a human who's trying to be more like a consultant, then we think you're just our kind of person.
Ian:And you're really welcome along to today's episode.
Mike:In today's episode, we're going to continue our conversation about what it takes to be an Absolutely, completely, 100% perfect consultant.
Mike:We've already explored analytical skill versus creativity, debated humility versus confidence, and today we're going to talk about whether consultants should prize certainty or be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.
Mike:Now, Ian, you mentioned somebody when we were talking about this idea of certainty and ambiguity, and you brought up somebody that we both have worked with in our professional lives.
Mike:It's interesting because I was thinking about him last week on Humility.
Mike:I remember John being inducted into the high potential leaders class and walking in the night before and say, mike, I don't understand what I'm doing here.
Mike:He's thinking that these are like the top 25 people in this corporation who are being groomed for top positions.
Mike:And he said, that's.
Mike:I see the other names on the list, and that's not me.
Mike:And I said, john, that's exactly you.
Mike:But I'm so glad that you'll be here with us.
Ian:So very humble guy, a very humble guy who's had a really great career in our industry.
Ian:And it's the same John for.
Ian:That's his pretend name for now that I was thinking of, Mike, when you and I were talking about certainty.
Ian:And I want to give you an example of a funny take that I've heard consultants take on uncertainty.
Ian:Because I was sitting, having a beer with this same John one night, and we were talking about, how do you describe your work as a consultant to other people?
Ian:And we got to talking about how we analyze and how we estimate numbers, and he talked about a swag.
Ian:In fact, he said he'd been on the phone to his dad giving a number, and his dad had said, so is that a wag or a swag?
Ian:So this made me laugh.
Ian:A wag, as I'm sure you know, is a wild ass guess, but a swag is a scientific wild ass guess.
Ian:And if we are going to be the kind of consultant who cares about certainty, maybe we need to have the skill of pulling a swag out of the bag, so to speak.
Ian:Anyway, another consultant who I think is great at swags and all other things like it is Marty from House of Lies.
Ian:So to get another take on what we're talking about, Mike, let's just take a quick listen to Marty and his team explaining a number to a client.
Mike:That spending figure strikes me as high.
Mike:Where did you get that?
Mike:I.
John:That's fca from Calvin's ass.
John:Calvin Sobel is something of a consulting legend.
John:The term's an homage, and when uttered with absolute certainty, it is a surprisingly effective answer to where'd you get that number?
John:It's also fma from my ass.
John:You wanna take a look at these, please?
Mike:I feel good about that number.
Mike:I always loved Marty, and I'm never quite sure when he's breaking the third wall and when he's talking to the client and to his team and to us.
Mike:But boy, that is life in consulting.
Ian:Ah, yes.
Ian:So not all your numbers have to be from anybody's ass.
Ian:Okay, if you want to build the skills of swagging, here are some tips that I read online.
Ian:To make a swag, to make a scientific wild ass guess, then go for a range and test for reasonability.
Ian:Smallest or lowest.
Ian:That seems reasonable.
Ian:That's probably quite a good way of avoiding the kind of exaggeration bias that we have.
Ian:You might have to explain like numbers actually work when they come along with a rationale.
Ian:Why isn't it higher?
Ian:Why isn't it lower?
Ian:How large would it be possible to go and embrace the uncertainty?
Ian:We have to as well, I think, communicate not just the number, but the assumptions that lay behind it.
Ian:That's part of swagging too.
Ian:Talk about what the consequences might be if assumption X goes in this direction.
Ian:Then we get change Y in our swag and finally say, okay, my final swag is right here.
Ian:It's in the viable mid range between this unreasonable high and this unreasonable low.
Ian:And actually, I think that's what 90% of consultants do when without thinking about it.
Ian:But breaking it down and being honest about it, I think is part of the culture of swag.
Ian:Anyhow, Mike, apart from just picking numbers out of the air, what else is there to certainty for Consultants, what does it consist of?
Ian:Why might we care about it?
Mike:I think the question comes down to this debate that we're having of people who are only or so much more comfortable with working in situations of certainty versus working in situations of uncertainty and ambiguity and the fact that both are really important and absolutely called for.
Mike:So let's talk about it.
Mike:What are we talking about here?
Mike:Being comfortable in situations that are certain.
Mike:What do we mean?
Mike:There's an answer.
Mike:The problem or opportunity or question is pretty clear.
Mike:There's formulas, precedents, approaches to get to an answer and to be fairly confident that whatever actions, recommendations, calculations we make are that we know where it's where that's going to lead.
Mike:That's concepts of certainty.
Mike:But we also have very uncertain situations.
Mike:We're working in something that's new to us or it's different or it's changing.
Mike:It's hard to define.
Mike:There are no clear precedents or multiple different precedents.
Mike:Ultimately, the results of our actions or the actions we're recommending to our clients, we're not sure how they're going to turn out.
Mike:We can't be certain.
Mike:That's uncertainty.
Mike:But there's also ambiguity in ambiguity.
Mike:There's just these multiple different perspectives, all of which could be true or they're true to different people in different situations.
Mike:So we have times when the clients have no idea what they want.
Mike:And perhaps it's because we've got a lot of different people who see things differently, and there's no readily apparently rational, logical, foreseeable way to tell who's right.
Mike:So whether we're dealing with certainty, uncertainty, or ambiguity, we still need clarity and precision to be able to deliver value in consulting.
Ian:So what comes out at the end needs to be clear, even if what went in at the beginning, if you like, was may have been clear and precise, or may have been ambiguous.
Ian:You're certainly triggering me, Mike, with memories of client problems that are ambiguously defined or clients where there are multiple different people, different perspectives on what the problem is.
Ian:So we.
Ian:We were trying to nail down what does clarity and precision mean to us?
Ian:What.
Ian:What might it mean if we were able to communicate clearly and precisely because this is going to be at one end of our spectrum, a consultant who's able to be clear and precise.
Ian:What might that look like?
Ian:That might mean that we're able to say to our client, as you said, Mike, if we commit to do X, we will get Y.
Ian:I think it's probably true as well that clarity at the beginning of something, at the beginning of a project.
Ian:So to be able to set goals, to be, to measure progress against goals like that's important from a practical point of view.
Ian:And I think it's motivating for people as well.
Ian:And it also seems that being able to be precise lends something to our credibility.
Ian:And I have a feeling that this might be a bit of a trap for us as consultants.
Ian:If we think that the only way to be credible is to put increasing numbers of decimal places in our numbers, then I think we're missing something.
Ian:But I think it's true that as outsiders, giving clients advice, to be able to characterize what we know and put a number on it sometimes gives us that kind of authority, that kind of credibility.
Ian:I remember going to a sales call, a sales meeting with the CEO of a major European contact lens manufacturer.
Ian:And I was pretty sure that we were going to have a conversation about our capabilities and our methods and our approaches.
Ian:But we sat down and this guy looked me in the eye and said, okay, how big do you think the contact lens market in Europe is?
Ian:And then he grilled me over whether I had the right number and whether my definition was right.
Ian:And he was using my confidence in a number as a bit of a surrogate.
Ian:It felt to me like it was a bit of a narrow minded surrogate, but to him it was an important surrogate for do you know the market?
Ian:Do you know the thing that we're talking about?
Ian:Ever since then, I've had a horror of anybody asking me what the market size for anything is.
Ian:But clearly it goes to credibility.
Ian:It goes to our ability to set clear goals, and it goes to our ability to communicate consequences of things effectively.
Ian:Mike.
Ian:Clarity and precision.
Ian:I thought that we were going to end up dissing the clear and precise end of things and loving the ambiguous end of things.
Ian:But the more we think about this, the more I have to realize that actually being clear and precise about things is an important part of my repertoire.
Ian:What do you think?
Mike:I think it's a very important part of the repertoire.
Mike:And I think sometimes being clear and precise about the process and why and how can help us in uncertain and ambiguous situations to get away from the fact that content we don't know.
Mike:All of our sureties are not like one another.
Mike:But even that gives us opportunities, great opportunities to create value.
Mike:So that's why we have to be comfortable with ambiguity.
Mike:It's funny how we'll talk more in luminaries about Vuca or Worlds, but you know, that was a description of these kinds of environments, but it was made in the mid-90s.
Mike:And I think the people in the mid-90s looking at today would go, oh, my gosh, we were in such a certain environment back then compared to now.
Mike:But this dealing with ambiguity really ups our problem solving game.
Mike:And finally, yeah, I think that leads to much stronger client engagement in strategic planning and change management.
Mike:We've always dealt with the fact that the path forward is not always clear, but we have the ability to work with clients to go through these uncertain phases by providing frameworks for decision making rather than immediate, definitive answers.
Ian:Yeah, it's great.
Ian:I can think of lots of the clients that have urgently wanted to buy work from me or the firms that I work with, and a large part of their motivation to come and buy and was because some new big uncertainty had come along.
Ian: you might call a mini boom in: Ian:It's callous to say it, but we did.
Ian:The whole world changed on its head.
Ian:Covid came along and there was a whole new need for new advice and new directions and new plans.
Ian:And in fact, this idea of the ambiguity and the volatility of the world is something that we're still seeing right now.
Ian:I think you were reading about this just the other day, right, Mike?
Mike:It's fascinating.
Mike: and their uncertainty around: Mike:So it's this side of the pond, but I think even people around the world are having a little bit of agenda here.
Mike:And it started to recount that people just don't do well with uncertain situations.
Mike:So, interestingly, in controlled experience, albeit probably with psychology students in labs, people who believe that they have a 50, 50 chance of getting a painful electric shock, an uncertain condition, are much more agitated than people who are 100% certain that they will get that severe electric shock.
Mike:So that's.
Mike:What kind of world is that?
Mike:Oh, my gosh.
Mike:And this article was looking at Kate Sweeney, a psychology professor at the University of California who has a whole team that's been studying uncertainty.
Mike:And she was talking about for people who are really finding themselves caught up in uncertainty and anxiety and the kinds of detrimental things that does to your life and your productivity.
Mike:Here's what we found is the best way to approach this.
Mike:And I thought individual consultants being uncertain themselves might be starting out, may have something to learn from this.
Mike:And her team is saying that it builds on a paradox about optimism and worry.
Mike:Cultivating optimism, especially at the very beginning, is much more productive than really letting Ourselves get seized with worry.
Mike:But worry has its benefits and its detriment.
Mike:So they save worry for the 11th hour here.
Mike:So they say, for example, step one, you take actions to manage risk.
Mike:Break it down.
Mike:What can I do to get my arms around this and stop looking towards the end?
Mike:I can't see the end right now.
Mike:Let me figure out what I can do now to move forward productively.
Ian:That's a great lesson for the beginning of a project.
Mike:Exactly.
Ian:I know loads of people who get struck sideways by the adrenaline going, okay, we have to get started now and I have to get moving.
Ian:And they're in a permanent state of anxiety.
Ian:Like all the mature kind of experienced project managers I've seen in consulting have got this calm, structured, look ahead and break it down.
Ian:Think it's a really good point.
Mike:Absolutely.
Mike:And things do sometimes go wrong, things do go bad.
Mike:There's a practice, a preemptive benefit finding, an idea that says, take not a lot of time, but take a little bit of time to say, all right, let's think about this.
Mike:What are some of the worst case scenarios?
Mike:Or what is the worst case scenario?
Mike:Rather than being just free floating anxiety?
Mike:Let me nail this down.
Mike:What could actually go wrong and what might be some of the benefits that come from that?
Mike:What we might learn some things here if some of the stuff that we're doing now doesn't pan out, we now know.
Mike:Like, was it Anderson who said, I know a thousand ways that don't work, I don't have to taste those anymore.
Mike:I'm looking for one more to make this light bulb go.
Mike:So this little bit of preemptive benefit finding can have a real tonic on where we're going.
Mike:And if the anxiety continuously is too much and the uncertainty, take a break, get some rest, do something that you can control to ease something that you can't control.
Mike:And now that all perhaps sounds like unicorn and roses a little bit.
Mike:But she says the other important part of this is as you get to the 11th hour, not the last minute, as you get to the 11th hour, let that worry come back in.
Mike:So helping to balance the worry that can motivate us to act, the worry that can help us spot risk, the worry that can help us mitigate risk, but not using worry that the toxin that could have swept through the entire project to demotivate us, SAP our spirit, get us doing unproductive things.
Mike:So use this word as a shot here.
Mike:And it's funny, as I was thinking back on this article and looking at that, I remember the time a Long time ago when my partner, managing partner called me in and said, Mike, what do you know about scenario planning?
Mike:And I thought of two sentences from my strategy PhD and thought, there's this and there's that and that.
Mike:Great.
Mike:I'm glad you're on top of this because Monday I want you to start a global cross industry scenario planning project on a very high visibility thing.
Mike:So as I remember the weekend sleeping through the stacks of the University of North Carolina library, going through a lot of these stages, I thought, I think she's got a great idea.
Mike:Thank you, Professor Sweeney.
Ian:Mike, that's a really great point.
Ian:This idea of going back to the negative energy at the 11th hour and waking back up the adrenaline.
Ian:I think that's a really good purposeful tip.
Ian:I think I'm going to try that one now.
Ian:Mike, like always, we've got the chance to do a deeper dive on this whole idea of certainty and ambiguity.
Ian:And if you're all in the mood for a little bit more of this, we have our Luminaries episode coming out right now.
Ian:Look for our Luminaries episode.
Ian:If you're part of the luminary tier this week, we're going to be asking, what does it mean to be certain about something and why do we care?
Ian:And how much is uncertainty costing us in our economies?
Ian:The answer?
Ian:It's a huge amount.
Ian:What about consultants?
Ian:How do we respond to our own desire for certainty, our own desire for closure?
Ian:A lot we suffer and it turns out we're quite vulnerable creatures.
Ian:Why are consultants so often expected to do this big comfort with ambiguity, comfort with uncertainty thing?
Ian:We dig into the idea of vuca, that acronym, and we talk about how it drives the kind of work that clients come to us asking for.
Ian:And finally, we're going to ask in our Luminaries episode, if we were to choose one over the other, how much could that be holding us back from doing great work?
Ian:How much are we wedded to being precise?
Ian:Are we wedded to being uncertain?
Ian:And how much is that holding us back?
Ian:And then finally, Mike, we're going to talk about those super communicators that we've already mentioned a couple of times on the show.
Ian:What can that tell us about whether we're always reaching for the right tools and the right team when we deal with different situations?
Ian:That's all for those of you who are our supporters in the luminary tier, Mike, meanwhile, for us everyday folks here on Consulting for Humans, let's get some closing thoughts.
Ian:Tell me something that you're thinking about that you're going to try and come back to from what we've talked about today.
Mike:It's interesting, Ian, My first answer to this was going to be Kate Sweeney's article or research that was reported in this article.
Mike:And I thought I realized that I've done some of that instinctively or almost backed into it, those innovative, creative things that happen under uncertainty.
Mike:But when we got to the Luminaries research and I came to that scale on the need for closure, I thought, wow, this is going to be really helpful for me.
Ian:So if this need for closure thing sounds interesting to you, that's in our Luminaries episode.
Ian:We'd love for you to join us.
Ian:Mike.
Ian:I love the Kate Sweeney stuff as well.
Ian:I'm really interested in the idea of a preemptive benefits analysis.
Ian:I'm an optimistic kind of a person, but I think for project management, looking ahead and doing a preemptive inventory of benefits, that could be a really powerful way for me to get it all straight in my head.
Ian:Might be a powerful way for clients to get it all straight as well.
Ian:I'm going to search that one down right now.
Ian:Apart from that, Mike, we've still got our final pair of traits to talk about next time, right?
Ian:And it's a controversial one.
Mike:It is.
Mike:Are we looking for the hard working consultants?
Mike:Are we looking for lazy consultants to do our best work on a team and a firm?
Ian:Mike, it's going to be great.
Ian:I can't wait.
Ian:Why don't you all come back and join us next time then on the Consulting for Humans podcast.
Mike:The Consulting for Humans podcast next is brought to you by P31 Consulting.
