Company culture is important, but not as important as profitability. Layoffs are necessary. Business is business... But you don't have to treat your people like garbage. They're your most valuable asset after all. There are a number of examples we’ve seen over the past few years of company culture that doesn’t seem to get the balance quite right between the commercial needs of the business and respect for the individuals of the company. On the one hand, the business exists to make money and tough decisions are often called for that impact people’s lives. On the other, the humans that make up the company deserve to be treated fairly and with some dignity. We recently sat down with Stephen Foreshew-Cain, CEO of Scott Logic, a UK tech consultancy. He has staked out a slightly different approach to leadership of his company by putting the employees first in recognition that happy, motivated employees makes for better business. Importantly, they have matched words with actions. In this episode: How do you attract and retain a diverse workforce? Why does that matter? How far should company leadership go to accommodate employees? What does respecting the employee look like in 2023? Does it vary by type or size of company? What does a good retention agenda include? Is there a generational aspect to employee expectations? Does this topic vary by country? What are the implications around transparency? Check out ScottLogic's website and be sure to read about their People Promise. Also, read some of Stephen's blog posts around the topic of leadership and respect: https://blog.scottlogic.com/2022/01/05/new-normal-for-leadership.html https://blog.scottlogic.com/2022/06/16/pride-2022.html Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)

There appear to be economic headwinds as we move into 2023. Tools like LinkedIn can be one of the most powerful weapons in your branding, sales, or employment arsenal. That is, if you know how to use it effectively... In a recent discussion on using Social Media on the podcast, we acknowledged the fact that while all 4 of us have years of expertise in using social tools, none of us are world-renowned experts who train other people how to use them. Luckily we're friends with a person who is. Richard Bliss is 8th on LinkedIn's list of top global social selling experts. He's an author who's latest book is called DigitalFirst Leadership, and heads up BlissPoint Consulting which enables leaders to leverage the language of social media to extend their voice, vision and message. And don't forget that he publishes an annual research report on the LinkedIn Algorithm... So yeah. He knows what he's talking about when it comes to using LinkedIn for success. We asked him to sit down with us and talk through some of our observations and point out a few of his strategies for maximizing your effectiveness on LinkedIn. For all the cats out there who are interested in upping their game on the socials, you'll want to grab a pen and a notebook... In this episode: What are some key strategies for building a successful and effective LinkedIn profile? What are some common mistakes people make on business social sites? How do you better understand the algorithm to maximize viewership of posts and articles? What are tips for finding a client or career opportunity? What are some effective ways to grow your network? Check out BlissPoint's website at https://www.blisspointconsult.com/ and request a copy of the 2022 LinkedIn Algorithm Report. Also check out Richard's latest book on Amazon: "DigitalFirst Leadership: Master Social Media | Build Online Presence | Lead Your Tribe" https://www.amazon.com/DigitalFirst-Leadership-Master-Social-Presence-ebook/dp/B091MD5DL7?ref_=ast_sto_dp Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)

With the year ending, and folks in various stages of vacation and merrymaking, the Consultants Saying Things team wanted to get together for our annual Christmas Special.    This year we issue awards in various categories (e.g. Best LinkedIn Appearance by a Member of the Cast), talk about significant events of 2022 and turn to our expectations in 2023.    In this episode:  A revisit to an online argument about clean energy and trains  2022 CST Awards in 8 categories  Drinking Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)

Social media is a wonderful, terrible thing. It is a cosmos of tools that allow us to be our best or, perhaps more often, our worst. If we're a knucklehead in real life, Facebook can make us a louder knucklehead... For consulting professionals, the use of social media is typically career related or career-adjacent. Given there are so many ways to engage, given the sheer amount of noise, given our own proclivities to react emotionally to things we read, how does a professional get their message out while avoiding the combative social trap? I asked my friends Phil Yanov, Oliver Cronk and Whynde Kuehn what they thought. What are the right ways for professionals to leverage social media to connect, build a brand, share ideas, communicate and learn? In this episode: Why should a professional care at all about social media? What are some ways to avoid the social media conflict zone? How does one cut through the noise on the socials? What are some tips on maintaining equanimity while still engaging? What are some common pitfalls to avoid and useful tips to employ? There's some extra goodness in the outro. Hope you enjoy. Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)

According to various polls, public speaking ranks as peoples' top fear... ahead of snakes, heights, clowns and, in fact, death itself. Let that sink in. People would rather be DEAD than speak in front of a group of other humans. So, first... why? And second, what can be done about it? Naturally we can't solve EVERYONE'S fear of public speaking, so we decided to tackle this issue from the perspective of consulting. Good consultants need to be able to do a variety of tasks well. Yes there's the need for technical or domain knowledge and skills, the ability to model and analyze, the skill of collecting information and processing it, the requirement of logical thinking, etc. But without the ability to communicate effectively to other people (i.e. the CLIENT), all of that good consultant stuff is less useful or perhaps even useless. In this episode: Why is public speaking important? Why does it matter for consultants? Why are people afraid of speaking in front of others? What are some ways of getting better at public speaking? There is a longish cold open and some extra goodness as an outro. Why? Well as you'll see, our discussions range over a wide, wide territory. Most of that content never sees the light of day. I thought I'd include a bit of off-topic stuff to give you a sense of the kind of people that get MY intellectual juices going. Being around these types of folks and having these kinds of conversations and being comfortable with it is what has enabled ME to face and conquer public speaking fears over time. Maybe it'll work for you... Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)

The knock on consulting is that so much of what goes on is either a bunch of fluff and hand-waving at a stratospheric, impractical level or narrowly focused on mostly useless technical gee-wizardry with little connection to actual business need. How do you connect strategy to reality? Luckily there's a new book that takes dead aim at this issue and serves as a practical guide to developing strategy that delivers real-world value. And even more luckily, the author is one of our own... "Strategy to Reality: Making the Impossible Possible for Business Architects, Change Makers and Strategy Execution Leaders" by our own Whynde Kuehn is practical, digestible, and evergreen. She applies decades of knowledge and experience in what works and what doesn't and lays out a prescriptive plan for matching vision with delivery. We wanted to sit down with her and discuss the book, how consultants can apply the knowledge within for their clients, and how leaders in industry can use it as a guide for change. In this episode: What inspired Whynde to write this? What did she learn about the process What are the central factors at play when developing and applying strategy? How does business architecture factor in to strategy? How do you get real-world change from what seem like fluffy concepts? How do these practices sustain themselves inside of organizations? How do consultants help clients connect strategy and execution? Hit up Amazon right now and get her book. It's an easy read with so much useful stuff that you'll definitely want a highlighter handy. Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)

Being mentally resilient in the face of everything the world throws at us can be daunting. Whether it's work, family, friends, international politics... there's a lot of stress on us every day. How is a person supposed to deal? (Psst: I have the answer...).   Okay. I personally don't have the answer. But I'm lucky to know some folks that are certified experts in this area.    You may recall in the last episode of the podcast, Phil, Oliver, Whynde and myself discussed our experiences with mental resiliency over our careers. Frankly this amounted to personal anecdotes and clever observations. None of us are actual experts in mental health (which should be obvious to anyone who watches).    Enter a couple of friends of ours: Dr. Haley Dare and Gavin Richardson of https://www.neurequity.com/. Hayley is a Chartered Consultant Clinical Psychologist with over 25 years’ professional experience and Gavin has extensive experience in designing and implementing transformational workplace mental health initiatives to enhance employee engagement and organizational performance. It turns out that they're ACTUAL experts in this space. Through their work, they help companies around the world ensure their employee's mental wellbeing.  We brought them on to discuss mental resiliency, this time through the lens of professionals.   In this episode:  Why does mental resiliency matter? What are some of the biggest causes of stress for Consultants?  How does that stress manifest itself? What are some of the impacts? What are some of the coping mechanisms?  How does brain chemistry factor in?  What are some ways to improve resiliency?  How do we, as consultants, protect "the asset" ?   You're not gonna want to miss this one...  It should be said that if you are in real need of help due to stress or other mental health issues, don't listen to this podcast. Go out and get the help you need. YOU are the asset. Protect it! Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)

Work can be hard. It can be stressful. Consulting in particular is full of A-Types who work long, busy hours trying to help in often frustrating client situations. What if you break?   Each person's ability to handle things is different, with some having deeper mental capacity buckets than others. At some point, however, most people have experienced that bucket filling up and overflowing.    What happens when you run so hot for so long that you start to burn out?  More importantly, how do you bounce back? How resilient can you be? How far can you stretch that stress rubber band without snapping it?   I wanted to chat about this with my smart friends. Of course, while none of us is a medical professional (and mental health should be taken very seriously), we had some thoughts and anecdotes to share around how to be more mentally resilient.   In this episode:  Why does mental resiliency matter?  What are some ways to avoid mental exhaustion and burnout?  When you do break down, how do you bounce back?  What are some tips for increasing your resiliency? Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)

What is an architect? What is architecture? In the business technology context, is architecture a profession? What do architects do? A quick Google search reveals an endless debate on these topics that's been raging for several decades. Let's add more fuel to that fire and stir that pot... This episode is the third in a mashup series on this topic that began with an episode of IASA Global's "The Argument" podcast hosted by Paul Preiss (https://youtu.be/A6Bli8FYXz0) and continued in an episode of the "Architect Tomorrow" podcast hosted by Oliver Cronk (https://youtu.be/e6Q5y2o6JWU). Check these out as they each have a thematic take on architecture! While I enjoy a good endless debate with smart people, I wanted to focus on the topic of Architecture through the lens of Consulting. Joining me is Phil Yanov, Oliver Cronk, Whynde Kuehn and Chris Potts. Chris is an internationally recognized enterprise architect and mentor for small and large businesses across industries. He's also the author of a number of business novels about change called The FruITion Triology (https://technicspub.com/the-fruition-series/). In this episode: Consulting is known as a profession. Is architecture a profession? Can any consultant become an architect? Are architects actually consultants? Is there a difference between an architect inside a company versus an architect in a consulting firm? What skills do architects have versus consultants? This episode represents the third entry in the Podcast Mashup series representing the following totally awesome podcasts: Architect Tomorrow - https://youtube.com/ArchitectTomorrow/ Business Architecture Straight Talk https://bit.ly/st-podcasts https://bizarchmastery.com/straighttalk Consultants Saying Things - https://www.consultantssayingthings.com The Argument by IASA - https://iasaglobal.org/Public/Public/Events/Use-as-templates/TheArgument.aspx Tech After Five - https://www.techafterfive.com/ Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)

Four years ago a friend told me that since I had so much to say about business and technology topics that I should go make a podcast. In retrospect I think he just wanted me to quit bothering him. Joke's on him. I had him join the cast.   50 Episodes later, we've talked to dozens of people on many different topics... all related to how we as consultants can leverage our experience and knowledge to help deliver value to our clients.    We've tried to make the discussions topical, meaningful and most of all, practical. Knowledge isn't particularly helpful if you have no realistic way to use it. Keeping things useful for the cat on the ground has always been important to us.    We've had quite a lot of fun over the years and debated a variety of really interesting subjects. But what we enjoyed was not always what you, the viewers, found to be most helpful.    For this 50th Episode, we wanted to see exactly which episodes where the most viewed on the Youtube channel, on the website consultantssayingthings.com and most listened to via the myriad audio-only services. We've pulled out clips from these Top 5 shows and put them together in one episode.    In descending order, the episodes are:   1) The One About Agile Being Bullshit  2) The One About Business Architecture  3) The One About Consulting 4.0  4) The One About PMO  5) The One About Ethics in Consulting   Keep in mind there are another 45 episodes out there that we think are ALSO pretty good. But these ones are the Top 5.    There's new footage here that never made it into the final edits of the respective episodes. We also begin Episode 50 with what has been almost universally identified as the best cold open of the series to date...   Thanks for continuing to watch. Add your thoughts to the conversation on LinkedIn or YouTube. You can also like and subscribe on the YouTube Channel (and you should!)