Consultants: There’s reason for optimism this year

Head winds, always head winds!

One thing all sports fans know for a fact is that their team is the one that is the most hard-done by. Their team has the hardest schedule. Their team has the most biased press coverage. Their team gets the worst calls from the referees. Their team isn’t allowed to be as rough as others. Or their team is singled out for rough treatment. Or their team is punished against “bigger” teams. So on ad nauseum. In every aspect of the game, their team is the one with the most obstacles to success. It’s a fact. We all know it. No need to even discuss.

creativecommons1.png                                                                                                               Courtesy of the Creative Commons

The same can be said about our business fortunes, about our financial affairs, about almost any aspect of our personal and professional lives. The struggle against insurmountable odds makes for intriguing reading and plays to our love of the heroic. We like being the heroes, of course. Despite all the barriers and setbacks, we won! We prevailed! We (or is it ‘I’’?) somehow pulled it off!

While we are all great storytellers – that is part and parcel of consulting. If we are honest with ourselves, we also know that despite the allure of the heroic, we know that we are biased. I’ll admit it. I see the obstacles more than the benefits. In other words, I feel like my cause, my initiative, my project is subjected to harsher treatment than other potential projects. Deep down, I believe all of us share this bias.

It is not unusual to hear the same narrative throughout our association – how to come to agreement, how to work with each other, if only we were more like (fill in name of epic other organization that has it all figured out). I actually believe that this is somehow comforting mythology and I am also simultaneously blind to the benefits that consultants and other professionals in our field enjoy. This is completely normal.

The Freakonomics episode Why is my Life so Hard explains why: it’s because people naturally feel headwinds more than tailwinds. The episode is actually an interview with Shai Davidai and Thomas Gilovich, the authors of an academic study titled The Headwinds/Tailwinds Asymmetry: An Availability Bias in Assessment of Barriers and Blessings.

In 7 different studies, Davidai and Gilovich show that human beings are naturally more attuned to the obstacles in front of them than they are to the things that are benefiting them. Whether this is in business or politics it is the same story, people feel that they have more obstacles than others and that any benefits they received were less important than others. This belief system turns into resentment, envy, and at its worst, entitlement.

So, for example, the recent US election showed that America has a problem with angry white people. Not all Trump voters were angry white people and angry white people didn’t just support Trump but you’d have to have been living in a coma for the last 8 years to have missed out on the phenomenon that showed up at rallies across the country. Punching people in the head, yelling “lock her up”, and more. Davidai and Gilovich mention this phenomenon in the podcast and explain it: there are real obstacles appearing in front of a large number of people across the country – manufacturing jobs have gone away, health care costs are rising, and Americans feel sicker and poorer than they were before Obama – and people feel those obstacles much more heavily than the overwhelming white privilege that they have benefited from. These people have lost some of their entitlements and they want them back!

I would also say that there is a temptation to go down that road in our business. If you are in Alberta, it is the protracted depressed economy, in Ontario it is the apparent ‘sins’ of the current government and the concerns over US policy shifts, in the Atlantic Provinces, it is continued economic shifts to offshore suppliers. If there is anger or resentment, it is heightened because consultants are only seeing the headwinds right now and not feeling the tailwinds. And this is totally normal.

We are also, much like the angry Americans, being forced to share some of our privilege; when I first entered the profession, we were a unique and somewhat rare profession. However, that is not the case anymore. Many other disciplines can be found participating in consulting engagements – data experts, IT specialists, graphic designers, mathematicians, statisticians and a raft of technically oriented engineers. Our dominance in the marketplace is in question. We are no longer one of the top professions and this makes us somewhat angry, occasionally resentful, and fearful of the future.

Davidai and Gilovich have a recommendation to combat this phenomenon. First, you have to know that you’re doing it. But second, to overcome it all you have to do is to actually appreciate the benefits that you have - to enumerate them and become appreciative of the tailwinds.

So, for example, we focused on disruption as a theme of our era at our fall National Conference. Once our leaders began talking it through, it was clear that client disruption is a boon for consulting. We expect to grow as a profession. We also have unique capacity to integrate and interpret – making the technical understandable and making policy operational. We are working with blended disciplines and helping to solve the impossible. I see tremendous interest on campuses in our profession – many are PhD students and graduate students with technical backgrounds. There are consulting clubs across the country. And according to CMC-Canada’s 2016 Industry Report, the Canadian market in particular offers solid potential for the management consulting community.


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If you look, you can find reasons for optimism and a bright tomorrow. That’s some tailwind compared to what many others are facing.

I encourage you all to think of the tailwinds rather than the headwinds. If you can’t see it in your professional life right now or if you can’t see it in your association at the moment, maybe just the ones in your life. I think you will find your life more enjoyable and the obstacles less harrowing.

And one last piece of advice here from the study. We often attribute tailwinds to other people and by doing that we diminish the actual benefits that we might have. So, we tend to only appreciate the things others have done for us. We have all enjoyed a leg up from a colleague or associate. Don’t forget that you have brought some of your talent and unique strengths – that’s why you enjoy those occasional small nudges.

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