Consulting Journal: Style - Label-free consulting

Style: Label-free consulting

by David Blakey

Keep consulting free of slogans. Advice from the obvious to the places you may have forgotten.

[Monday 25 November 2002]

I wrote recently about wearing a Tyrolean hat (in Been there; done that). It is very unlikely that you would wear a Tyrolean hat festooned with badges when you went to visit a client. If you arrived at the client wearing such a hat, you would probably take it off and put it away somewhere before you went in.

You might wear a plain hat, even a plain Tyrolean hat. The problem is with the badges. You would not wear the hat because of the badges.

In the same way, you might have a suitcase that is covered with labels that name the places that you have visited. It would be a more clumsy medium than a hat, and it would have a fairly limited audience - baggage handlers and hotel bell-boys - but you could have a suitcase that you put a new sticker onto for each place that you visit.

You wouldn't do this with your briefcase, of course. Even your last baggage tag should be removed as you leave an airport. Your briefcase should be personalized only to the extent of having your initials on it. You would never enter a client with a briefcase with labels on it.

But how about some other examples?

If you're male, how about your tie? If you're female, your scarf? Which of these would you consider as an acceptable motif?

The Playboy logo?
The word ‘Guinness’?
The logo of the Institute of Directors?
Your company's logo?
Your family's clan tartan?

Let's start by considering those that are unacceptable in any circumstances. The Playboy and Guinness ones would be out on that criterion. But couldn't you always wear your IOD tie or scarf?

The answer is: not always. There are some directors who dislike the Institute of Directors, for any of a number of reasons, ranging from their political attitudes to their own feeling of comfort. So what about your company's logo?

The danger with wearing your company's logo on your tie or scarf is that you may look like a ‘company person’. A client might assume that you will ‘toe the line’ of your company's policies and procedures; you might appear as inflexible or as incapable of thinking for yourself. You might appear as having your main loyalties with your employer rather than your client. I am not saying that these will be the impressions that you will give nor that these impressions have any foundation in fact. I am saying that some people could gain these impressions.

That leaves your family's clan tartan. Which is also a wrong answer. Other people may have positive or negative thoughts about you if you wear it as a tie or scarf. The one exception is if you are Scottish. By ‘Scottish’ I mean that you were born in Scotland, of Scottish parents, and have a Scottish accent. You can meet all three of these criteria and still not be Caucasian. If you wear a clan tartan, it is more likely to be accepted by other people if you are white. But mainly it helps if you do not have an accent that is obviously American or Canadian or New Zealand or - probably worst of all - English.

The examples that I have given so far are obvious. Keep your briefcase free of slogans. Keep to neutral ties and scarves. I shall now move on to less obvious examples.

The first of these is lapel-pins. Some companies still use lapel-pins with their logos on. I worked for a company where we were all issued with lapel-pins. They were extremely useful when I was travelling to another country or someone from another country was travelling to see me. We just looked for the lapel-pins at the airport. Each country had a different colour for their pins, so we usually swapped them. During my time with them, I didn't lose a single pin, but I was issued with five or six as a result of swaps. In general, though, a lapel-pin can give the same messages to people as wearing a company tie or scarf. You may not want to avoid them completely, but do consider the feelings that they can generate. Sadly, wearing a September 11 lapel-pin can have a negative effect on some people in the US, who believe that it is maudlin.

What about umbrellas? Is your umbrella free of slogans? I still prefer to use a plain black umbrella with a cane handle, but sports umbrellas are now in common use. You should avoid a cheap one, however. You should also avoid one that has any kind of message on it.

People can think that an umbrella with a slogan on it is one either that you got for free - so you look cheap - or that you paid for - so you look gullible.

Finally, your car. Some people have stickers on their rear window or their bumper that they do not mind total strangers seeing but that they would be embarrassed by a client seeing. First, take off the ones that are jokes. (No one wants to know what you claim your other car is or how management consultants ‘do it’.) Second, take off anything that is advertising. (You may like a local radio station a lot, but others may not, especially if they own a rival station.) Third, take off any political slogans. (This is a purely personal preference and should therefore always be kept separate from your work.) What does that leave? Nothing? Good.

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