Like some ignoble professions, consulting suffers from low barriers to entry. At least my children need to take a test to get a driver’s license. But any adult can hang out a shingle and become a “consultant”. Here are 5 ways to know that yours may be in over his/her head. If you ever hear your consultant say one of these, run away….very, very far away.

#1: “Does that make sense?”
I can’t think of anything more stomach-turning than to hear a supposed expert ask at the end of what is usually a long-winded monologue, “Does that make sense?”

I ask you, in what other profession, would the alleged expert ask you, “Does that make sense?”

Can you imagine your doctor, after giving you a diagnosis and explanation for your illness, saying “Does that make sense?”

What about your mechanic: “Hey Sal, what’s wrong with my car?” “Well Dave, you seem to have a serious compression problem in one of your cylinders, which is ruining your acceleration….Does that make sense?”

Or your local dry cleaner: “I’m sorry, Mr. Harper, we couldn’t get the red wine stain out. We tried washing it, dry cleaning it. We even tried several spot removers. And it still didn’t come out…..Does that make sense?”

If you ever hear one of your consultants ask you, “Does that make sense?”, feel free to ask in reply, “Why do you ask me? Don’t you know?”

#2: “That’s a great question. What do you think?” or “What does the group think?”
This is a classic. This is the modern day version of putting on your dancing shoes and buying some time. Instead of saying, “You know, I have no clue. I don’t know, but I’ll find out for you, unless someone else here might know”, the slick consultant will take a question that he/she can’t answer, and delay/sidetrack by throwing it back to the questioner or to the larger group, if in a group setting.

Please. If your consultant can’t tell you that he/she doesn’t know, how can you be certain that they’re not faking it when they DO tell you something?

#3: “My role is not to answer your questions; my role is to help YOU answer your questions.”
This is another dancing shoes type response, typically offered when a consulting client or a coaching client asks, “What do you think?”, “What do you think I should do?”, or “What would you do?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard consultants and coaches say that their job is not to give answers but instead to help their client find the answers. Typically, this is accomplished by the consultant’s using expression # 2 above: “Great question, Pat. What do you think you should do?” Or something worse like, “Oh my role is only to facilitate the process.”

Again, how many other professions do you tolerate the alleged expert answering your direct, straight-forward question with a response that says, in effect, “I don’t have to answer your question.”

I appreciate that there is value in not automatically answering every question posed.  But there are limits to that approach.

Again, if your consultants ultimately don’t know, they should say so. If they should know (because they’ve positioned themselves as true expert coaches and/or consultants), then what are they doing charging you for their services?

#4: I name drop, using lots of popular leadership/management best-sellers.
If your consultants tend to use popular leadership/management books as their rationale for implementing or doing whatever they’re doing to you or your organization, I hope you get the hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-my-neck feeling.

Hey, we all enjoy reading about moved cheese and being like hedgehogs. But is this truly what your company or organization needs right now? Beyond referring to the popular (faddish) best-seller, how does your consultant know? What experience does he have with other organizations or situations that serves as better justification for the recommendation? If you probe the consultant, and she gets that deer in the headlights look, search for the deer repellent, and quickly.

#5: “Value-added”
To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, if you have to say it’s “value-added”, it’s probably not. Certain things are truly value-added. Having a steering wheel in a car vs. no steering wheel: that’s value-added. Having an electrical outlet that stops you from frying when you drop the hairdryer in the bathtub (and you’re in the bathtub): that’s value added. Having real coat hangers in your hotel closet and not those hook-less ones with the dinky-nob-on-the-top-so-you-don’t-bankrupt-the-entire-hotel-chain-by-stealing-all-of-our-coat-hangers: that’s value added.

It’s simple: value-added is determined by the customer. It’s not for the consultant to say. It’s for the customer to decide. The customer determines what is and what isn’t value and value-added.

And that certainly applies to the value and value-added of the consultant.

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What consultant double-speak and gobbledygook makes your skin crawl or makes you laugh with incredulity? Share your vivid examples with other readers.

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In this post, we speak with Michael Romaner, Executive Vice President for Digital at Morris Communications. Morris Communications is a privately held media company headquartered in Augusta, Georgia with diversified holdings including newspaper and magazine publishing, outdoor advertising, radio broadcasting, book publishing and distribution, visitor publications and online services. Morris Publishing Group (the newspaper publishing arm of the company and one of the oldest newspaper companies in the United States) owns and operates 13 daily newspapers as well as nondaily newspapers, city magazines, and free community publications in the Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and Alaska.

David Harper: As Executive Vice President for Digital for the entire company, what are your main responsibilities?
Michael Romaner: Ultimately, I am responsible for the strategic direction our company takes in the digital publishing arena. In this new position, I work with all of Morris’ diverse divisions in helping them form strategy, partnerships and digital marketing. Over time, I expect other responsibilities will emerge. For example, it is likely my team and I will help our division heads find and provision resources to achieve their digital goals, whether they be in development or sales or marketing.

What are some of the greatest challenges today facing the print version of newspapers and other printed publishing?
This is always an interesting question. The best answer I can give is “time.” Or maybe, “proliferation of choice.” People still love printed products. But since the advent of the web, the amount of information - and entertainment - that has become readily available has exploded beyond anyone’s imaginings. The vastness of it all absorbs people’s attention in a way that traditional products like newspapers and magazines can’t do anymore. Who has time to read a daily newspaper in the morning when the first thing you do is check your email, your Facebook page, Twitter, etc?

Well, some people do, in fact, have the time and make the time, because the daily newspaper is still a very powerful thing. And important! But some people don’t make the time. For young people, newspapers never became relevant. For some others, newspapers (and magazines) lost their relevance, simply given the proliferation of information choices. This is certainly not universal. Millions of people continue to subscribe to these traditional products. And they drive a powerful business - one that is not nearly as powerful as it once was, however.

Advertising dollars also have become scattered across the giant new marketplace of information and entertainment solutions. Think classifieds: Does a local auto dealer want his listings on a local classifieds website or Autotrader.com, where he will find the same audience as is on the local site, plus an expanded audience beyond anything the local site can provide?

What are the greatest opportunities in the digital area?
The smart money says it’s in mobile - hardware, apps, advertising, HTML5 web development. Forecasts say that 60 percent of all digital advertising will be on mobile devices in 2016. Right now, the amount spent on mobile-related advertising is miniscule. Imagine the shift we are going to see over the next 48 months.

How will newspapers and publishing be different 2 - 3 years from now?
Increasingly, our efforts are turning to digital, and especially mobile. We are launching apps for everything. And we’re learning to sell mobile. Increasingly, publishing on print will be a niche practice, and printed products will be niche products. But those products will be more expensive than ever, as niche products tend to be. People who want them in that format will be happy to pay the price.

How do you define “leadership”?
I just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs, and now I have some new views about leadership (I highly recommend the book). Job’s success came from several factors, particularly he loved the products Apple built. He loved them in a way that he had to be involved in their development every step of the way. Whether it was how the software worked, or the hardware, or the design aesthetic, he insisted on being close, involved. He breathed life into Apple’s products in a way no one else at the company ever did - and there were (are) many great people working at Apple.

Too many executives in too many companies are too removed from the product or service the company provides. They are too happy to delegate to experts, because either they think they should, or because they have no real passion for the product. CEOs typically manage the money, not the thing the company is known for outputting. Leadership, then, is about passion. It’s about teaching your employees in a hands-on way to love the product and care for the customers it serves.

Looking over your career, what’s one of your most meaningful accomplishments?
I have always tried to inspire greatness in my employees. I have sometimes been successful. Over the years, there have been times when my division was a great place to be. That’s what I wanted most of all.

What’s one of your most notable regrets?
I didn’t stay close enough to the product. Had I done so, we would have had better products. I delegated too much.

What would you recommend to new employees who aspire to be managers and leaders?
Don’t lose touch with the skill you developed that got you into management in the first place. If you were an engineer, be sure to continue to engineer. Keep your skills honed. If you were a designer, design stuff for the rest of your life - even if you become the CEO. Yes, you will have to learn all sorts of new skills. But you must make time to keep the old ones alive. Most managers never learn to do that. And then, they increasingly become removed from the product. They wind up delegating themselves to far less important roles, like “running the company,” rather than building the product.

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What changes do you expect to see in publishing? How have your reading habits changed? Are you print or digital? Post your thoughts for other readers.

View others’ comments.

In my previous post Why Are You Still Running On Your Hamster Wheel?, I referred to Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement address (here’s the text version as well).

As I write, this specific posting has been viewed over 12 million times, with millions more having viewed other postings of the same video. No doubt, many of you saw clips from it on the nightly news, in stories relating to Jobs’ death.

In several of the broadcasts I saw, news anchors referred to the same passage from his address:

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart….

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life…. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

I’m sure many of us, with every good intention, committed to following our heart and intuition, just as Jobs described.

So why didn’t we? And why don’t we?

Many will cite fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of change. Etc.

I think those are decent answers but not the total answer.

Fundamentally, it’s difficult to change because of ignorance, in the literal meaning of the word.

I know who I am, now. I’m with him every day. I wake up with myself, I go to work with myself, and I go to sleep with myself. Every day.

Ah, but this new self, this ideal self that I should be. I don’t know him that well.

I haven’t met him yet. Sure, I may have a vague notion of who he is, or who he should be, but I’ve yet to meet my ideal self.

Which makes sense, because if I was already my ideal self, if I had achieved the pinnacle of Maslow’s needs hierarchy and had achieved full self-actualization, I wouldn’t be so inspired by Jobs’ exhortations. It would be old news to me.

Although we may have a clue of what our ideal self looks like, it’s hard to feel overwhelmingly compelled to pursue it. At some level, we like who we are, warts and all. It’s comfortable. It’s a known quantity. It’s familiar.

We may feel we’d like to be better, but at what cost? At the cost of “pushing off the ledge” as I say, and abandoning our current understanding of who we are.

Scary stuff for most.

So don’t be too hard on yourself if you haven’t been transformed by Jobs’ video. Most of us won’t.

But then again, it might be worth the effort to push off the ledge. How bad could it get? Particularly, if you start slow and take it one step (or small leap) at a time.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was self-actualization and personal fulfillment.

Who knows how far Jobs got on his journey, how true he was to the ideals espoused in his commencement address. Only he knew that.

Just as only you know how far you’ve gotten, and how much further you’d like to go.

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What changes have you made in how you live and lead? Why do some of us fear being who we truly are? Post your thoughts for other readers.

View others’ comments.

This month’s issue formed from the convergence of several recent events:

- I read the August McKinsey Quarterly Report “The US Employment Challenge” (You may have to register, but it’s free.)
- Steve Jobs resigned as Apple CEO.
- I watched Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement address (here’s the text version as well).

Here’s how they fit together:

In the McKinsey Report, Kelly Services CEO, Carl Camden, writes:
“So jobs aren’t permanent, locations aren’t permanent, and workers are returning back to what I would call a free-agent type of work style. Independent contractors, part-time employees who move in and out of the workforce, temporary employees, consultants who move in and out of the workforce - that group of individuals in most of the industrialized world is already 25 to 35 percent of the workforce, on its way to becoming 50 percent of the workforce, I think, over the next decade.”

In his resignation letter, Steve Jobs states:
“I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
Jobs was diagnosed in 2003 with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor, had a liver transplant in 2009, and is currently battling pancreatic neuroendocrine disease. It is apparent he faces a very difficult, uphill climb.

In his 2005 Stanford commencement address, Jobs recalls a childhood memory:
“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me…

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart….

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

So the McKinsey article reminds us that if we stand still, we run the risk of stagnating. We need to be flexible, continue to develop our skills and capabilities, and see the ongoing change as challenging opportunity.

Jobs’ letter reminds us that how things play out or end may not always be our preferred choice, or even our choice.

His commencement address underscores what we all know but infrequently honor or live to the fullest extent: that while we have the time, freedom, and opportunity to choose how we live and lead, we continually run the risk of staying on our running wheel, convinced that if we run faster or longer, we’ll be happier or wiser.

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What changes have you made in how you live and lead? Post your examples and your thoughts for other readers.

View others’ comments.

In this month’s post, I give you permission to smack me upside the head (metaphorically speaking, of course) if I ever make it seem or if I ever suggest that leadership is easy.

If you’re like me, your inbox is full of newsletters and email articles on leadership and management.  Many I don’t read, because the author makes the mistake of suggesting that leadership is easy:

“The 5 Easy Leadership Skills to Being a Better Leader, Now”
“The 7 Easy Things Your People Want You To Do”
“10 Easy Steps to Becoming a Great Leader”

Question: Why do writers and consultants have this habit of making it sound like leading others is a simple 1-2-3 process?  Connect the dots, and voila, you’re a phenom as a leader.

Truth be told, I’ve not yet met a manager or a leader that I’ve respected, who’s said that leading people is easy or simple.  Those that have said it, often have an inflated sense of self, are out of touch with their people, or both.

Most good or aspiring-to-be-good leaders can show you the scars they’ve sustained because of the leadership mistakes they’ve made along the way.  What impresses me about these leaders is their ability to admit their mistakes without scapegoating (i.e. “I took my best shot, and failed.”), coupled with their determination to move forward.

To quote the author Aldous Huxley (with apologies for the androcentric quality):
“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”

So leadership is not easy, irrespective of what popular authors and less-than-popular consultants imply or actually have the audacity to even state.

I’ve yet to see a simple, easy-to-follow-and-do road map for leadership success, but here are a couple of books I do recommend:

The Feiner Points of Leadership by Mike Feiner (full disclosure: Mike’s a friend and was featured in our September and October 2005 60-Second Email).

Leadership without Easy Answers by Ronald Heifetz.

Feiner’s book is a great, practical, how-to guide, and Heifetz’s book is more theoretical; they’ll make for good bookends in your leadership library.

So for anyone who’s under pressure these days to deliver results (aren’t we all?), and is truly feeling that pressure (ditto), don’t worry. You’re in good company, with the emphasis on “good”.

It’s not easy.  It is difficult.  And therein lies the challenge that makes the leadership journey worthwhile.

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Have an example of a great leadership book or article? Or an example of one you wouldn’t recommend even to your worst enemy? Share your suggestions and thoughts with other readers.

One of the big myths in employee development is that people are motivated by goals, or that goal setting is inherently motivating.

If I’m planning a trip, my knowing the destination, knowing where I have to get to, doesn’t make the trip any more desirable or annoying.

Why I’m going to wherever I’m going to, now that tends to have an impact.  Maybe it’s to see an old friend I haven’t seen in 15 years.  Or maybe it’s for a funeral.  Two different reasons.  Two different motivations.

Staying with the trip analogy, if I use a GPS system or Google Maps so that I know precisely where I need to get to, exactly how far the trip will be, and how long it should take, that still won’t really add fundamentally to my motivation for getting there.

Yet somehow we feel that it applies to goal setting.  SMART goals anyone?  [SMART Goals:  Goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Actionable, Realistic/Relevant, and Time-bound.]  Truly, just because we have people using SMART goals doesn’t mean they’ll have great desire to pursue them.

Instead of getting caught up in the precision and micro-measurement of our goals, how about adding the following:

• Will the goals you set with your people contribute to more than your organization’s success?  i.e. will they contribute to the success (growth, capabilities, sense of self worth, etc.) of the person pursuing the goals?  How so?  Do you know the person well enough to even answer the question?
• Is the goal more than just a “If you do this, you get to keep your job” type of goal?  Obviously all goals can’t be about self-actualization and achieving existential enlightenment, but on balance, is there much in the goal setting and the goals themselves for the individual?
• Even if the goal itself is sterile (i.e. increase/reduce X attribute by Z%), can the process to achieving the goal be engaging?  Can you as the person’s manager, make it more engaging?

Ask anyone who’s ever trained for a running race about getting to the finish line, and he or she will at some point discuss the training and preparation, i.e. that much longer process that leads to the final destination.  People will train 3 - 5 months, to run a 3 - 5 hour marathon.  And if the training process is a wretched experience, I guarantee you, few will have the stamina to even show up on race day.

The same is true for goal setting.  Have a look beyond the SMART goals themselves.  Is the process of achieving the goals of any value to your people pursuing them?

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What’s your impression of SMART goals? Do you agree? Disagree? What do you use that gets people interested in their goals? What’s your secret sauce?
Share your thoughts and examples with other readers.

The man beside me at the counter was irate.  He didn’t yell, but you could see by the expression on his face and by his body language that he was incredulous.

We had been promised by the gate agent in Newark that our carry-on bags, which they required us to check at the gate, would be available to us in Atlanta.  The flight out of Newark was more than 2 hours delayed, and many of us were guaranteed to miss our connections.  ”No worries,” promised the gate agent.  ”They’ll put your bags on the carousel in Atlanta.  It’s standard policy if your flight arrives after the last flight of the day to your destination departs.”

Wrong.

“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t go down and get your bags.  We only have 3 people working down there and they’re very busy.  Plus we don’t know where your bags are exactly.”

“But we can provide you an overnight bag.”

Faced with the prospect of sleeping in my clothes or wearing the equivalent of a hospital gown, I was not entirely happy.

The day had begun at 6:00, and it was now 12:30 the following day.

So, do we do the bivouac at the local basic hotel (which the airline would discount, but not fully pay for), or do we press on, get the rental car, and drive the 4 hours home?  With luck and no traffic (hardly an issue at 1:00 a.m.), we’d be home by 5:00.  Just in time to greet the woman who delivers our newspaper.

It was an easy choice.  Road trip.

Customer service at Budget was friendly and compassionate (”If I may say, Mr. Harper, you look like you’ve had a long day.”  She had me at “hello”).  Even the fellow who took my papers at the rental car exit was friendly: “Safe drive, Mr. Harper, and have a good night.”

$65 for a rental car (with satellite radio, a godsend when it’s 3:00 a.m. and you’re on I-16 in Georgia, somewhere between Atlanta and Savannah.)

$655 for the flight and the pleasure of missed connections both ways (the flight to Newark was another adventure), “memorable” hotel accommodations, and equally memorable overnight kits.

The financial math didn’t add up, and it didn’t make sense.

What did make sense, though, was that you can’t depend upon others to look out for your best interests.  When it happens, it’s great, and it’s a wonderful thing to appreciate.  But you truly can’t depend upon it.  Stuff happens, and other people have their own lives and issues to deal with.

So you need to take things into your own hands.

If you’re in a position where you’re not getting the leadership, coaching, or management support you need (and quitting is not the best option these days), you’ll have to get it yourself.  Find someone inside or outside the company who can give you the counsel, wisdom, and expertise you need.  Don’t wait for them to find you.

And if you’re not currently being challenged by your manager, that’s no security or safety zone.  If anything, you’ll be very vulnerable when a more capable leader replaces your incumbent manager.

So no use in complaining if you’re not getting what you need.  Sometimes it just works out that way.

The big question is, what are you going to do to get where you need to be?  What’s the decision you need to make, right now?

There are no overnight kits in these types of situations.  Just missed opportunities.  Missed possibilities.

So just like the ad says:  Grab your bag.  It’s on.

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What are you doing to get what you need for your own leadership growth?  Share your thoughts and examples with other readers.

“If businesses managed their money as carelessly as they managed their people, most would be bankrupt.”

That’s how Bill Conaty and Ram Charan start their recent book “Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers”. And it’s hard to argue with them. Depending upon where you work, it will be true to varying degrees. But there certainly aren’t many places where it isn’t true at all.

So how did we get here? How is it that so much more time, effort, and resources are invested in managing a company’s finances than managing its talent?

Here are some answers:

It’s More than a Bus Ride
It’s much easier to talk about getting the “right people on the boss and the wrong people off the boss” than to actually do it. Making decisions about people’s talents, skills, capabilities, and potential is not a one-time, afternoon exercise. It should be a demanding, rigorous, well-thought-through, and ongoing process that, in part, defines what leaders do.

It’s Important but Not Urgent
If there’s a fire in your organization, and you don’t deal with it, you’ll be vilified, and possibly prosecuted. But if you don’t deal with the slow burn of not developing your people or not developing a succession plan, it’s unlikely someone will find out. That is until a one of your key employees leaves, and there’s no one to replace him or her.

Who’s Ever Taught This Stuff?
You can go through high school, college/university, and even grad school, and you will never be taught how to develop exceptional talent. You may read interesting articles and books on leadership and management, but no one will take you by the hand and say, “Here’s how you build great employees.”

We Don’t Keep Score
Imagine if the folks in finance didn’t keep track of the finances: “Hey Frank, what are sales this quarter?” Frank: “How should I know; I just work here.” Finance has numbers for everything. In fact, it’s virtually impossible to separate finance from numbers. So who’s keeping score for your talent? What numbers are you tracking? What numbers are important?

No One’s Accountable
You miss your sales goal: you don’t get your bonus. You really miss your sales goal: you don’t keep your job. You don’t cut expenses like you said you would: you’re brought in to the office to account for it. The project has cost overruns: inquiring minds want to know why. You didn’t develop your people this year, and………………[crickets] nothing changes.

With companies running so lean these days, it’s crucial that leaders develop the talent they do have. If finance produced zero returns on the company’s financial capital, finance would be seriously taken to task.

So why should it be any different with a company’s human capital? Surely it’s reasonable to expect a return on that.

What kind of return will you get on the investment in your people this year?

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What are you doing to develop talent in your organization? Share your thoughts and examples with other readers.

The immigration debate is certainly complex, but surely we can find a way to keep some exceptional talent from leaving the country.

Dominic Barton, global managing director of McKinsey & Company and a Canadian who for 25 years has counseled business, public sector, and nonprofit leaders across the globe (he’s lived in Toronto, Sydney, Seoul, Shanghai, and now London), offers a thoughtful essay on Capitalism for the Long Term.