And Vijay Says…

My first job out of engineering college was at a Tire company . One night, a spindle needed to be replaced in a machine on the line to restart it . I used my deep knowledge of mechanical engineering and figured I needed a spindle with 28.8 CM diameter . Everyone around me had a good laugh at my expense . Turns out spindles come rounded in 5CM intervals . Also I need not have done any calculations – there was a simple chart posted on the machine that indicated what size was required 🙂

There is some irony in this story . I was very familiar with the theory of approximations in Mathematics while in college . Just that I was not smart enough to use the principle in real life scenarios .

My generation didn’t get to use a calculator in school – so by and large most people in my peer group can do mental math just fine . This unfortunately can’t be taken for granted any more and it pains me to watch massive confusion from cashiers and customers alike when I am waiting in line at a grocery or something . it’s not as if kids became any less smart – the educational system somehow derailed along the way .

Even amongst people who learned how to do mental math – approximating answers is not something that comes naturally when it comes to multiplication and division . This becomes a challenge both in personal life ( eg: what would I need to spend if I need new carpet for my house ) and at work ( eg: what percentage of customers might churn annually at current trajectory ) .

Say for example you need to find what is 17% of 58976 . The correct answer is 10025.92 for which most people will need a calculator to get to this precise level . But most decisions don’t need this level or precision – a close enough approximation is just fine .

One quick mental math is to round up and find 20% of 60000 . Which is 12000 – but since we have rounded up both sides , we should know how much to reduce from this to get a close enough approximation .

One possible next step is to find 15% of 60000 – which is still rounding up 58976 but rounding down 17% . That gives us 9000 .

Since 17 is closer to 15 than 20 – we can assume the final answer is closer to 9000 than to 12000 . The range between the two is still a big 3000 and we need to get somewhat closer for this approximation to be useful . How close though ? 17 is about one third the way from 15 and two thirds the way from 20 . So what does that tell us – it should be about one third the way between the answers for 15% and 20% which is 1000 (out of the range of 3000 between the two extremes we found) . Consequently the answer is 9000 + 1000 = 10000 !

The math is rarely the limiting factor in our ability to approximate . Worst case you can always go find a calculator and get the math work .

The limiting factor often is in how well we define the problem and it’s context . For example – if the math problem above was about paying taxes , IRS wouldn’t take it kindly if you approximated the math and paid less 🙂

Breaking down the problem into peace parts and making sure there is minimal overlap is where we usually struggle .

Let’s say we are trying to budget for new carpet. It’s not enough to approximate square feet and multiply by a price you find online – there are other issues at play like labor and transportation , cost of removal , sales tax etc . Then there is the issue of knowing how close your budget needs to be to what you will actually spend which is very specific to your situation . As a young immigrant couple of decades ago – I needed to know within 5% . Now I only need to know within say 20-% .

At work, this takes a whole another level of complexity . At its simplest level – we tend to over engineer for the short term , and completely under engineer for the long term . I have erred on this myself countless times . As numbers get bigger and the time frame increases – it gets really hard to make good approximations .

For example – a day has 24 hours , which is 86400 seconds . That means a week has 604800 seconds . So how many years will it take to spend 1 million seconds ? How about 1 billion seconds ? You will probably be surprised at how close you will approximate million versus billion .

It’s Sunday evening now and I am staring at a massive spreadsheet figuring out plans for 2023 – and making judgments on where I absolutely need bottoms up calculations with high accuracy and where a directionally correct top down approximation is perfectly fine .

The good thing is that my two wing men are standing by to help in whatever way they can 🙂

Business development in consulting (also for systems integration) is a fairly straightforward process at its core .

1. You identify and solve problems for a client . These include problems whose impact that the client is fully not aware of yet !

2. The solution comes with value that the client can demonstrably see as greater than what it costs .

3. The specific problem you are solving is more valuable than solving other comparable problems the client could tackle right now

4. You have something special to offer – past experience, special skills and Knowledge , a unique point of view – which makes it less risky to hire you as opposed to someone else

5. You get paid fairly for the value you provided and you build enough trust based on that delivered value and earn future business

That’s all there is to it at a basic level . When we stick to this level of simplicity and clarity, it helps both consultants and the clients . The consultant can use this to qualify whether a particular opportunity is worth chasing at each step , and the client can make an informed decision based on facts and logic .

All this said – why do consultants and clients both struggle with this process ?

The answer is in step 1 above . This only works if the consultant knows the problems the client has . When I was a young consultant – it was quite common to just ask a client “tell me your problems and I will solve it for you”. It was a natural exercise back then – but it is not as effective today . Business is a more complex endeavour now than in the 90s, and people are way too short on time to have these open ended conversations with “strangers” .

It’s still common for clients to call consultants they have known for a long time (and have great trust ) to say “I have a problem” . But it’s not common enough in the industry anymore for a consultant to just depend largely on inbound demand to sustain their business .

A much better approach for consultants now is to approach clients with a unique point of view . This might not help win business right away – but it helps establish yourself as a value adding partner to the client and serve as a first step towards building a long term relationship .

I have been in both software and consulting industries across multiple employers in my own career. Consulting is more relationship driven and software is more transaction oriented . The best software business development leaders are also great at relationships – and the least effective consulting business development people are transactional sellers !

The world is not perfect – and even if a client is convinced about value , they are often tied down by a budget that was created based on some other definition of value that they had no control over . In those cases , you have to find a solution that fits in the envelope they have . What I have realised over time though is – even if you start that way , it’s often the case that over time you can help your clients make the case to their bosses on investment decisions and end up in win-win situations

When I was a young Associate Partner, I had a chance to present a finance transformation study to the CFO of a client . At the end of my presentation, he asked me “The value is clear – I am not sure why you are proposing a solution to only a third of the problem”. I responded that the controller who works for him only had so much budget available and hence I carved out a solution that fits that envelope . He smiled and asked me “Do you really think as CFO of a multi billion dollar company , I would hesitate to invest in solving a problem that has the kind of ROI you just convinced me of because someone in my team only had a tiny budget?” . It was a life and career changing moment for me !

Let me close out this post with what I think are the success factors for people who are good at this . There are three consistent differentiating factors for consultants who are good problem solvers for their clients .

1. They listen to understand the problem and they speak more to clarify the problem than offering spot solutions

2. Once they have a solution, they have the right balance of conviction on it being right and humility to accept an alternate point of view that they haven’t considered so far

3. They present the solution with clarity and they are not afraid to push back at clients professionally with facts and logic .

Happy Diwali everyone !

With family and friends, I absolutely think patience is a virtue . You generally don’t give up on these two groups by definition – and it’s usually bidirectional.

The answer is less obvious when it comes to the work place . Perhaps due to the uncertainty created by the pandemic, it’s a question that has come up from several people I know off late . Sometimes it’s about their own careers and some times it’s about their team or their customers .

How long do you wait for a promotion or raise before jumping ship in this hot labor market ? How long do you wait for performance to improve for an employee before letting them go ? How long will you spend time with a customer who refuses to buy anything from you despite giving you buying signals for a long time ?

A lot of this confusion happens because we carry over the the way we deal with family and friends to our work life too . This is normal since work takes as much time or more than what many people spend on their life outside work . The key difference here is that the emotions that hold a family together are love and affection, where as the key emotions at work are respect and fairness . Once that distinction is clear – it becomes a little more easier to make important decisions .

What this distinction means is that patience is a virtue that comes attached with a time dimension at work – and that time dimension is determined primarily determined by fairness . 

Bad news at work generally doesn’t get better with time – mostly because of the time dimension . You never have enough time – and you can’t buy more time . So generally I am a fan of determining the range of time that is fair to turn around bad news to good news , but then starting with the lower end of that range for how long I will be patient . 

I am also a big fan of defining upfront what happens if nothing changes in that period of time . For this – it needs an honest conversation with the other party on what’s causing the issue and if there is a path possible for a turn around . Without that – you are just guessing and there is a high chance you will get it wrong . Such conversations do need patience to do them well !

It is also important to consider short vs long term implications . Maybe you will get 20-% more money if you jump today – but it will delay your career progression by several years because you need to build a new network at your next gig . Maybe you won’t get money in base pay – but your cash flow might be positively better with a retention bonus . Think about all of this carefully – we all tend to generally be poor at understanding the long term effects when we are worked up .This is where patience is a virtue !

Granted you can’t always be explicit about telling this to the “other side” – if you don’t have another job lined up , you may not want to threaten to leave if no promotion happens in 6 months , or you may not want to spook a customer prematurely that you don’t want to work with them anymore . But in your mind – the action should be clear and immediate . If no promotion happens in 6 months , you want to leave – but that means you start your job search right away .if your cljent doesnt buy in one more quarter, you will stop working with them – but that means you will start more prospecting right now.

When the short end of the fair range is getting close , you have a decision to make . This is where the longer end of the fair range helps . Ok so you didn’t get promoted in 6 months – but there is a hand shake with your boss that happens that makes you believe it will happen in 3 more months . You also have a good idea that you have a few options lined up and can wait 3 months . It’s time to be more explicit with the other party on what happens next – telling them how much longer you are willing to continue patiently and what happens if nothing changes . At this point – it is no longer acceptable to be told an open ended “pls be more patient and good things will happen” . The time for that was the previous conversation – and even there an open ended promise only would have gone  so far ! 

Relationship decisions in personal life are often driven by love and affection – but in the workplace it’s a trade off between risk and return . No one of truly irreplaceable at work over a long period of time – it’s the short to medium term that is at play for work relationships . That is another good reason why it’s fair for your own patience also to come with a finite time dimension  . 

if you have read this far – you are probably a very patient person 🙂