Peter Winick argues that consultants default to adding new meetings when clients have problems, overloading already-packed schedules. Instead, integrate your expertise into what they're already doing: license IP into existing programs, grab a slot at a planned off-site, embed solutions into their natural rhythm.
Chapters
Hi there, it's Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and here's the idea that I'd like to share with you today, and that's this: all too often, as, as authors, as thought leaders, as experts, as advisors, and as consultants, we get so excited when a client or potential client presents us with a problem that we know we are best suited to solve. We can help them through this, we can fix this, we've done this many, many times before. However, Far too often in those situations, our gut response, our initial response, is to come up with some great solutions and not take a look at the landscape or the cadence of the things that the client's already doing. So we're adding to the mix. We're adding another offsite. We're adding another meeting. We're adding another series of coaching or interventions or whatever the case may be. Our default mode is to be additive. What I would suggest to you, or suggest to you to consider, is before you add, think about how can you integrate? How can you take what you've got and integrate it into the things the client's already doing? Can you license your intellectual property into a high-potential program? Can you ask the client for a small piece of an executive offsite that they already have planned where you can work with the team? Can you figure out other ways to be a part of the natural rhythm of the organization that you're working with as opposed to adding more to their plates. We're all so busy, and oftentimes what we'll think is, wow, I came up with this awesome solution, but it was the budget. And it really might not have been the budget. It might have been it's just so difficult to add yet another thing, another event, another intervention, meeting, offsite, whatever the case may be, to everyone's already packed and busy schedule. So anyway, my challenge to you is to think about where you can integrate instead of add.