Ten principles and values of a consultant

Since many years when asked what I do for a living, I answer that I am an environmental  consultant, specialized in communication. Many of my colleagues focus on a specific discipline, e.g. branding, advertizing, facilitation or PR. I offer advice on all stages of the management cycle, always from the perspective of strategic communication, processmanagement and learning. I am not interested to become the best in my trade or to make a lot of money. I love to concentrate on results that make a difference to the client and to nature or sustainable development. In the plane a young professional asked me what my professional values were. I shared with him these ten principles and values that guide my work:

1.     .   Love nature. Love people.
2.       . Know your qualities and your limitations.
3.       . Focus on the issue behind the question.
4.       . Be humble and customer oriented.
5.       . Always keep learning, view everyone as your teacher.
6.       . Publicize the success of your clients.
7.       . Dream the future, that will inspire others.
8.       . Be honest and transparent and ask that from others too.
9.       . Listen to your (ex) customers and their stakeholders to see what cannot be seen. 
10.     Work hard, do not complain and give the credits to others.

See also:

The effective attitude of a consultant 

Coaching to be mindful of learning

Communication:tools or strategy  

Frogleaps onstrategy

Pleasing the client

A good project does not necessary please the client. Making a real impact on the ground in the sense that project beneficiaries really benefit directly from the project, is not enough to please a client. Neither is delivering value for money and satisfying all the elements of the ToR. Nor is it enough to please a client that the project becomes the talk of town in their community and beyond. To please a client - especially in international development projects - the consultant has to think beyond the client. And think how to satisfy and please the clients of his client. In the end funding for development cooperation comes from national tax payers, it might be channeled through international organizations and a national ministry.

To please the client it is important to realize their interest and that of their clients. The project management unit may like the project to contribute to the continuity of their office, or at least provide credits for their careers. The Ministry where the management unit is placed may like to see explicit added value or extra support to their policies and priorities. The international organization involved wants the project to deliver proof of the viability of its approaches and wants templates for reusability of the project results in other countries. Finally the donor country wants concrete proof of money well spent that satisfies their taxpayers. So pleasing a client means going far beyond the ToR, while staying within the budget. A matter of project planning!

Leadership equals transparent communication

Trust is essential in effective leadership. That is exactly what is missing, I notice in my interviews to advice on strengthening capacities of climate risk management. Respondents in and outside government have no trust in their leaders and CEOs. No wonder I pick up signals of lack of motivation, low productivity, absenteism, poor cooperation, increased staff turn over and talent loss.

Trust is essential in getting things done, but even more essential to prepare for climate risks. So how can a government reverse a lack of trust in senior management and the performance fallout that follows, especially when that lack of trust is complicated with the uncertainties brought about by climate change? The answers for me is in increased transparent internal and external communication.

Credibility is crucial for establishing trust. Leaders must demonstrate competence enabling staff to trust that they have sufficient skills to make sound and firm decisions. Credibility also requires consistency. People do not trust leaders who change their mind too often. With regard to my task a successful leader will have to establish a strategic risk management plan and then implement it consistently with only minor modifications.

To earn trust leaders must at the same time show they care for their people and treat them as their human capital. An open door policy helps. Actively listening and proactively responding to the needs and problems of their workforce does wonders. It also implies that leaders must trust their staff and understand everyone has a different learning style and curve and that no one is better than another. By demonstrating these qualities, leaders can inspire others. Strengthening capacities for climate risk management implies also investing leadership styles.

Season's Greetings

Sending season's greetings is one of the tools to keep relationships alive. At the same time it can also be a way to update and clean the relation management system. About ten percent of my three hundred 'electronic best wishes for 2011' bounced back, as addresses were not anymore correct. I could immediately update my address book. Another twenty percent of immediate response were people thanking me and sending me their best wishes. Around five percent reacted on the photo, mostly asking where it was taken. I took the picture at a small Tibetan monastery that looks after the Pragbodhi cave where the historical Buddha practiced austerities and asceticism before attaining enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya. It is situated on a mountain range overlooking dry forests and deserts, an hour by car from Bodh Gaya, India. One cave contains a statue of a very skinny Buddha. Another cave a more traditional Buddha statue. We put up prayer flages, lighted candles and incense in the late afternoon.

The positioning of communications

In governments, international organizations or NGOs the function of communications is sometimes directed by the Head of the Information Unit. Sometimes it is directed by the Policy or Management Team. The choice where to position the communications function in an organization depends on the vision one has on the role of communications. On a continuum one can formulate many visions. For reasons of clarity I just describe two extremes on such continuum.
If one sees communications only as an instrument to facilitate and clarify operational information to external audiences (especially mass media) one positions the communications function in an Information Unit. And the press officers in this unit are basically directed by the Unit Head.
If one sees communication as a strategic policy instrument to influence knowledge, attitudes and behavior of specific target groups, generating trust and support and engaging audiences in public participation, then communications is often directed by top management and positioned directly under the highest decision making level. And the various communications experts of the unit (varying from media experts, to facilitators of stakeholder dialogues and social marketers) also are the ‘ears’ for top management: they bring into the policy making process the actual attitudes, gossip, prejudices and motivations of the audiences for whom policies are developed.

Briefing authors for a special of a magazine

Briefings are often done on line. Sending just an email with the request to write an article is not enough. These are some points of attention when briefing a new group of authors for a special of a magazine. The email itself should be short and personal. The briefing should be in an attachment. See also: Successfactors for a good briefing and Briefings for communicatuion support. Click on the image to read the points.

Managing professional updating projects

The graphic summarizes the phases of a professional updating project to help clients think beyond funneling expert knowledge into power points. Formulation and execution of a professional updating project is often a learning experience for both consultant and client. The client makes steps from thinking in terms of instruction to thinking in terms of creating a learning environment; from seeing the consultant as a follower of instructions to trusting his/her didactic expertise to guide the development process for which the client is one of the suppliers of information and content. The consultant makes steps in understanding context, audiences, expectations and a possible next phase of development in the learning of the client. Most difficult for both is to realize that often most of the available time is needed for the phases that prepare for the production. I sometimes wonder whether these reflections not only apply to learning projects, but to all communication projects.

Briefings for communication support

Large organizations tend to ask for external communication support to help them getting their messages out through websites, newsletters, press releases, posters, leaflets and brochures. In their briefings they mostly formulate their objectives as ‘to increase awareness, understanding, and support among stakeholders and the (interested) public, as the means for their further engagement’. Such ‘paper’ communication definitely contributes to access to information on policies and practices. It is questionable however whether it will create awareness and support of people in stakeholder groups and among the general public.
How to upgrade such ‘paper’ communication to ‘people’ communication? The first step is made when – in the briefing – you:
1. define the success of the policy or organization and the evolving needs of its audiences and position the added value of the transactions the policy or organization has to offer
2. segment the audience (identify those target groups that are key to the success of the policy or organization) and
3. quantify the objectives (SMART) per target group (often additional target group research is needed).
In the briefing you can then ask the communication support
1. to formulate short messages in the ‘language’ and ‘mind frame’ of the target group, that appeal to them, contain a promise and a proof that it is possible and make concrete what the target group can do contribute;
2. to make creative use of those media that are credible and effective sources of information for the audience, if possible by involving people and media from the target group itself;
3. to map out benchmarks to monitor the process, provide positive feedback and adapt the approach where necessary.
Read more about briefings.

Communication management

When you have enough time with a protagonist, spokes person or a resource person, use the opportunity to reach out to different audiences through different media. Last year the Fundación Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente did just that: a lecture and workshop for the audiences of the Casa Encendida, interviews to newspapers and magazins, a professional dialogue with their staff and input for an educational video. UNED, the Spanish Distance Education Channel used the input for a module in a course on sustainable development: Verdades y mentiras sobre el cambio climatico. The title is inspired on the lecture I gave an hour after this interview. The video also features on YouTube.

Include external knowledge in the project team

To succesfully capture and disseminate lessons learned it is useful to include knowledge management expertise when designing the project team. This is one of the messages of our evaluation of a multi-country forest governance project. The project focuses on a participatory approach with unpredictable and mostly intangible outcomes, depending on stakeholders outside the project. Learning on multi-stakeholder dialogues results mostly in implicit knowledge. To make such knowledge explicit you need expertise from outside the forest community. A good example of such need was the way a professor forest management was conducting a workshop to write up lessons learned (left column). The result were academic articles, with little news. Interviews with participants afterwards revealed that they knew much more and had more relevant insights than were written up in the academic exercise. In the right column a more effective approach is provided to make such knowledge explicit.

Milestones Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue

"A multi-styakeholder dialogue is a process, you cannot plan." I hear from the staff in the project, I have to evaluate. When I show them the milestones and policy life cycle, they recognize it and start giving examples from their experience. One project manager refects: "I wish we had seen this earlier, I could have planned my capacity building better. Now when the demand came for interest-based negotiations my training budget was used on less important topics."

New knowledge input into a project

Many project managers feel during the course of the project the need for external and new knowledge input. Every time a workshop is organized for such input, the project gets new perspectives and a new direction. Such changes often generate resistance from project staff as the ongoing work is disrupted and some activities have to be rethought or restarted. This model of knowledge input is called the relay model. More effcetive is the funnel model as right at the start of the project all knowledge areas are mapped and agreed upon, as are the procedures how to integrate new knowledge in the project. This model implies a feasibility study, an inception period or at least a well prepared kick off meeting.

The five Cs of the crisis

On his way out as CEO of Shell Jeroen van der Veer draws 5 simple lessons from the current financial and economic crisis:
1. Cash should be king - be careful with borrowing money.
2. Clients - manage the risks of the different client groups.
3. Costs - always be critical of the costs, especially when business goes well.
4. Capital - be critical on capital investsments: can't it be cheaper?
5. Communication - always be transparent, internally and externally.

5 leadership tips

In his last big performance for Shell managers, CEO Jeroen van der Veer had 5 tips for leadership:
1. Everyone knows an organization has to go from A to B, but leaders often forget to make it practical. What do you do tomorrow and what on Monday morning?
2. If society and the organization are professionalising, employees need to be longer in their job. With too much staff turnover, you cannot build a strong organization.
3. People tend to make things more complex. So good leaders need to make the work more simple.
4. Leaders should first listen, then provide direction and speed things up.
5. You are never finished with culture change.

The real issue: make it small and concrete

Management effectiveness of protected areas depends on defining the right management objectives; and this depends on the right definition of the issues a manager wants to change. Management effectiveness increases considerably when communication concentrates on how to engage stakeholders in the issue, explore change pathways and co-create solutions. Thinking strategically about communication helps to (re)define the issues managers want to change. Visualizing the change that managers want to see (click on the photo) proved to be a powerful tool to formulate small and simple first steps towards change in our CEPA workshop for 24 protected area managers in Ecuador. In this case communication can focus on knowledge, skills, attitudes and actions of stakeholders to get them around the table.

The difference of participation in the South

Participatory planning – does it work in every context? Why did the participants from Western Europe do their assignments better that those from Central and Eastern Europe, not to speak of those from Africa? How much is this inherent in the University’s approach (a government driven approach) to establish a protected area? This is what I learned so far.
In developed countries public participation is an approach for government or governmental institutions to improve their decision making. It requires a range of pre-conditions, e.g. transparency, freedom of information, the ability for adaptive management and to deliver on promises. Good governance.
When the appropriate legal and economic structures are lacking, participatory planning can be successful. But the focus is then often on empowering communities to help themselves without having to lean too much on government or other outside support: see e.g. the Maya Nut case. Mostly it means that the government is at a distance and NGOs or the private sector are the drivers of the process.
In cases where through the support of international cooperation, governments engage in participatory planning, communities quickly ‘smell’ whether the government institutions are serious in terms of follow-up of the participatory planning: mostly a matter of making available appropriate financial and human resources. If not, communities sooner or later back out. Or the process drags on, like in the Nariva Swamp case. In other words what trainers and (future) managers should realize is that participatory planning processes are different - depending on the context.

Effective project presentation

How to engage in effective project presentation and how to steer projects on main policy lines? My client asks me to attend a meeting of the advisory board of the organization. Project managers present their projects. They sum up activities they have undertaken. They can go on for hours. The board - it is the first time they are briefed on the projects - starts asking questions about all kind of details. Soon the meeting reaches the point of micro-management. Later I am asked how to avoid this. I share a simple format that allows an advisory board to stay at the main policy level. It is advisable to keep the presentation short not more than 5 - 7 minutes and allow enough time for questions and feedback.

Project debriefing: biting your tongue

A debriefing session with the donor on the results of the project is an exercise of talking and especially listening. The client I am working for just had such a debriefing. I had proposed to do it this time differently from his normal routine of giving a long presentation and answer questions. So we started with shortly reformulating the objectives of the project. Then we showed a short video with the highlights of the process and products. Afterwards we asked questions: what was most meaningful for them, what questions the images triggered, to what extent the project met their expectations, how it added value to their policy and what next steps they would advise us. We had to bite our tongue, not to start giving more information, just listen and recapitulate. This way we collected useful feedback and building bricks for a follow-up, partly 'owned' now by the donor.

Invest in preparation and facilitation

People support what they help to create: meaningful involvement is key in any process of change. To create positive change for biodiversity on a local or sub-national scale participatory action planning is often a good investment. To guide such a process successfully one needs three disciplines: project management, strategic communication and facilitation of group processes. Based on these disciplines Ramsar has published a participatory action planning guide for managers of a wetland site or river basin. The tool is designed to develop a wetland outreach plan, but managers of any landscape can easily use this guide to develop or update any management plan. The material provides the manager with insight and tools for the interactive processes of clarifying the context, charting change, validating ideas, and moving to action. For a manager the success is in enough time for the first phase and in finding a skilful neutral facilitator.

How to handle stress?

My colleagues organizing a conference are under heavy stress. So much that it seems to impact their performance. I remember the deadlines we had to meet when we worked for a pitch. Often for days deep into the night. And the way we kept stress at productive levels. For that you have to know what you are dealing with. When stress becomes too much you feel first a certain alarm, then resistence and in the end you feel completely exhausted. A certain degree of stress helps your performance. If it gets too much it impacts your judgment: you don’t know anymore whether you are doing the rights things or are trying to do the things right. It turns positive energy into negative energy: you become unfriendly, angry or aggressive. Stress finally stops your mind totally from functioning. It leaves you behind helpless: time for sick-leave. Unless you act in time. What can you do? Double-click on the box to read some advice from the old days, which is still helpful for me.