Consulting Journal: Techniques - Client dining rooms (2)

Techniques: Client dining rooms (2)

by David Blakey

The answers to some questions raised by our first visit to the client's dining room.

[Monday 9 June 2003]

I wrote previously about visiting your client's dining room. That article provoked a number of questions, and I shall attempt to answer them in this article.

Conversation about work

I wrote ‘You should join in conversations and meet people’. This raised the question of how much you can participate, given that you do not understand the normal rules of behaviour in the dining room. My answer is that you should have a set of sensible rules that will keep you out of trouble.

Ask questions about work

If the people in the room are talking mainly about work, then you can best participate by asking intelligent questions. You should do this continually if you do not understand the internal politics within the client and within the dining room. Avoid making suggestions.

Do not attempt to grab work

If someone says that they are considering a project that you could undertake, then do not suggest that you could do it. There are two reasons for this. First, you should not appear to be touting for work in the dining room. Second, if they have not got to the stage of preparing a consulting brief, you should not be involved yet. You can certainly say that it sounds interesting and that you would like to see a copy of any consulting brief that they prepare. If they then ask if you could do the work, then say that it is too early to be certain - because there is no brief - but that it sounds like an assignment that you could do.

This signals a number of good points to the person.

You are not eager to grab work without a proper consulting brief.
You believe that the client should prepare the brief, without being driven by consultants.
You expect a competitive process for the award of the assignment.

Many people think that consultants are so eager for work that they will invent their own assignments. You should appear to be someone who has an interest, who has the skill to do the assignment, and who will leave the decisions on awarding any future assignment to the client.

Do not compare

If someone mentions some project that they are working on, do not mention any previous experience that you have working for another client. If you mention any previous assignment, you may be asked for more information about it. Unless you know the career history of the person who asks you, you will be unable to give an answer. They may have been involved with the earlier assignment. They may have taken credit for its success, because they were personally involved. Alternatively, if they were not involved, they may have told their current employer that it was a failure.

In some extreme cases, you could even find yourself telling a person that you reported to someone who was, say, the director of logistics in a previous client, when someone else in your current client has passed themselves off as having that role.

If these issues do arise, it is better that this happens in a private one-to-one discussion, rather than an open conversation in the dining room.

Get other people to talk

One way of avoiding making comparisons is to get the other people to do all the talking. You can do this quite easily by asking intelligent probing questions.

Intelligent probing	Conversation
Were you involved in the diversification into restaurants?	When were you there?
How much did the strategy change after the merger?	Did you know George Jackson?

If you are used to only making ‘small talk’, then you may need to practice intelligent probing.

The example above only lists two questions. Two questions is a reasonable number. More may seem like interrogation. If the other person wants to continue talking, then encourage them by listening and asking intelligent probing questions from time to time. Remember that, for many people, talking to a consultant is a ‘release’; they may not be able to talk about these matters at home or with friends. They may not want to raise them with their superiors, their subordinates or their peers. Accept this role as part of being a consultant. It can reward you, especially if you are discreet and never discuss these conversations with anyone else.

After you have asking your maximum of two questions, then let the topic drop if the other person has run out of things to say.

Conversation about news

If the conversation is mainly about news and current events, then have some positive contribution to make. If someone asks if you saw a particular television programme the previous evening, it is not positive to say ‘No, I never watch television’ or ‘No, that show doesn't interest me’. Have a more acceptable - and genuine - reason. Saying that you did not watch a football game because you were at the ballet is acceptable. Some football fans are interested in dance as well.

You should avoid the mistake of appearing to denigrate something just because it does not interest you. If you never do watch television, it is quite truthful to say that you missed that particular programme. If you are rarely at home in the evening, it is truthful to say that you were out on that particular evening.

Do not make jokes about news and current events. Even if other people are making jokes, do not do so yourself. This does not mean that you have to be deadly serious. It just means that you should not be frivolous. There may be one person in the room who does not think that jokes are appropriate, and that one person may be important to you in getting more work.

Give your opinions if you are asked for them or if everyone else has given theirs.

This all means that you should do your homework. Make sure that you follow the daily international and national news. Be aware of major sports fixtures and results. Subscribe to publications that cover your client's industry.

Records

Some people have suggested that you should keep records of your visits to a client's dining room. I disagree. I make mental notes of where people sit and of the other people that they often talk with, but I do not have a database of suitable conversational topics and snippets of their career history. People are far to interesting for me to attempt to assign a set of categories to them. The more that you think that you know someone, the more that they continue to surprise you. I do not try to ‘pigeon-hole’ anyone. Just because they spoke about football and television on the previous occasion that I met them, I do not assume that these are the only interests that they have nor that their other interests will be similar.

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