It Sometimes Takes Mistakes to Evolve Your Practice

It's a beautiful, sunny, and dry summer day in Boston, and after a long day, I have decided to give props to my team and to a consultant we recently brought in to train my team on the Fundamentals of Consulting. The consultant, Jean DiGiovanna of ThinkPeople, did a fantastic job of reinforcing messages I have been delivering to the team about what it means to be a consulting professional, and I am thrilled to see my team incorporating what Jean taught us in her three-day workshop.

So I said I'd give some props to my team, too.

First, the team has responded with a genuine interest in putting the lessons learned to work and practice. They have asked that we spend time every other week practicing the skills and best practices we learned in the training. They are, for the most part, committed to being a World-class Professional Services Organization.

Second, it will take time for the skills we learned to become second nature, and we will make mistakes along the way. The biggest difference between now and pre-Jean's training, though, is that the team recognizes when a mistake or misstep is made and is committed to avoiding that problem again.

Recently, we kicked-off a client project using our "usual" methods for kicking-off a project "like this." After the training, the team recognized what they could have done differently in the kick-off and made adjustments to what they could/should have done up front. Additionally, when they realized today that they could have done a better job of communicating expectations with the client, the conversation quickly turned to "how do we make this right" and "how do we avoid this next time."

Mistakes will be made; that is to be expected, but a truly world-class PSO uses the mistakes to the practice's advantage by using the lessons learned to further improve and evolve the practice.

As Jean DiGiovanna says, if you make a mistake, make it right. I am proud that my team understands that.

Thanks Jean, and Thanks Team!!