I tweet a daily consulting tip on the @artofgig twitter account and compile them every couple of weeks here as a newsletter issue.
Here are tips 60-75
Consulting Tip #60: Beware of the Employee Orientation 101 syndrome where you get tempted into trying to learn your client’s business the way new employees do. You’ll learn the wrong things at very high cost. Hack your own way into an understanding that works for the gig.
Consulting Tip #61: Get good at picking up on on clues about how a client business works indirectly, like a detective. Clients have problems they want solved. They’re not tour guides.
Consulting Tip #62: When you have opportunities for discovery conversations with people at a client organization who are not primary clients you report to, make the most of it. Have good questions ready, that uncover information helpful for your gig. Try to be helpful in return.
Consulting Tip #63: As an outsider, you will effectively be “borrowing” the status and authority of your primary client as you navigate the organization and talk to others. Behave appropriately, as a delegate of your primary, but do not abuse the borrowed social capital.
Consulting Tip #64: When talking to people who report to your client, put them at ease by clarifying the scope of what you’re doing and why, and indicating clear boundaries for the conversation. But don’t try to bond with them as a peer.
Consulting Tip #65: In discovery, when people seem concerned about how what they’re telling you will be used, just tell them. And ask if they’d prefer to act on their own judgment or want you to convey a message. Discovery chats with client employees are not interrogations.
Consulting Tip #66: People tell outsider consultants things they wouldn’t share with fellow employees. Respect the confidence, but gently set boundaries if they wander into inappropriate sharing that might put you in a tough spot. There are things it is better not to know.
Consulting Tip #67: When working with an organization, you will typically sign an NDA. But be aware that NDAs are just the baseline level of discretion you are legally bound to. You should hold yourself to much higher standards, including internally among company employees.
Consulting Tip #68: In certain gigs, you may end up better informed than most employees, and keeping secrets between employees of the client organization may actually be a bigger challenge than complying with the NDA. Be on the alert for accidental internal indiscretions.
Consulting Tip #69: If you bring a particular narrow technical background to a broader indie consulting domain, resist the temptation to apply it unless that’s specifically what you’re being paid to do. Use the background as a source of general principles, not specific skills.
Consulting Tip #70: If you do not have the technical background to understand a deep technology underlying a client business, do not try to fake it. Play student, set boundaries. Fakery will be obvious to the experts long before you realize you’re hemorrhaging credibility.
Consulting Tip #71: Try and land at least one gig in a new industry every year, no matter how small, and even if the work itself isn’t new. As a consultant, your growth is a strong function of the frequency of sectoral boundary crossings you can sustain.
Consulting Tip #72: Even when you have a lucrative anchor gig going that’s temporarily generating more than enough income, try and keep 1-2 smaller gigs with modest billings alive too. It’s how you avoid cognitive capture by a single big client. Monogamy kills gig lives.
Consulting Tip #73: Differentiate your service offerings around what makes your clients special, rather than around what makes you special.
Consulting Tip #74: On Labor Day, be polite and courteous to paycheck types, wish them a happy Labor Day, and make secret plans to turn all their jobs into some mix of apps, AIs, robots, and gigs for yourself.
Consulting Tip #75: Communicate with people you need to influence via the simplest and most informal medium possible that does the job.
Here is Compilation #4 (45-59) if you want to backtrack and catch up.
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