We're in the home stretch of this The Conversations with the Past arc, based on a nine year old article by Chris Locke, Faster Horses! sent to me by Jim Sterne and is an experiment in trans-temporal communication; a kind of "What can we learn from the past?" gedanken, if you will.
Part 1 had Mr. Locke waking up in the middle of the night and asking me some questions. Part 2 went into why we dream what we dream and what would have to happen for someone to dream about ecommerce. Part 3 ended with Mr. Locke going to a prospect meeting and in Part 4 Mr. Locke was engaging with the prospect. Part 5 found Mr. Locke going into metaphor and being distracted and Part 6 delved into a cynicism that can develop between client and consultant (and hopefully note mine!). Part 7 found Mr. Locke turning his well-deserved cynicism into a moral philosophy, a difficult task and one that I can easily appreciate, and Part 8 left Mr. Locke concerning himself with what, exactly, the prospect does. Part 9 left Mr. Locke discovering the client's product and doing a comparative analysis.
To make things a little easier to read, Mr. Locke's article will be in standard text, my responses in italics.
This is something else I've seen done repeatedly in consulting engagements, get the client to redefine their definition of success so that whatever the consultant does is deemed "a success". It's right up there with "It will ship and it will be a success" as one my pet peeves. Guess I'll have to get back to that Thoughts on Building a Business blog arc soon..."Faster horses!" Frank practically shouts into my face, high-fiving me with incredible we-get-the-joke-now joviality. A few months later it's become a kind of war cry for the poor b?stards. They think it's the key to some secret knowledge I imparted. "Right on!" I say, and "Killer!" I say, and "Hit one outta the park!"
Yes, I've often noticed that enthusiasm is a great motivator. I was once told -- long before NextStage was even an idea we talked about over beers -- that I didn't get a consulting job because I didn't show "the proper level of enthusiasm" for the project I would have been consulting on.
Consulting. Man, what a racket. Why didn't I figure this out years ago? But I almost feel unclean for doing it. I almost feel guilty. Not for taking their money. That's just manifest destiny. No, sometimes I feel terrible because I think maybe I really am helping these clueless f?ckers to rape the rest of us. Giving them some empty-headed motivational excuse to weld all that avarice into an effective weapon that will make us all salivate for spiffier software or snappier net connections or the latest breakfast cereal breakthrough.
Ah, well. We have our Principles and people like CDFW, Sweetness, WindKiller, Stonewall and others to keep us in line.
(more to follow...)
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Links for this post:
- Chris Locke's Faster Horses!
- The Conversations with the Past blog arc
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